On Books You Should Read

(a manifesto for us losers in a world of heteronormative, absurd success. From the long time love of my life—- I still wanna eat your brain Jack.)

THE QUEER ART OF FAILURE BY Judith “Jack” Halberstam

In a world of hokey motivational posters and cheap self-esteem peddlers that encourage us to learn from our mistakes and strive toward self-improvement, Judith Halberstam turns toward the wisdom of gay memoirist Quentin Crisp who quipped, “If at first you don’t succeed, failure may be your style.” The Queer Art of Failure  re-examines how we conceive of the idea of failure in our society, not so that we may correct ourselves, but so that we may see how our various “failures” may actually produce a preferable alternative to conformist lifestyles and the status quo.

Halberstam investigates how “low culture,” popular films and media not normally thought of as “high art,” can produce incisive critiques of a mass culture that privileges conformity and complacency and marginalizes those who do not fit its ideals.

Asking, “what kinds of reward can failure offer us?” Halberstam responds that it “allows us to escape the punishing norms that discipline behavior and manage human development with the goal of delivering us from unruly childhoods to predictable adulthoods.” The privileging of the child and the childish does not rehash the cliché of childhood innocence or Whitney Houston’s cheesy “I believe that children are the future” mantra, but instead argues that the child’s anarchic, unorganized vision of the world around them sees the flaws in our society that we normally ignore.

i wanna eat and fuck your brain at the same time Jack. I know you know it.