Failure Is an Option: An Attempted Memoir [Penguin Audio, 2018]

Failure Is an Option: An Attempted Memoir

by

H. Jon Benjamin


First off, let me be clear that I’m not a huge reader of autobigraphies – I mean I’ve read a few like Nelson Mandela and Jim Morrison and the like, but there have been at most, a handful over my years as a reader. So this was a bit out of my normal zone of interest but I liked the title and I was curious because I’ve found Benjamin to be an interesting lower/mid-card celebrity.

The book lives up to it’s title and that’s not ambigious at all.
From the very first lines and story, it is a testament to the art of not just failing, but everything that surrounds this mythical and terrifying thing that is a social demon we are hammered with since childhood – Failure!
I mean consider that todays generation of parents has been notorious amongst their elders and peers for not wanting their kids to feel failure and to never have a “loser” or give participation trophies or whatever. Personally it’s not a philosophy that makes sense to me but hey, to each their own.
This book however is an interesting one because it doesn’t talk about failure as something terrible, nor does it go the other extreme as some people do with the whole “that which does not kill me, makes me stronger!” sloganeering – no, this book just talks about the small and simple things that you would go through in everyday life and would try and fail at just as much as it does the big things like your career and big projects or dreams.
It’s about the concept that it’s okay, life is full of failures big and small. We do things and sometimes it goes to plan, sometimes it doesn’t and in both cases, sometimes it’s a success and sometimes it’s a failure – there are no guarantees and it’s not the end of the world. Life carries on. That’s it. No big.

I don’t know, maybe it’s the Lebowski in me. Maybe I’m just not that interested in competition and success as people around me. Maybe showing people things or keeping up didn’t interest me enough (I blame my parents!). Maybe it’s the raspy, lazy tones of author H. Jon Benjamin (whose H I finally learned the secret of in this book!) who I’ve gotten so used to hearing on animated shows that put me at ease to enjoy it – it was like a book being read to me by Bob Belcher and that was it’s own kind of hilarious!
But bottom line, it was a nice change of pace from intense books, both fictional and otherwise and it spoke to the laid-back slacker in me and that’s a lazy wolf inside of everyone I think we could do with feeding a bit more from time to time. You could read the book and it’d be great or hear the audiobook and that’s just an added entertainment layer – but I do recommend this book to anyone even mildly interested or intrigued!



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