Failure

01/21/2005 at 12:00 p.m.

In America striving for success is a duty. Ambition is a virtue. Failure is a stain. But has our understanding of failure changed? In the play Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman embraces the American dream of success. He tells his sons "Be liked and you’ll never want". In the end Willy commits suicide because he sees himself as a failure. Yet the play questions the notion. Was Willy really a failure? Or did Willy embrace a misguided notion of success?

In the early 1990’s young people began to proudly wear t-shirts emblazoned with the word Loser. The musician Beck achieved great success with the refrain "I’m a loser baby, why don’t you kill me." We’ve all been touched by failure. Have your views of failure evolved? Is failure not as bad as it's cracked up to be? In this hour of The Conversation, we talk to the editor of Failure Magazine and Scott Sandage, author of Born Losers: A History of Failure in America. Sandage concludes that failure isn’t the dark side of the American dream… failure is the foundation of the American dream. What do you think?

Guests:
Scott Sandage Associate Professor of History at Carnegie Mellon University and the author of Born Losers: A History of Failure in America