Loser Goes First: My Thirty-Something Years of Dumb Luck and Minor Humiliation (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Christmas Eve 1978, and I'm ten years old..." (more)
Key Phrases: New York, Crab Pot, Southern California (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Many people spend their lives searching for their true calling, the one thing at which they excel and which will catapult them to fame and fortune. For Dan Kennedy, author of the darkly comic memoir Loser Goes First, that talent is decidedly not rock and roll. Kennedy details a life spent pining for the glory of rock stardom as a junior high student, an Austin, Texas, open-mic failure, and at various grim stops along the way as he shoots for the big time without the burden of talent or the tedium of learning to play an instrument. Kennedy's talent is also not acting, although he lands a gig as an extra in Sleepless in Seattle that leads, much to his chagrin, to nothing at all. Even his scrupulously cultivated talent of being an indie scenester is torpedoed when he willingly accepts an audition to be an MTV VJ, only to have the tryout be an unmitigated disaster. Finally, Kennedy discovers a pair of latent abilities. He finds, after he's into his thirties, that he has a knack for advertising copywriting that sets him on the path to his first financial success almost accidentally. And in writing Loser Goes First, he reveals a talent for relating his own dumb moves and embarrassing fiascoes with an honesty and wit that is vividly entertaining. Loser Goes First approaches narrative structure with the same indecisive distracted quality that Kennedy used in his actual life and the result is a chronicle of Kennedy's first 33 years peppered generously with film treatments, bullet point lists, imagined dialogue, and other snippets that seem transcribed from a very clever notebook. While such meandering could be perceived as too self-consciously quirky, it matches the story and keeps the humor crisp. --John Moe

From Publishers Weekly

McSweeney's contributor Kennedy claims to have managed to miss just about every zeitgeist of his life so far: leaving Seattle for Austin to make music just as grunge was taking off and failing to make millions in the dot-com excesses at the opposite end of the same decade, to name two. Part mock Chicken Soup for the Slacker ("Maybe the only reason we don't do half of the things we try to do in life is because we just never get around to doing them") and part Sedaris-style essay collection, this episodic book presents Kennedy from his normal-but-awkward childhood to his normal-but-still-awkward adulthood. Early flights of Walter Mitty fantasy segue later in the book to a hard-won semi-maturity after he ends up broke in Manhattan after a failed grab at MTV VJ fame. His 30 years, though at a glance misspent, have taught him a lot-and won him a lot of friends. One of the book's main attractions for certain readers will be its shortcoming for others: Kennedy's spot-on generational references might seem alien to someone who didn't spend tthe '80s wearing Ocean Pacific shorts and listening to the Plimsouls and Oingo Boingo. Yet the main achievement here is that each potential success remains just that close in the mind of this book's protagonist; while Kennedy-the-character was constructed by and resembles Kennedy-the-author, the latter maintains a particular warmly bemused (or faux na‹ve) distance from him, the signature move of the McSweeney's generation.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Crown (September 16, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609610368
• ISBN-13: 978-0609610367
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #965,896 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Watch what you buy: There are TWO Dan Kennedys, May 30, 2006

By	Paul S. (Seattle) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Loser Goes First: My Thirty-Something Years of Dumb Luck and Minor Humiliation (Paperback)

There's the McSweeney's writer Dan Kennedy who wrote "Loser Goes First" and there's this "How to Kick Butt at Sales and Make Millions!" Dan Kennedy. Don't get the Kennedy's confused like Amazon does --- I sadly realized this after paying for a book about making millions from selling things to friends and relatives or something. Not that I wouldn't mind making millions or anything, but my friends and relatives aren't going to buy anything from me, TRUST ME. Hey, maybe I should try to sell them this book abotu how to become a millionaire over night! At least I'd get my money back!

Loser Goes First is funny, surprise, surprise. One would imagine it would have to be after reading the author's stuff on McSweeney's every week or two. I was actually hoping the book would talk a little bit more about how his job there came about, but it was hilarious reading about every other less successful, disasterous trial and tribulation that occured before he got there.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No Loser Here, October 2, 2003

By	Phil Kailer "Phil Kailer" (Elizabethton, TN) - See all my reviews

Dan Kennedy's memoir-esque look at life is hilarious, if not slightly stolen from the Dave Eggers book of self-analyzation and tone--right down to the customization of page styles (Dan Kennedy's works have repeatedly shown up on McSweeney's, by the way.) But whatever similarities exist, whether you like Dave Eggers or not, should be ignored because this book exists and thrives on its own.

The writing is crisp and clear and laugh-out-loud funny, sitting just up a notch from David Sedaris. Kennedy tells stories of youth with a self-deprecating style that never shifts to the excessive or whiny. The only restriction here is the point of reference to the generation of which Kennedy is a member. Baby-boomers will have a hard time with some of the material, but they shouldn't shy away. The quality of writing is strong enough to entertain-and very much so.

Well worth the purchase price-you'll get at least three reads out of it. I'm keeping on eye on Kennedy for his next project. Let's hope he turns to fiction.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Laugh Out Loud Hilarious!, November 11, 2003

By	B. Frankel (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

From page one, I was already laughing out loud. This farcical memoir moves fast, incorporating hilariously imagined sequences along with Kennedy's already amusing life. I actually called friends on the phone so that I could recite some of my favorite parts to them. I recommend this to anyone who like humor, books, and or the written word.