Failure of History of Great Sadness

Abstract

Failure of History of Great Sadness is an original, creative work that presents itself as a blend of fiction, memoir, and literary criticism. The work is framed in such a way as to explain two ideas: that an initial goal was pursued but failed to have been met, and that this failure is actually an opportunity to develop a new work out of the old work’s remnants. The work encourages a seamless interweaving of what is imagined and what is real, and suggests the destruction of the boundaries between author and subject. Additionally, the work is a gallery of aesthetic: there are many types of ways to write, and, to the author’s best ability, a number of these ways are explored. The work of Failure of History of Great Sadness is, essentially, a collection of short stories that each focus on their own particular subject — with the added caveat that the work understands and proclaims itself to be an attempt at writing a thesis. But, more than that, the work centrally addresses that which is elusive: as in, the spark that makes magic into magic.