“The ground bass is failure; America is the key signature; Pauline Bardal is the lyrical tune that sings at the center; Minneota, Minnesota, is the staff on which the tunes are written.” So begins the masterful title piece from Bill Holm’s first book of essays, The Music of Failure. This collection introduced to many the singular vision and voice of literary giant Bill Holm, a writer who had traveled well and widely but came back to his hometown of Minneotaâthe town of his immigrant Icelandic ancestorsâas, in his words, “for all practical purposes a failure.”Â What emerges from these pages, and from Holm’s cherished writings over the next two and a half decades, is anything but failure. From his ruminations on life in Minneota, family history, and the “horizontal grandeur” of the Midwestern prairie to a poetry-reading tour of Minnesota nursing homes and an account of a naked man eating lilacs out of his garden, The Music of Failure is a lyrical and surprising compilation that finds Holm mining the stories and places that captivated him and continue to enthrall his many readers.Â This 25th anniversary edition includes poignant portraits of Holm and the history of The Music of Failure by Jim Heynen and David Pichaske, along with an essay Holm requested be added to this new edition, “Is Minnesota in America Yet?” With beautiful black-and-white photographs by Tom Guttormsson, The Music of Failure is Bill Holm at both his early and quintessential best, an inimitable and much-missed writer who illuminates our private and common lives through both our quiet victories and our sublime failures.

The Music of Failure

Literature & Fiction

HOLM, Bill

Essays & Correspondence

Plains Pr

Review\nAlmost Paradise 
 Black Russians 
 Blues For The Common Man 
 Blues Night 
 Boo Boo 
 Caboose 
 Callie Jo 
 Cantina 
 Carnival 
 Coda 
 College Boy 
 The Color Of Sadness 
 Cool In The Summer Breeze 
 Culture 
 Czechoslovakia 
 Daylight On The Mexican Border 
 The Dewey Bar 
 Drink And Agriculture 
 Fat Chance 
 Flesh 
 Gabby 
 Ground Fog 
 Heat Lightning 
 How Long Has This Been Going On? 
 On The Banks Of Money Creek 
 Quintet 
 Reception 
 Red Beans And Rice 
 Redball 
 Rhonda, The Full Moon, And Richard Brautigan 
 Ribs 
 Save The Last Dance For Me 
 Shindig 
 Sixties 
 Sonny Rollins 
 Spanish 
 Spontaneous Combustion 
 Strawberry Moon 
 The Summer Wind 
 The Sweetest Little Woman In New Orleans 
 Tequila 
 Too Late To Turn Back Now 
 Very Warm For Love 
 Weinstock's Daughter 
 The Widower On New Year's Eve 
 A Wife's Tale 
 A Wish To Be On The Road 
 -- 
Table of Poems from

Carnival

Etter, Dave

Poetry

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