Self-proclaimed expert on failure Phineas T. Wollenfellow guides you on How to Fail, covering subjects from falling in love, to mashed potatoes and more.
How to Fail is a satire of self-help books delivering advice on how to help a person fail at a whole variety of tasks. It is a guide on how not to succeed at Dating, Public Speaking, Playing Chess, Sledding, Making a Sandwich, Flying a Kite, Destroying the Zerblan Hornblatter of Gorongo 6 and many other subjects both sensible and bizarre. The book is also interspersed with Shaun Clayton's recollections of the eccentric Mr. Wollenfellow, a fictional person who claims to be an “expert in failure,” having failed at an exceedingly large amount of things in his life, including actually writing the book on failure. He hires Shaun to write the book for him, based off his words, and Shaun has to not lose his mind in the process.