How I (Barely) Survived the Abject Failure of My Much Hyped Debut Novel ‹ Literary Hub

It was one of the more memorable times in my life. I was in love with the woman I would eventually marry, I was young and in shape and my feeling of invincibility was compounded by a literary success that felt at once sudden and preordained, complete with an eye-popping advance and a veritable chorus of industry hype. It was the culmination of a rags-to-riches story I'd been cultivating for a decade. I was the courageous, iconoclast-child of working-class parents, a kid who'd escaped the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of Long Island housing developments to conquer college, grad school, and now literature itself. The universe didn't mind that I had exaggerated this story's most salient plot-points; it was confirming that I was special, and I moved through the rarified air of my ascendancy with a modesty so perfectly false that it convinced even me.