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Failure Is the Only Subject: On Documentary Film and a Life Coming Undone - David Shields (preorder)
ABOUT THE BOOK
A SEARING EXPLORATION OF FAILURE—PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL—THROUGH THE LENS OF DOCUMENTARY FILM AND THE PRISM OF SELF
In Failure Is the Only Subject, we encounter David Shields—memoirist, novelist, and filmmaker—undergoing psychoanalysis in the aftermath of divorce and in the throes of an addictive new relationship. Struggling to piece his life back together, Shields watches (and rewatches) documentaries about human disappointment by such groundbreaking directors as Werner Herzog, Errol Morris, Ross McElwee, Kitty Green, Adam Curtis, and Michael Winterbottom.
Contemplating the filmmakers’ choices, Shields asks painful questions about his life, any life, life itself. What happens when the mask falls off and we come face-to-face with the abyss within? Is there a way to bear such harrowing knowledge—about ourselves and the world? Renowned for his discomfiting candor, Shields is at his best here: unsparing in his scrutiny.
PRAISE FOR FAILURE IS THE ONLY SUBJECT
“[Shields] turns to documentary cinema to contend with divorce and depression. . . . Most of his observations are spot-on. . . . He leavens this material with sardonic wit. . . . An admirably raw work about dealing with trauma.” —Kirkus Reviews
“David Shields’s Failure is the Only Subject is catching me in exactly the right mood: descriptions of documentaries—massive, inconceivable, unspeakable failures in life, parenthood—intercut with descriptions of a consuming love affair with a documentary filmmaker.” —Granta magazine
“I genuinely love this book; here, Shields has mastered the proper tone for writing about himself. Hats off. Failure is a success.” —Phillip Lopate
“A masterful, bold, restrained, beautiful book, which I read in one sitting. David Shields has knocked it out of the park.”—Nancy Lemann
“A great book! Tonic and brilliant. A love story so palpable all the psycho-filmic filters fail to obscure it. On his tragic trajectory through layers of human failure, Shields uplifts as he despairs. ‘I think (I know) there is absolutely no purpose to anything whatsoever.’ Sure, but then why do I feel so much better when I read him?”—Andrei Codrescu
“Failure Is the Only Subject delivers old-fashioned pleasures: beautiful writing, the excavation of tormented interiority, and erotic frustration. It’s moving, frequently funny, and deep, and it has shrewdly original things to say about film and art. This is my favorite book of his. I couldn’t put it down.”—Laura Kipnis
“I can’t recall the last time I read a book in a single day. Utterly original.” —Jennifer Jacquet
“In Failure, David Shields heroically wrestles with this question: Do we make our imaginary life, or does it unmake us?” —Tom McCarthy
“David Shields’s new book consists of personal, thoughtful, deceptively simple ruminations on movies and life and how the thin skin separating one person from another is punctured. Deceptively simple because, although the voice is light and conversational, the insights, born of struggle and failure, accumulate, weaving into a pattern that resolves into nothing less than changing the way we think.” —John Haskell
“Failure is the Only Subject explores both an art form and the human condition. What happens when we consider art from a vulnerable place? How is our looking affected by catastrophic personal change? It’s a gift to walk through these questions with David Shields.” —Elena Passarello
“I compulsively inhaled this devastating book, which is nearly Dostoevskian in its attention to human suffering. It made me feel less alone.” —Daniel Cantagallo
“Is there any escape from the stubborn human unwillingness to see the world—really see it—from a perspective other than our own? By taking as his subject both documentary films and his own relationships, David Shields has chosen the perfect raw material with which to explore the limits of true understanding between individuals who are separated by, yet wedded to, their own narrow ways of seeing. If on the surface this book is about one man's sense of his own failure, it's more deeply about our species' common failure to imagine a world outside of the one we can each sense for ourselves.” —Vauhini Vara
“In Failure Is the Only Subject, David Shields is at his most vulnerable, naked, searching, and incisive.” —Melanie Thernstrom
“David Shields uses other people’s cameras to look unflinchingly at his own life and relationships. The result is intimate and devastating.” —Emily Wells
“Failure Is the Only Subject powerfully shows how good documentaries hold mirrors up to us at our most painful, vulnerable moments, when we are in conflict with our lovers, our children, our professions, ourselves. A triumph, from one of our most inventive writers.” —Mark Oppenheimer
“Only David Shields could have written this compelling and brilliant book.” —Nicholas Delbanco
“Powerfully elegiac.” —Peter Brooks, author of Reading for the Plot
“Shields’s tone and style merge here through what I can only call wisdom. A very fine piece of humanity, set down in text.” —Ewan Morrison
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Shields is the New York Times bestselling author of Reality Hunger, which Lit Hub named one of the most important books of the last decade. He has written and directed several documentaries; his new film, The Trouble with Men—loosely adapted from Reality Hunger—will be released in 2027.
BOOK INFO
Pub Date: February 23, 2027
Print Length: 136 pages
Dimensions: 5 × 8 inches
ISBN: 978-1-957392-42-4
ABOUT THE BOOK
A SEARING EXPLORATION OF FAILURE—PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL—THROUGH THE LENS OF DOCUMENTARY FILM AND THE PRISM OF SELF
In Failure Is the Only Subject, we encounter David Shields—memoirist, novelist, and filmmaker—undergoing psychoanalysis in the aftermath of divorce and in the throes of an addictive new relationship. Struggling to piece his life back together, Shields watches (and rewatches) documentaries about human disappointment by such groundbreaking directors as Werner Herzog, Errol Morris, Ross McElwee, Kitty Green, Adam Curtis, and Michael Winterbottom.
Contemplating the filmmakers’ choices, Shields asks painful questions about his life, any life, life itself. What happens when the mask falls off and we come face-to-face with the abyss within? Is there a way to bear such harrowing knowledge—about ourselves and the world? Renowned for his discomfiting candor, Shields is at his best here: unsparing in his scrutiny.
PRAISE FOR FAILURE IS THE ONLY SUBJECT
“[Shields] turns to documentary cinema to contend with divorce and depression. . . . Most of his observations are spot-on. . . . He leavens this material with sardonic wit. . . . An admirably raw work about dealing with trauma.” —Kirkus Reviews
“David Shields’s Failure is the Only Subject is catching me in exactly the right mood: descriptions of documentaries—massive, inconceivable, unspeakable failures in life, parenthood—intercut with descriptions of a consuming love affair with a documentary filmmaker.” —Granta magazine
“I genuinely love this book; here, Shields has mastered the proper tone for writing about himself. Hats off. Failure is a success.” —Phillip Lopate
“A masterful, bold, restrained, beautiful book, which I read in one sitting. David Shields has knocked it out of the park.”—Nancy Lemann
“A great book! Tonic and brilliant. A love story so palpable all the psycho-filmic filters fail to obscure it. On his tragic trajectory through layers of human failure, Shields uplifts as he despairs. ‘I think (I know) there is absolutely no purpose to anything whatsoever.’ Sure, but then why do I feel so much better when I read him?”—Andrei Codrescu
“Failure Is the Only Subject delivers old-fashioned pleasures: beautiful writing, the excavation of tormented interiority, and erotic frustration. It’s moving, frequently funny, and deep, and it has shrewdly original things to say about film and art. This is my favorite book of his. I couldn’t put it down.”—Laura Kipnis
“I can’t recall the last time I read a book in a single day. Utterly original.” —Jennifer Jacquet
“In Failure, David Shields heroically wrestles with this question: Do we make our imaginary life, or does it unmake us?” —Tom McCarthy
“David Shields’s new book consists of personal, thoughtful, deceptively simple ruminations on movies and life and how the thin skin separating one person from another is punctured. Deceptively simple because, although the voice is light and conversational, the insights, born of struggle and failure, accumulate, weaving into a pattern that resolves into nothing less than changing the way we think.” —John Haskell
“Failure is the Only Subject explores both an art form and the human condition. What happens when we consider art from a vulnerable place? How is our looking affected by catastrophic personal change? It’s a gift to walk through these questions with David Shields.” —Elena Passarello
“I compulsively inhaled this devastating book, which is nearly Dostoevskian in its attention to human suffering. It made me feel less alone.” —Daniel Cantagallo
“Is there any escape from the stubborn human unwillingness to see the world—really see it—from a perspective other than our own? By taking as his subject both documentary films and his own relationships, David Shields has chosen the perfect raw material with which to explore the limits of true understanding between individuals who are separated by, yet wedded to, their own narrow ways of seeing. If on the surface this book is about one man's sense of his own failure, it's more deeply about our species' common failure to imagine a world outside of the one we can each sense for ourselves.” —Vauhini Vara
“In Failure Is the Only Subject, David Shields is at his most vulnerable, naked, searching, and incisive.” —Melanie Thernstrom
“David Shields uses other people’s cameras to look unflinchingly at his own life and relationships. The result is intimate and devastating.” —Emily Wells
“Failure Is the Only Subject powerfully shows how good documentaries hold mirrors up to us at our most painful, vulnerable moments, when we are in conflict with our lovers, our children, our professions, ourselves. A triumph, from one of our most inventive writers.” —Mark Oppenheimer
“Only David Shields could have written this compelling and brilliant book.” —Nicholas Delbanco
“Powerfully elegiac.” —Peter Brooks, author of Reading for the Plot
“Shields’s tone and style merge here through what I can only call wisdom. A very fine piece of humanity, set down in text.” —Ewan Morrison
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Shields is the New York Times bestselling author of Reality Hunger, which Lit Hub named one of the most important books of the last decade. He has written and directed several documentaries; his new film, The Trouble with Men—loosely adapted from Reality Hunger—will be released in 2027.
BOOK INFO
Pub Date: February 23, 2027
Print Length: 136 pages
Dimensions: 5 × 8 inches
ISBN: 978-1-957392-42-4