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

dan kennedy

It all begins on Christmas morning, 1978. Dan Kennedy is ten years old and wants a black Gibson Les Paul guitar, the kind Peter Frampton plays. It will be his passport to the coolest (only) band in the neighborhood—Jokerz. He doesn’t get it. Instead, his parents present him with what they think he wants most, a real-estate loan calculator (called the Loan Arranger) and a maroon velour pullover shirt with a tan stripe across the chest. It is the first of what will become a lifetime of various-sized failures, misunderstandings, comical humiliations, and just plain silly choices that have dogged this “hipster Proust of youthful loserdom,” as author Jerry Stahl has so eloquently called Mr. Kennedy.

Dan’s hilarious and painfully awkward youth soon develops into a . . . uh . . . hilarious and painfully awkward adulthood. His first two choices for university are Yale (Lit or Drama) and Harvard (Business), so he reviews his high school transcripts and decides on Butte Community College in Oroville, California, where he studies for about four and a half weeks. We could go on here and describe in detail all of Dan’s good-natured stabs at ambition, but he, himself, sums it all up quite “If you’ve ever tried and failed miserably at being a rock star (no guitar/talent), a professional bass fisherman, an extra in the movie Sleepless in Seattle (guy drinking martini in bar while Tom Hanks makes a phone call), a Madison Avenue advertising executive, a clerk/towel person at a suburban health club (named Kangaroo Kourts), an espresso street-cart owner and operator (in the one neighborhood of that coffee-swilling town, Seattle, where, remarkably, no one really seems to drink coffee), a dot.com millionaire, an MTV VJ, or a forest fire fighter, this book is for you.”

Along the way, a few lessons are learned and we are treated to one of the most original, riotously funny, unsentimental, and offbeat memoirs in recent history. Dan’s a favorite in McSweeney’s and at the very popular Moth readings in New York City. We should be happy that he failed so miserably at so many things—and took notes!

Genres memoirnonfictionhumorbiographyautobiographymusic

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,2003

This edition

Format: 240 pages, Paperback
Published: August 24, 2004 by Three Rivers Press
ISBN: 9781400053742
ASIN: 1400053749
Language: English

About the author

dan kennedy

The New York novelist, comedy writer, and host of The Moth, has authored only the three books of humour and fiction referenced below.

Dan Kennedy is an American writer living in New York and host of The Moth storytelling podcast. He is the author of three books: "Loser Goes First" (Random House, 2004), "Rock On" (Algonquin, 2008), and "American Spirit: A Novel" (Amazon/Houghton Mifflin, 2013). A widely anthologized humorist, Kennedy first became popular as a columnist on McSweeney's dot net and as a performer of various comedic readings in downtown New York clubs. He tours occasionally, and often performs in and hosts events for The Moth, a storytelling collective founded in 1997 by novelist George Dawes Green (The Juror, Ravens).

AUTHOR DISAMBIGUATION: There are several authors named Dan Kennedy listed on Goodreads. The author described above is a New York based writer and the author of the above referenced titles. There should be no confusion between his works and certain/any Marketing, Dot Com, Sales or Financial Advice books, by other authors of the same name, as he has authored none, is not referenced in any such works, does not in any way endorse said works, and claims no legal responsibility for the advice given therein.