No Success Like Failure: The American Love of Self-Destruction, Self-Aggrandizement, and Breaking Even - Softcover

Solotaroff, Ivan

9781878818317: No Success Like Failure: The American Love of Self-Destruction, Self-Aggrandizement, and Breaking Even

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1878818317 ISBN 13: 9781878818317

Publisher: Sheep Meadow Pr, 1994

"Looking for America?" asks Sam Toperoff, "Ivan Solotaroff has drawn the map, and it takes you down, down, down, to the junkyard of the Dream Machine. He tells us exactly what happens when the Devil comes to collect and tells it brilliantly. Ivan Solotaroff never blinks. Never."
A remorselessly dispassionate chronicler of the absurd, the troubled, and the deformed, Ivan Solotaroff has an uncanny ability to find his way into the private lives of public figures at their moments of greatest epiphany, abasement, and deluded grandeur. With none of the judgement, artifice, or tropes of literary journalism, the eleven essays of No Success Like Failure present a vision of the American ego at its most fragile. Among them: "Sympathy for the Devil" on the life, times, and burgeoning environmental awareness of Charles Manson; "In the Land of the Fischer King," an account of Bobby Fischer's public reappearance in war-ravaged Serbia-Montenegro; "Once a Man, Twice a Child," which covers the criminal trials of soul-star James Brown; "Superhuman, All Too Superhuman," on the pugilistic career and vagina dentata of Mark Gastineau; "King of the Park," on the rise and fall of the street comic Charlie Barnett.
In these tales of unknowns, household names, and has-beens Solotaroff shows us what it is like to be trapped in the harsh spotlight of American popular culture, revealing in unflinching detail the hysteria and pathos of our national delusions.

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From the Publisher:

6 x 9 trim. LC 94-2092

From Kirkus Reviews:

A striking debut collection from a journalist whose articles for the Village Voice and Esquire portray people--some famous, some obscure--hovering somewhere around the edges of pop culture. In Reno, Nevada, on the trail of the heavy-metal band Judas Priest, whose albums allegedly caused the suicide attempts of two very troubled teens, Solotaroff captures the weirdness of this metastasizing ``town for losers'' and the leather-clad bandmen who love golf more than Satan. In the Yankee Stadium bleachers, he finds cheery, beery, foul-mouthed fans who tell macho stories of sports bonding. On a Yugoslavian island of Sveti Stefan for the renegade chess ``championship'' between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky, he concludes that the surrounding war--the ``anarchy of freak individualism run amok''--absolutely fits Bobby Fischer's chess history. Trailing ex-footballer Mark Gastineau as he chases elusive glory in boxing, Solotaroff finds an overbearing stage father. He poignantly probes the lost dreams of playground hoops legend Earl Manigault, whose few personal effects include a dog- eared notebook and a photocopy of his Hollywood film option. He observes legendary musician James Brown, in perpetual trouble with the law, manically referring to himself in the third person--it sounds like ``Jamebrown''--amidst ``global/biblical self- pronouncements'' not entirely without foundation. A few short pieces--on the subculture of trick bikers, cracked-up comedian Charlie Barnett, and toilet-head comic Andrew Dice Clay--could use some more depth but are still arresting. Despite the unfortunate subtitle, a collection full of powerful descriptions and memorable moments. Ivan is the son of Ted Solotaroff, literary critic and former Harper editor. -- Copyright �1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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