Like the infamous propaganda film that inspired the title of this brilliant collection, Triumph Of The Won't is populated by would-be dictators and failed artists. Meet a literary revolutionary who doesn't write; the record producer obsessed with making it big at all costs; a zine publisher who stalks his girlfriend, oblivious to the consequences; the Marxist author who despises capitalism while lusting after fame and riches. Interpersed with these mad tales from the creative underground are stories and essays dealing with the more painful realities of life--the loss of a child, the end of a marriage, the struggles with drinking, dating, and day jobs--making Triumph Of The Won't a surprisingly tender and poignant autobiography of an artist, by one of the country's most talented and fearless personal journalists.
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Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Tim Hall is a native of New York City and a 10-year veteran of the underground and alternative press. His groundbreaking multimedia work with video blogs and digital writing have garnered praise from Silicon Valley to Australia. His first novel, Half Empty, is available from Undie Press.
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More About the Author
Tim Hall is the author of two novels (Half Empty and Full Of It), a collection of stories (Triumph Of The Won't) and a book-length essay (How America Died) which is being offered exclusively through TimHallBooks. His work has been reviewed favorably in Time Out Chicago, dComp, Go Metric, and Sheridan Sun. In June 2009 he began Uplift The Positivicals, a freeform text column for online comics site Act-i-vate. He is also a member of the editorial board of OutsiderWriters, where he serves as Naked Opinion editor. A native of New York City, he now lives in a small town on the outer fringes of Chicagoland. When not working on his organic garden or dreaming of warmer climates he travels to a number of small press and author fairs throughout the year, and hopes to see you there.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great set of stories from an underappreciated contemporary writer,
By William (New Jersey) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Triumph of the Won't (Paperback)
I first discovered Tim Hall's writing in the formerly great New York Press of the late 1990's. He had a voice that was unaffected by the inauthentic habits that typically plague modern writers, like hipper-than-thou irony, grad school pretension, or blatant careerism. There was something blunt and honest that I responded to, and I got the feeling that he was a "real person" who wrote, rather than a "writer" who used inapproachability to his work as a sign of its artistry. As the title implies, his characters aren't failures, but "won'ts," people whose half-baked dreams won't be realized for lack of talent, ambition or connections. They all have to face the realization that they're people like everyone else, and nothing special. This isn't a sexy theme because it's neither feel-good nor tragedy, but it is honest and rarely tackled in modern fiction (in my limited experience with it). Many of his characters are pseudo-artist types that buzz around the fringes of New York, trying to show the world they're important when they're not. Sometimes the narrator himself is a "won't," getting tricked out of a construction job or coming to terms with the reality of a failed relationship. Mr. Hall is at his best in his longer pieces where the narrator acts as a sympathetic observer of others' follies. He's not demeaning or snide about his characters' misaimed dreams, and the writing is free of the sneering elitism that you sometimes find in our culture's young literary heavyweights. Maybe it's a class issue, since Hall's characters are usually out of their depths in the well-connected circles of Ivy League back-patters that run the Manhattan arts scenes, or maybe it's just his believable reaction to the tiresome modern "hipness" that makes so much fiction writing seem insubstantial. Judging from the success of his longer pieces here, I'd like to see him tackle a full-length novel (I haven't caught up with his novella "Half-Empty" yet) because I think he's really got something worthwhile to say about the way most of us live today and I'd like to see him widen his scope. I certainly recommend this brief but memorable book of stories.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Won't Triumph's!,
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This review is from: Triumph of the Won't (Paperback)
Finally, one of my favorite contemporary writers, Tim Hall, has released his new book, TRIUMPH OF THE WON'T. Except for one new story, I have read, enjoyed, and commited, each and every one of the stories collected into this amazing treasure tome. Do yourself a favor and order a copy or three. If you dig Bukowski, Ames, and Sedaris, you'll love Hall.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Eager for more,
This review is from: Triumph of the Won't (Paperback)
This was the first I've read of any of Tim Hall's writings and I'm eager for him to put out his first full novel. In "Triumph of the Won't", I found myself sucked in and, without sounding corny, "feeling" these characters. Mr. Hall's writing is very real.
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