The Great Failure: A Bartender, A Monk, and My Unlikely Path to Truth

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The Great Failure: A Bartender, A Monk, and My Unlikely Path to Truth

3.38 of 5 stars 3.38 · rating details · 272 ratings · 28 reviews

What was I doing standing up in front of everyone anyway? ... They had signed up for this lovely New Age weekend down in Florida -- what was going on with this Natalie Goldberg? I knew only a handful had read any of my books. How was I going to leap over this mess smoothly and talk about writing practice, where I was on solid ground? I mentioned the horses from the seminar...more

Hardcover, 208 pages

Published August 17th 2004 by HarperOne

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May 11, 2009 Sonya Feher rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: spiritual seekers, fans of Natalie Goldberg,

Shelves: memoir, writing, spirituality

I read this after hearing Goldberg speak at a book signing recently. Someone said they'd read all of her books and she asked if the woman had read The Great Failure. The woman hadn't heard of it and neither had I, so I picked it up. It explores Goldberg's coming to terms with her father's mistreatment of her, revelations about her spiritual teacher Katagiri Roshi that come up after his death, and her continuing quest to find herself in the midst of the 10,000 things. She's honest without being c...more

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Aug 10, 2012 Áine rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: dharma-books, wanted-to-love-it

An important document of betrayal in American Zen. Aching with masculine loneliness and the pain that follows abuse of patriarchal privilege. An interesting parallel construction of the two father figures in her life: Katigiri Roshi, and her father, who fought on opposite sides of WWII. The strongest moments for me were the memoir anecdotes, vividly told, rather than the exposition of the meaning these men had for her. Still trying to put my finger on where it crossed the line into self-indulgen...more

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Dec 21, 2010 Lilian rated it 3 of 5 stars

Natalie Goldberg is at her best as a teacher of both writing and zen and of writing as a spiritual discipline and practice. I first encountered her books around 20 years ago. Writing Down the Bones was all the rage in writing groups and of course, being contrary, I avoided it for a few years and then read both that one and Wild Mind (basically a re-run of Bones, but enjoyable). I found them invigorating, and loved the spiritual aspect, though her favourite methods didn’t work for me.

The Great Fa...more Natalie Goldberg is at her best as a teacher of both writing and zen and of writing as a spiritual discipline and practice. I first encountered her books around 20 years ago. Writing Down the Bones was all the rage in writing groups and of course, being contrary, I avoided it for a few years and then read both that one and Wild Mind (basically a re-run of Bones, but enjoyable). I found them invigorating, and loved the spiritual aspect, though her favourite methods didn’t work for me.

The Great Failure, however, isn’t about writing nor is it about failure as a path to success. It’s a memoir about the two important men in her life and their failure to maintain appropriate boundaries, resulting in abuse of their positions, one as father, the other as teacher. It’s a divided book, not only in its subject matter, but in the success of the portraits.

Her portrait of her father is nuanced and vivid. He was, as one would say in Yiddish, “a grober yung,” a boor (literally “a gross boy”). He had little boyhood himself, and was little cared for. As a man he was crass and oblivious to his crassness. He commented on his pubescent daughter’s body, he held her too tight, he made her uncomfortable enough to avoid being alone with him. A bartender, he had no understanding of his adult daughter’s career as a Buddhist teacher, but he was earthy and without pretension.

During a visit to her home in the southwest, he sat outside to watch the sunrise at her command. When she asked him what he thought of it, he was nonplussed; it was a sunrise, it happens every morning. On another occasion she tried to teach her parents to meditate. After ten minutes of silence, she asked him if he’d noticed how busy the mind was, how many thoughts flit through it. He said he hadn’t thought at all, not a single thought. What was it like for him, she asked. It was like it always is when nobody is talking or doing anything, he said.

He was loud, he was busy, he was vigorous, he was insulting, a grober yung who loved his daughter with all his heart. His simplicity, his complexity, and her forgiveness for all of it comes through vividly.

It stays with me. And I envy her this possibility of forgiveness because, although her father failed in many ways it was out of ignorance, not intention, and there is all the difference in that.

Her portrayal of her teacher, Katagiri Roshi, a zen master and founding abbot of the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center, while sincere lacks the vibrancy and understanding she has for her father. Katagiri’s motivations and feelings in carrying on secret affairs with students are unknowns that Goldberg tries to fill in with guesswork. Her guesses are sometimes plausible and sometimes, for me, dubious. And the situation is different in another way; he was her teacher not ever her lover. The wounds are wounds of disillusion, and as disappointing as the disillusion is, it is a surface wound compared to what she experienced as a daughter.

Perhaps better writing comes out of deeper wounds. I wonder what, as a teacher herself, she would say about that. (less)

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Mar 16, 2010 Kristin rated it 3 of 5 stars

"The Great Failure" is autobiographical and written by a woman whose earlier book "Writing Down the Bones" (which I never read) inspired many people to start writing. The book is about two male role models - her father and her Zen teacher - both who she felt betrayed her. She tries to reconcile their affairs, their abuse, and the ways they compromised her trust with two people she loved and admired.

The book begins with her being held up at gunpoint in St. Paul, Minnesota, and continues into an u...more "The Great Failure" is autobiographical and written by a woman whose earlier book "Writing Down the Bones" (which I never read) inspired many people to start writing. The book is about two male role models - her father and her Zen teacher - both who she felt betrayed her. She tries to reconcile their affairs, their abuse, and the ways they compromised her trust with two people she loved and admired.

The book begins with her being held up at gunpoint in St. Paul, Minnesota, and continues into an unsuccessful lecture the author delivers where she tries to draw a parable from this attack, Zen Buddhism and writing. Threaded through Natalie Goldberg's book is an initially annoying Zen "teaching story", the same one that failed in the lecture. The book has a sense of humor. I got a glimpse at these two men and their secrets. who Both her father and teacher die in the end.

One moment I liked in the book is when she tries to get her parents to meditate. In the middle of silent contemplation, her father starts to sing "Hello Dolly" and accompanies himself on the Zen bell. More substantially, I liked the attempt to contradict conditioned ways of seeing people and responding to their behavior in order to see people's true nature. This is a technique in reevaluation counseling I've found helpful.

Both were intense men - one a buddhist master and another a bartender, arguably a type of buddhist master. Both her father and her teacher had affairs. You had to wonder their motivation. Betrayal means breaking off and going into the unknown.
I thought about the book in terms of desire, betrayal, creativity (all of which may involve intense emotions), and emptiness. She talks about leaving behind the rollercoaster of intense emotions. I tried to group activities in the book into these categories, but couldn't draw more out of this:
Creativity: art, writing, music, enlightenment, lecturing
Desire: affairs, gambling, success, loneliness
Betrayal: sexual violation, hurtful comments, and the feeling of being hurt.
Emptiness - her marriage, drugs, death, sitting, zen, surrender

In the book, I felt Natalie exposed private sides of these two men, without exposing her own failings. While she alluded several times to personal failings, she doesn't delve into herself. There are glimpses of them - a marriage she abandoned, speeding tickets, anger, depression. However, as she is the narrator, the seriousness of these failings is easy to miss. I wonder if she is implying she too has had affairs. Maybe she doesn't feel she needs to spell these out.

In the end, I was left feeling that she, too, is revered as a teacher by many people. One these of the book is (clearly) failure. She quietly shows that she has failings and failures. In the end, no one is a perfect teacher. Even the Zen teaching story she uses was a flop in her lecture, yet she tries again.

Questions for the book group:
Why begin with a holdup?
What was the motivation for Katagiri and her dad's affairs?
In the book, she writes that "we are drawn to teachers that mirror our own psychology" Is infidelity a part of her life?
Have you ever had a similar experience of having and leaving a spiritual leader?
How she has failed? (less)

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May 31, 2011 Martin Roell rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography, buddhism, relationships, to-review, zen

I enjoyed this, but not as much as I enjoyed Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America. This book is long-winded in places and Goldberg gets caught up in judgements. In long passages she appears to be trying to change her feelings by thinking. A repeating motive is that she spends effort digging into past events. I kept wondering why she did this.
While it is interesting to follow her story and to relate to her struggles, in many times I wondered why she behaved as she did. Her descriptions of th...more

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Mar 25, 2013 Angela rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: self-actualization, religion, philosophy, memoir, writing

An interesting exploration about the two central male figures in Natalie Goldberg's life.

Both men were dynamic and full of life force and deeply flawed. Goldberg's father had no sense of boundaries, which caused havoc in her life. Katagiri Roshi was Goldberg's Zen teacher who led a secret life that was not exposed until after his death. Both men were instrumental to Goldberg's discovery of compassion, forgiveness, and human frailty in spite of greatness.

A deeply moving work about our humanity a...more

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Jul 03, 2010 Theryn Fleming rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2000s, non-fiction

This is a brief memoir of Natalie’s relationships with her father and her Zen teacher and her coming to grips with them being human, i.e. flawed. Essentially, it is about her figuring out whether she is able to admire/love people even when she feels that they have disappointed/betrayed her by their actions (or inaction, in the case of her mother).

The Great Failure didn’t resonate with me in the same way as her earlier work did. I think if you’re going to write about how people have disappointed...more

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Jun 06, 2011 Angela Gaskell rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: crafts, memoir, reviewed, zen-books

"The Great Failure" was okay for me. An easy read for sure and interesting in some points. I feel that giving a review of the book and judging it goes against what the author Natalie Goldberg was preaching about and going against what she learned from her zen master Roshi. She writes on page 129 "A mind that rests at zero. No good or bad. No criticism, blame - also no praise. That is how we were trained by Roshi. In a world of bonuses, competition, fear of failure, yearning for applause, receivi...more

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Oct 02, 2010 Shayda rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: essays

Really a memoir about betrayals -- betrayals of the author by two men whom she adored, her father and teacher; the author's own betrayal of the man she described as the love of her life. There's a lot of pain recounted here and at times this is not easy reading, so I understand why some of the Goodreaders' reviews describe the book as "ugly." I'm undecided as to how satisfying the resolution can be, though I suppose it has something to do with the relative values of truth and art. Goldberg is a...more

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Sep 25, 2009 Alexis rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009

Two and a half stars for this. I felt somewhat conflicted about it. I felt that the beginning was truly self-absorbed, but I was very moved by the ending of the book. These were fairly heavy topics and I did feel love in this book, but it was still ultimately a challenging read and difficult to like. Hmm.

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Aug 25, 2008 Alison Perry rated it 2 of 5 stars

I mentally wrote the review for this book before I even finished Part I. What I had planned to say, "The Great Failure is aptly named. Of the few things that are right with this book, that is most significant." I wondered as I flipped through the pages, what was it that I once loved about this author, because for the life of me I couldn't see it in this book. Then she got me in Part II when discribing her father's death and I was simultainiously thrilled and surprised. But, she lost me just as s...more

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Dec 05, 2012 Mariana rated it 4 of 5 stars

This helpful short book showed me that some mothers are depressed and some fathers behave inappropriately without being malicious.

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Aug 19, 2012 Stephanie rated it 4 of 5 stars

An interesting memoir and easy, engrossing read with a mix of personal history and a bit of zen buddhism.

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Feb 12, 2009 Laura rated it 1 of 5 stars

Awful. My first Natalie Goldberg book and I was not impressed.

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Apr 03, 2010 Heather Roberts marked it as to-read · review of another edition

curious how a great writer comes into great writing.

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Mar 16, 2009 N. rated it 1 of 5 stars

Read it for a class. Don't get me started.

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Jun 10, 2008 John rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: those familiar with author's previous work

Shelves: lgbt, library_books, bio-and-memoir

This book seems written for the author to exorcise her own demons. In previous works, she'd extolled the wisdom of her (late) Zen teacher, Katagiri Roshi. She discovered recentky that he wasn't the saint she'd thought him to be (portrayed him as); this work includes details of her father's abusive behavior, presumably to explain how she came to put Roshi on a pedestal by comparison.

For another perspective on Katagiri Roshi, read Thank You and OK! by David Chadwick; this zen teacher had a signif...more

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Aug 08, 2008 Beth added it · review of another edition

Shelves: memoir

This was a page-turner. I read it in two days. I picked it up because I listened to part of Long Quiet Highway while I was on the bus to Maine a couple of weeks ago. I had read Long Quiet Highway and listened to the audiobook before. So it was interesting to get more of the story through this second memoir. I always want more from memoirs, more of the real behind-the-scenes story, and here's much more. Should she have written this book? I'm not sure. But scene-by-scene, she did write it well.

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Nov 02, 2010 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read this book in a night, so it must have been good. Like all her books, it was an easy read, but at the same time there was a depth to it (very Zen-like in its simplicity, yet its ability to point beyond itself). I would have liked to see her go even deeper, though. There were some parts where I felt like she just brushed the surface, for example, when speaking about her ex-husband, who was clearly an important man in her life, just like her father and her Zen master.

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Jun 13, 2011 Jessica rated it 5 of 5 stars

I enjoy natalie's voice. She tells the unravelling of parallel secrets in father & father-figure's lives with tremendous intimacy, presence, and no judgement. An excellent model for memoir.

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Mar 16, 2009 Alan Fay rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: borrowed

~~Stolen~~ Borrowed off my dad's bookshelf, expecting something entirely different than a fashion Bhuddist penning her anecdotes about the human condition through the lens of her social anxiety disorder. No thanks! I should have read the title more closely.

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Aug 10, 2010 Kristin rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

An interesting attempt to write for the public what is really a mega-entry in her diary. I'm sure it was cathartic for her to write, and it may be meaningful for Natalie Goldberg fans... but I lacked the context and empathy one would need to enjoy this book.

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Sep 17, 2008 Rainey rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book is a tale of a struggle for meaning in life, finding yourself and finding out that the people you look up to might not be who you think they are and what that effect might be and how to try and accept that. Very open. Very honest.

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Feb 25, 2008 Erin rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is the sequel in many ways to the memoir Long Quiet Highway. I got more out of it on my second read as I had lost my own father by then. Beautiful treatment of the difficult father daughter relationship.

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Dec 03, 2010 Cherie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, spirituality

A Wow. What great blunt honesty. Natalie reveals the failure of her former guru, of her poor relations with her abusive father…failure gives us strength, and this book is excellent.

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May 23, 2009 Laura rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

Insightful and inspiring. I feel like every time I reread this book, I'll get more out of it.

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Aug 17, 2007 Dawn rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: forfun, neverfinished

yup, a great failure on natalie goldberg's part - though i loved her other books (2005?) (1 star)

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Jun 25, 2010 Jenn added it

I have a signed copy from the workshop I went to in Sedona. :)

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May 16, 2013 Bretigne Shaffer rated it 1 of 5 stars

May 12, 2013 Emily Crowell marked it as to-read

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About Natalie Goldberg

Natalie Goldberg lived in Brooklyn until she was six, when her family moved out to Farmingdale, Long Island, where her father owned the bar the Aero Tavern. From a young age, Goldberg was mad for books and reading, and especially loved Carson McCullers's The Ballad of the Sad Cafe , which she read in ninth grade. She thinks that single book led her eventually to put pen to paper when she was twe...more

More about Natalie Goldberg...

Books by Natalie Goldberg

Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America

Thunder and Lightning: Cracking Open the Writer's Craft

Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir

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