Take heart. That is the essence of what H. Jon Benjamin writes in his book, “Failure Is An Option: An Attempted Memoir”. The title is beguiling, to say the least.
Jon Benjamin is a successful actor, comedian and now a writer. So when he talks of failure is it not contradictory?
“It's true. It's a contradiction. I think the stories that I tell or at least all the relatable ones are kind of about failures...that I hold my own, that are part of who I am, my nature as a failure as opposed to my more evident success as a actor or voiceover artist. So I spend most of my time in that world,” says Benjamin revealing a profound insight: whatever we may be, the way we think and talk is the world we live in...not the made up face we show the world.
What are the stories he relates? He goes back to the time when he had taken his little son to the park, “...it was early on in my care of him, and we did go to a New York City public park. And he had just started to crawl, and he did crawl off as I was having a conversation with a few mothers who were in the park with their kids as well. And then I was approached by another mother saying, is that your son?...I looked up. I took my eyes off for — I don't know — a minute or so, and he was next to a tree. And she told me — informed me that he was eating poop. Dog poop I hope. I don't know. It was — it's New York, so it's hard to tell. So yeah, that was a big failure.”
The interviewer is kind enough to assure him that it was perhaps not such a failure because the son survived and is now 15 years of age and healthy!
Such and more hilarious (to the reader) instances fill the attempted memoir to convey to the readers that even behind all the success, there are moments of low. No wonder then that his dedication in the book which is urging us to let go of the constant grind towards success reads: For all of you failures out there, you can do worse.
He explains the second part of the title thus, “There are elements of a memoir, but I would not call it a traditional memoir. I did go back into my personal history, but there's a lot of other sort of forays into comedy bits. And, you know, I think the personal stories that I tell in my life, sort of, do add up to say that you can fail and fail and fail again and continue to move forward. And it's not a prescription for success at the end of that — not a rainbow I guess, but a dark cloud. But I hope for the best for the reader.”
