‘Failure Is An Option’ is a book about trying

As much as H. Jon Benjamin’s collection of 21 personal essays, “Failure Is An Option,” is written as a book of failures, it’s also a book about documenting successes.

“Failure Is An Option: An Attempted Memoir”
By H. Jon Benjamin.
258 pp. Dutton. $25. 
2018.

The chapter “The Robbery (and How I Failed to Stop One)” could have been reframed as “How I Survived A Robbery.” The chapter “How I Failed as a New Father” could have been called “How I didn’t manage to kill my kid.” And the chapter about how Benjamin failed at “pretty much everything as a kid,” including how to learn a musical instrument, could have been titled “How I made the very experimental 2015 jazz album, ‘Well, I Should Have Learned How To Play Piano.'” Meanwhile, the book’s two-sentence second final chapter, “How I Failed at Differentiating My Two Characters of Bob and Archer” (because to be honest, that’s what you know Benjamin for and it’s probably why you’re reading this book), could have been called “How I became a very successful voice actor in two almost-decade-long franchises.”

Even the book’s title — “Failure Is An Option” — could have been renamed to something along the lines of “How I Wrote And Published My First Book” — becoming that self-help guide to wannabe authors.

The secret: You have to fail at writing your first book before you can succeed at it.

Rephrased: You have to try.

(Or try to convince others to do it for you — which Benjamin does with varying degrees of success. Two chapters include painful cringeworthy excerpts of his correspondences with history professors he tries to con into writing portions of the book for him.)

“Failure Is An Option” is filled with embarrassments. You almost* (coda to this later) feel bad for the guy. But his life’s most humiliating experiences — including when his child ate dog poop in front of strangers, when he got his brother-in-law’s father to write a failed pilot filled with unnecessary Viagra jokes for him, and when he had diarrhea and pooped in the front seat of a rental car while driving to a fancy hotel with valets — are the book’s biggest and funniest successes. If you only have time to read one chapter of this book while waiting in a store where this book could be purchased, skip to Chapter 20: “The Flood: A Waster of Waters Ruthlessly (How I Failed My Rental Car).”

Regardless on whether Benjamin’s exercise in recounting failure is a failure, failure is the bread and butter of stand-up acts and often makes for a better story than success.

“So much of my life has been a success of small personal failures, and still, I will be remembered for all the good fortune,” Benjamin wrote.

“Failure Is An Option” is really a book about opportunity: squeezing those lemons into lemonade. It just depends on how you look at the glass.

Benjamin’s glasses are mildly funny. But that’s why we pay him to make us laugh.

* Warning: If you were hoodwinked into purchasing and reading “Failure Is An Option” in its entirety, you might walk away feeling as if you were conned, with the sneaking suspicion that somewhere out there, Benjamin’s laughing at how he got some poor schmucks to pay enough Benjamins for his diarrhea-filled pages.

Disclaimer: I received a free eARC of “Failure Is An Option” from NetGalley in exchange for this honest review.