Congratulations, You're a Failure! Stephen Marche on Enduring the Life of a Writer

The Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum

Meghan Daum

Society & Culture

4.7 • 855 Ratings

🗓️ 20 March 2023

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Stephen Marche is the author of six books, has been a columnist at Esquire, has taught Shakespeare at the college level and has contributed to The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and many other publications. By any reasonable measure, his career is an unmitigated success. But seen through a different lens (for instance his own) it can also look a lot like failure. That's true of just about every writer who ever lived and Stephen grapples with this dichotomy in new book, On Writing And Failure, which is both a literary history and a reverse pep talk for aspiring artists. In this conversation, Stephen talks about how writers from James Baldwin to James Joyce to Li Bai (and many, many others) built legacies on the sands of constant rejection. He also shares stories of his own failures and offers some thoughts about how the contours of failure and rejection have changed in the new independent creator economy.

For paying Substack subscribers, Stephen stays overtime to talk about failure outside of the literary arena, including the perils of marriage and childrearing. Meghan shares her story about getting rejected from a dream job because of a typo in her resumé and Stephen remembers what it was like when his first book, a novel, received a positive New York Times review from none other than . . . Meghan!

Guest Bio:

Stephen Marche is a novelist and essayist. He is the author of half a dozen books, including The Next Civil War, The Unmade Bed: The Messy Truth About Men and Women in the Twenty-First Century (2016) and The Hunger of the Wolf (2015). He has written opinion pieces and essays for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Esquire, The Walrus and many others. He is the host of the hit audio series How Not to F*ck Up Your Kids Too Bad, and its sequel How Not to F*ck Up Your Marriage Too Bad on Audible. His latest book is On Writing and Failure: Or, On the Peculiar Perseverance Required to Endure the Life of a Writer (Field Notes).

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the unspeakable podcast. I'm your host, Megan Dome. Before I introduced this week's guest,
0:09.8	Stephen Marsh, a couple really quick things about, yes, the unspeak easy. The first is that once again,
0:17.2	we have our retreat in Minneapolis coming up May 8th through 11th.
0:24.1	There's a retreat before that in Leavenworth, Washington, but that is sold out.
0:28.2	That is old news.
0:29.3	The one to think about is in Minneapolis.
0:32.9	If you are interested in that, go to the unspeak easy.com.
0:37.2	We also have a brand new website, so that's extra exciting.
0:41.0	The Minneapolis Retreat is going to offer a day-only package.
0:45.1	You can come just during the day for May 9th and 10th, as well as the overnight offering,
0:50.9	although both of those are selling out quickly.
0:52.9	So do check them out.
0:55.7	The second thing is that the online community for the unspeak easy is just around the corner. I know I've been saying
1:01.3	that for a long time, but it's really, really true. This is going to be a place where you can come in
1:07.6	and be part of discussion circles about all kinds of topics. We're going to have
1:13.5	book clubs. We're going to have live events. It is for women only. But if you are a guy and
1:20.6	you are finding this frustrating and thinking I'm discriminating against you, I really am
1:26.9	going to expand this whole enterprise,
1:29.5	so we're going to have events that include men. So don't despair the unspeakEasy.com. Good
1:37.0	things happening. Okay. My guest is Stephen Marsh. He is a writer, quite an eclectic writer.
1:43.7	He's written about culture, politics, marriage.
1:47.3	He's published six books. He's been a columnist at Esquire. He's written for all kinds of
	...

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