Tony Grist
NOTE: I recently unpacked my hodgepodge of notebooks about gun culture to begin thinking about writing another book in 2025. Seeing John McPhee’s Tabula Rasa in a local bookstore inspired me to empty those notebooks here. Be advised: These are truly notes and not composed ideas.
At the start of every semester, I have my introduction to sociology students listen to and reflect on Alanis Morissette’s song, “You Learn.”
You live, you learn
You love, you learn
You cry, you learn
You lose, you learn
You bleed, you learn
You scream, you learn
As we unpack the lyrics, I ask the students to reflect on the most developmental or educational moments in their lives. They often identify moments of failure. We observe that we rarely learn from success. We need to risk failure.
This was all well and good until I was the one failing. Failing time and again to get editors at major publishing houses to see the value of my work on gun culture. Thirty-three times failing, resulting in my superstar literary agent throwing up his hands and saying he’d done everything he could do. The fact that the book was published at all is serendipitous, as I’ve discussed many times.
What I’ve realized is that you may learn from failure, but it doesn’t feel good. Which explains the conservative approach my students often take to their work. Nothing ventured, nothing gained is a truism. But is nothing ventured, nothing lost also true?
As I get ready to embark on a two-week vacation, I also have hanging over my head the possibility that I will fail to reach one of the three hoped-for audiences for this book: gun skeptics.
I honestly believed that gun skeptics — who are largely my fellow liberals — would be open-minded enough to consider my work. Now I’m not so sure.
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