Among the many types of failure that life has to offer, literary failure ranks among the most devastating. It is sometimes even more painful than romantic rejection, which may simply be the result of mundane factors (crossed eyes, a small income). Literary failure, however, is a thing of the soul, made all the more toxic when it comes at the hands of that confederacy of Precious, Insular, Sanctimonious, Smug and often Young (work out the acronym for yourself) writing-program grads who seem to rule the literary roost. Yet “The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure” offers a more nuanced view. Far less grim than its title would suggest, the dictionary implicitly argues that failure is often the best possible outcome, both for the reading public and for the writer whose obscurity may be a blessing. “We have no idea how many great works have been lost,” the dictionary explains, “yet we are aware of a number of bafflingly mediocre ones which have managed to survive and even get canonised.” To write is rarely divine; to fail always keeps you out of infamy’s grasp. THE BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF LITERARY FAILURE Edited by C.D. Rose Melville House, 175 pages, $18.95 In this spirit the widely unheralded Aurelio Quattrochi “spent all of 1973 poring over a single word, and most of 1974 erasing it,” according to the dictionary, never finishing the book he was trying to write. Most readers, to be sure, will not have heard of Aurelio Quattrochi or any of the 51 other victims—or beneficiaries—of literary stillbirth whose biographies are collected in this thin volume. There’s a good reason: They are all fictional. The dictionary originated as a website where short, invented biographies of writerly catastrophe were posted and usually, soon after, deleted. Mercifully, these were saved from oblivion by their author, C.D. Rose, who lists himself as the dictionary’s “editor.” Though the vignettes are fictional, most are entertaining and all could serve as warnings to anyone thinking of taking up the literary life. Daniel Finnegan, for example, received a nice advance for his first novel, only to have his editors insist that he change the male protagonist to a washwoman, because “female migrant worker narratives are hot at the moment.” Then, after focus-group intervention, he was informed that the washerwoman should become a reality-show contestant and finally that his book should list a female as its author, though Finnegan was promised a mention in the acknowledgments. Then there’s the sad tale of Casimir Adamowitz-Kastrowicki, a writer supposedly from the 19th century who asked a friend to destroy his manuscripts should he perish in war. He survived battle but was tardy in his return home, inspiring the friend to carry out his orders. The only silver lining was that the author was simultaneously killed by a runaway horse. In a similar vein of futility, Marta Kupka finally got around to writing her story late in life. “She wrote incessantly for three weeks, completing the long tale of her life, failing to see that not a single word of what she wrote actually made it onto the paper” because her typewriter ribbon had dried up. Most of the entries in “The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure” run to only a few pages, giving aspiring writers something to read while waiting for their computers to boot up or their morning martinis to take effect. Though the book describes the travails of the writing class—including poets, who these days find themselves playing second fiddle to fortune-cookie scribes—it offers direct ridicule as well. The dictionary snarls at “ostentatious flâneurs who sit in cafes or coffee shops, flaunting their Macbooks or Moleskines.” It takes aim at “a young, eager aspirant from Ohio, fresh out of his MFA” program, who decides to write the longest novel ever written. Unfortunately, while “he knew how much he wanted to write, he had little idea precisely what he wanted to write.” On the other end of the spectrum, a writer hoping to cash in on the minimalist vogue—think of Raymond Carver and Donald Barthelme—submits a manuscript with the word “I” on its first and only page. Publishers and agents mistakenly assume that he has forgotten to send the rest. Mr. Rose, touted as “the world’s preeminent expert on inexpert writers,” is an appealing crank. He describes practitioners of “experimental writing” as those who “willfully [abandon] punctuation or engage in wild flights of typographical fancy.” He offers up an experimental group called the Beasley Collective, which “wanted to take the ideological drive of the post-punk era and marry it to the sheer thrill of being in a band, but seeing as none of them could play instruments (not, it has to be said, a barrier that stopped many in that fertile time) decided to work in the literary sphere.” Their writing goes no further than an unread manifesto. For all its ear-boxing “The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure” proclaims, near book’s end, that writing—even bad writing—is something of a heroic act. “The power of writing is one of the greatest things we have, whether it is read or not.” By writing, we leave a memorial of life: “I was there, I saw.” True, no doubt. But as the book’s mini-biographies attest: It is often better to let sleeping keyboards lie.
