The Other Kafka: Humorist salutes 52 literary losers
U.K. humorist C.D. Rose has written the who's who of the talentless and deluded. What does it take to truly fail at the writer's craft?
When it comes to the myriad ways to fail as a writer, C.D. Rose has been taking notes. The U.K. humorist joins guest host Talia Schlanger to discuss his tongue-in-cheek study, The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure, and why he wanted to write the who's who of the talentless and deluded.
Rose shares how the satirical project cost him his "conceptual purity", why failure is so much better than mediocrity, and why readers want writers to be as spectacular as their stories.
"It's always rather disappointing to find a writer who's a very modest, quiet person, happily married with two children and a semi-detached suburban home," says Rose.