December 19, 2022 | Read Online

Failure Before Success

We will all suffer the pain of defeat, the hardship of losing a job, of our teams underperforming at some point. But in those struggles come valuable lessons.

Each Monday night in the spring of 1939, Whit Burnett would teach a creative writing course in Room 505 of Dodge Hall on the campus of Columbia University.

His room was packed with students who dreamed of being published in the magazines that dominated the corner newsstands of New York City.

One particular uninspired student sat in the last row gazing out the window, seemingly uninterested. Burnett paid him little mind as he knew this was the student's third school in as many years, and without the help of his deep-pocketed father, he likely never would've been enrolled at Columbia.

Burnett was a hot ticket on the academic circuit as he and his wife, Martha Foley, had founded Story magazine, highlighting new writers, eight years prior. Their publication was commonly viewed as a must-read for New York publishers.

But when the first class assignments were due, the uninspired student came to life. His work and his distinctive voice resonated with Burnett, who deemed the student's writing the best he had read since launching Story.

Burnett didn't react with glowing praise, though. He instead instructed the student to keep writing and fine-tuning his work.

After reading 10 more outstanding pieces, Burnett told Jerome David Salinger he would publish the first he'd written for the class.

Annoyed, Salinger asked why he didn't publish his work immediately, to which Burnett offered a simple but critical response: Everyone needs to understand failure before understanding success.

One must comprehend the anguish and the elation that 18th-century British thinker Jeremy Bentham called "felicific calculus." Bentham believed the purpose of life was the maximization of happiness and the minimization of suffering.

Through our pain and disappointments come a sense of great purpose, a greater commitment to our craft, and a relentless pursuit of our dreams. Without going through this process, we cannot truly find the excellence we have from within.

In those 10 papers Salinger wrote after the first rejection, he discovered the teenage character Holden Caulfield's voice. When Burnett told Salinger he was publishing his first work, he instructed him to remove Caulfield from a short story and devote an entire book to the character. Ten years later, the world became acquainted with Holden in "The Catcher in the Rye."

We will all suffer the pain of defeat, the hardship of losing a job, of our teams underperforming at some point. But in those struggles come valuable lessons. In those hard times can come a resolve and dedication to being better prepared for our next challenge.

No one who has ever achieved great success has dodged failure. When we embrace our struggles, we become the best version of our ourselves.

Without Burnett, there might not have been a JD Salinger. Without failures, we cannot succeed.