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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
“I genuinely love this book; here, Shields has mastered the proper tone for writing about himself. Hats off. Failure is a success.” —Phillip Lopate, author of Totally, Tenderly, Tragically: Essays and Criticism from a Lifelong Love Affair with the Movies
“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, author of How to Become a Scandal
“I compulsively inhaled this devastating book, which is nearly Dostoevskian in its attention to human suffering. It made me feel less alone.” —Daniel Cantagallo, Executive Producer, Cargo Film & Releasing
“I can’t recall the last time I read a book in a single day. Utterly original.” —Jennifer Jacquet, author of Is Shame Necessary?
“Only David Shields could have written this compelling and brilliant book.” —Nicholas Delbanco, author of Group Portrait
“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, author of Nina X
“In Failure Is the Only Subject, David Shields is at his most vulnerable, naked, searching, and incisive.” —Melanie Thernstrom, author of The Pain Chronicles
“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, author of I Am Not Jackson Pollock
“David Shields’s Failure is the Only Subject is catching me in exactly the right mood: these descriptions of documentaries—massive, inconceivable, unspeakable failures in life, parenthood; intercut with descriptions of a consuming love affair with a documentary filmmaker.” —Amie Barrodale, Granta
“Is there any escape from the stubborn human unwillingness to see the world—really see it—from a point of view 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 perspective. 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 apprehend for ourselves.” —Vauhini Vara, author of Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age
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: 134 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
“I genuinely love this book; here, Shields has mastered the proper tone for writing about himself. Hats off. Failure is a success.” —Phillip Lopate, author of Totally, Tenderly, Tragically: Essays and Criticism from a Lifelong Love Affair with the Movies
“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, author of How to Become a Scandal
“I compulsively inhaled this devastating book, which is nearly Dostoevskian in its attention to human suffering. It made me feel less alone.” —Daniel Cantagallo, Executive Producer, Cargo Film & Releasing
“I can’t recall the last time I read a book in a single day. Utterly original.” —Jennifer Jacquet, author of Is Shame Necessary?
“Only David Shields could have written this compelling and brilliant book.” —Nicholas Delbanco, author of Group Portrait
“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, author of Nina X
“In Failure Is the Only Subject, David Shields is at his most vulnerable, naked, searching, and incisive.” —Melanie Thernstrom, author of The Pain Chronicles
“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, author of I Am Not Jackson Pollock
“David Shields’s Failure is the Only Subject is catching me in exactly the right mood: these descriptions of documentaries—massive, inconceivable, unspeakable failures in life, parenthood; intercut with descriptions of a consuming love affair with a documentary filmmaker.” —Amie Barrodale, Granta
“Is there any escape from the stubborn human unwillingness to see the world—really see it—from a point of view 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 perspective. 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 apprehend for ourselves.” —Vauhini Vara, author of Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age
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: 134 pages
Dimensions: 5 × 8 inches
ISBN: 978-1-957392-42-4