Success at "Loser Lit"

I told Ed about Kate Christensen, and he told me about her interview with The Journal News. Apparently The Epicure's Lament was originally supposed to be about the current narrator's brother and his failed marriage, but Hugo's "desperate hilarity and arrogance" hijacked the story:

Hugo's self-loathing comes from an overweening arrogance... That kind of self-loathing can only come if you have a huge ego, self-regard and ambition that has soured. Hugo thinks he could have been a contender, but the world failed him. I feel that I could have ended up that way so easily.

It's a dim threat I've felt myself a few times and persevered against, so I know exactly where Christensen's coming from on that front, and why characters like Hugo are as compelling as they are repellent. And being able to depict that is what ensures she'll probably never end up like him.