<DIV><i>“The ground bass is failure; America is the key signature; Pauline Bardal is the lyrical tune that sings at the center; Minneota, Minnesota, is the staff on which the tunes are written.”</i> So begins the masterful title piece from Bill Holm's first book of essays, <i>The Music of Failure</i>. This collection introduced to many the singular vision and voice of literary giant Bill Holm, a writer who had traveled well and widely but came back to his hometown of Minneota—the town of his immigrant Icelandic ancestors—as, in his words, “for all practical purposes a failure.”</div><div> </div><div>What emerges from these pages, and from Holm's cherished writings over the next two and a half decades, is anything but failure. From his ruminations on life in Minneota, family history, and the “horizontal grandeur” of the Midwestern prairie to a poetry-reading tour of Minnesota nursing homes and an account of a naked man eating lilacs out of his garden, <i>The Music of Failure</i> is a lyrical and surprising compilation that finds Holm mining the stories and places that captivated him and continue to enthrall his many readers.</div><div> </div><div>This 25th anniversary edition includes poignant portraits of Holm and the history of <i>The Music of Failure</i> by Jim Heynen and David Pichaske, along with an essay Holm requested be added to this new edition, “Is Minnesota in America Yet?” With beautiful black-and-white photographs by Tom Guttormsson, <i>The Music of Failure</i> is Bill Holm at both his early and quintessential best, an inimitable and much-missed writer who illuminates our private and common lives through both our quiet victories and our sublime failures.</div>