"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." So begins the masterful title piece from Bill Holm's first book of essays, The Music of Failure. 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." What emerges from...