-OpEd-
BUENOS AIRES — In a late novella, the playwright Samuel Beckett makes the now familiar observation to “fail better” after failing. This has become an adage today, circulating online without knowledge of its literary origin, as a consolation to people of all ages who merge with some goal – an exam, a position or business venture — and sink with it should it fail to prosper.
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Indeed, sinking was traditionally implicit in the Spanish verb to fail — fracasar — which meant breaking into pieces and, in the case of a fleet, sinking. Failure, in that sense alone, was a shipwreck! Don Quixote, the 17th-century literary character best known for charging at windmills, admits he is barely able to harm giants, “behead snakes, sink fleets (fracasar armadas) and undo charms.” It appears this was the first use of a verb of Italian origin in Castilian. In its early days, the verb would have been used to, well, wreck ships, monarchies and imperial ventures but not people.
But in time it would lose substance to become a metaphor of our dissatisfaction and sense of defeat, living in a context of unending competition. Likewise our word for success — éxito — now only distantly related to the English “exit” (or to eixida in Valencian) – initially meant just finishing, or presumably doing enough so you could leave! At some point it acquired its modern intensity, ferocity and violence. Because, today, if you fail to be successful, you’re a wreck …
As clickbaity as it gets
Yet looking at the lives of the rich and famous, we find their moments of failure far more intriguing than their triumphs. Websites “clickbait” us, promising to reveal all about the celebrities now working a day job, or 50 Hollywood stars who lost everything.
Perseverance may, in principle, lead nowhere.
Like the boxer Mike Tyson, who frittered away his fortune on Bengal tigers and million-dollar bathtubs, the actor Nicholas Cage, who lost properties over a tax scam concocted by crooked accountants, or Burt Reynolds, who went from spending 0,000 or so on hairpieces to post-divorce bankruptcy.
And it works — we click — because we are enthralled by tragedy, even its paltry versions, perhaps for seeing in it a kind of cathartic justice. These sorry tales act as a rectification of the oppressive myth of unattainable success: Is it really real, if a divorce or faulty accounting can pulverize it?
Forget about success
And as for Beckett, he certainly did not write his phrase “Try again. Fail Again. Fail Better,” as life advice to millennials and the like whose ventures have tanked. He is referring in his novella Worstward Ho to the writer’s desperate bid to command language. It is unlikely the people sending each other motivational snippets will have read the short novel (or perhaps anything by Beckett).
The phrase is useful nevertheless in thwarting another commonplace idea, that success is a matter of time, if you just keep at it. We might do well to bear in mind that resolve, or even perseverance, may, in principle, lead nowhere or at least not to where you wanted. We might do better recalling the original sense of success — effectively to do a job and go home — or better yet, to live without a thought for success. Especially if it’s being peddled online!
