How Do We Measure Success?
(Putting The Foundations Under Our Sky Castles)
Dear Esteemed Readers,
As we approach the July 21, 2026 publication of Dad, Love, Me, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I might measure my debut memoir’s success. My ego would love to sell a million copies, to get an obscene amount of media attention, to be on all the bestseller lists, and to hear my career howling triumphantly once again. Meanwhile, the higher powers inside of me have been highlighting the below Matthew Quick history lesson.
In my late thirties, I sat on a little hill in the South of France and wrote the first few pages of a novel. The year was 2011. In stunningly beautiful wine country, Alicia and I were the guests of a married European couple. Our gracious hosts—both writers—were older than us and we very much looked up to them. Their house had been built centuries ago. There was a pool in the backyard. And a real castle was only a short drive away. Silver Linings Playbook the movie would begin shooting in just a few months. I wanted to have a new book ready should there be a moment to seize.
Leonard Peacock leapt onto the page with anger, humor, violence, naivety, and an all-consuming need to be loved.
After I wrote a few thousand words, it felt like a baby wolf had curled up in my lap and I had inexplicably become its adoptive parent. I feared its forthcoming adult fangs and knew I hadn’t the training to raise such a wild animal, but as it licked my hands and longingly looked up into my eyes, I also knew I couldn’t refuse. Once I said yes, I was instantly overwhelmed by its ferocious potential.
For a week, I wrote happily by the pool. Then, pen in hand, I wrote happily in Paris, sitting outside of cafes and on park benches. I came home to the USA and finished the book. I thought it was genius. Alicia agreed. My agent quickly sent it to my editor. My editor bought in. We began to sell the foreign language rights for Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock abroad.
Leonard Peacock seemed destined for greatness.
When Silver Linings Playbook hit the theaters, Harvey Weinstein sent me on a publicity tour. At one point, I was in the Tribeca Grill, filming a TV interview. A screaming Harvey burst into the room. He was furious with my film agent because we had optioned the film rights for my novel The Good Luck Of Right Now to Steven Spielberg. Harvey spit all the worst curses in my face and accused me of disloyalty, claiming I hadn’t allowed him a chance to read the novel before Spielberg. I calmly explained that we actually had sent the book to The Weinstein Company and his people passed before my agent sent it out elsewhere.
“You didn’t send it to me personally!” Harvey yelled. The end of his nose was just inches from my own.
“Harvey,” I said. “I grew up on Miramax. I’m beyond appreciative. But this is the first time you and I are meeting. I’ve had no access to you. We respectfully sent your people the book. They passed.”
“You owe me!” he roared.
“Well,” I said, hardly believing that I was still able to make eye contact with the most feared man in Hollywood, “I’m publishing a book next year that I think can help a lot of kids and put some good in the world.”
I could feel something unclench inside of Harvey, so I pitched him Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock. Soon we were seated in a booth together and he—across from me—was ordering me a sandwich that had been named after him.
I told Harvey that my time working as a high school teacher had taught me much about wounded teenagers, all of which I put in the book. Leonard Peacock would reach and help young folks. I was certain of it.
To my absolute shock, Harvey nodded and then began waving his people over, telling them to listen carefully to me.
Shortly after that, my agents and I did another film deal with The Weinstein Company.
Leonard Peacock was howling beautifully.
When the movie tie-in edition of The Silver Linings Playbook hit the bestseller lists, it felt like Leonard couldn’t possibly fail.
The first reality check came from Barnes & Noble, who refused to stock the book unless we changed the cover. The original FM,LP cover featured a white cartoon hand in the shape of a pistol, set against a red background. If you read the book, you will see that the symbolism of the original cover is perfect. It also tested extremely well. Because Barnes & Noble accounted for so many book sales, we had to change the cover. It was late in the game so the gun-shaped hand was simply replaced with the title and my name—no image—which did not feel like a triumphant howl.
When the reviews started rolling in, they were strong. Then we were told that the book was being named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, which—at the time—really felt like being anointed. I might have even let out a triumphant howl myself when I got that news. But the editor who made the pick subbed out the writing of the actual review to someone who did not agree with the original assessment. The review was negative, which felt like a soul-crushing trick at the time. I spent days feeling sorry for myself and drinking extra hard.
Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock did not hit any bestseller lists. The general response on-line was polarizing. While there were people who did not like the book, it went on to receive nice accolades. And I started receiving letters from lonely, misunderstood, hurting teenagers who connected with the novel. Some said reading it saved their lives. Others said it was the most important book they had ever read. But sales slowed and attention went elsewhere.
Whenever Harvey called—always at an unexpected time—I’d tell him about the letters I was receiving. He’d tell me we were going to help those kids by making a beautiful movie. I believed he wanted to help them. He seemed to get what I was trying to do. He hired a famous actor to direct and develop the film. The actor called and invited Alicia and me to visit his ranch. Because I didn’t have much experience with Hollywood yet, I thought the invitation was genuine. But a date was never set and we, of course, never did go to the ranch.
When the script came in, I felt there was something off. While there was much to admire, it just didn’t seem to capture the complexity and authenticity of Leonard’s suffering. I worried it wouldn’t help the kids who seemed to be responding strongest to FM,LP. I shared my concerns with Harvey and to my shock, he told the famous actor that he should listen to me. I started making notes and thinking how to best help the actor and the screenwriter.
Then Harvey was arrested and sent to jail, which seemed to officially end Leonard Peacock’s chance of ever howling triumphantly on one of the zeitgeist’s largest stages.
For a few years, the letters from wounded teenagers continued to arrive, but then the reader responses slowed to a trickle before almost stopping altogether.
It was hard—especially in early sobriety—not to feel as though I had failed. Should I have fought harder for the original cover? Should I have taken my editor’s suggestion to eliminate the footnotes by writing them into the text? Should I have pretended to love the movie script? Sometimes I’d reread bits of the novel expecting it to have aged poorly, but the story continued to move me and still does to this day.
The pain of getting close but ultimately failing to launch something into the zeitgeist was fierce and debilitating for years, but I slowly moved on, got sober, did a lot of work on myself, and wrote other things.
I really hadn’t thought much about Leonard Peacock for years when—in early 2026—I received an email from a twenty-seven-year-old man. He said he had written me about FM,LP when he was fifteen. Back then he wasn’t having many positive interactions with adults and he felt alone in the world. Apparently, I had written him back in 2014 and sent him a signed copy of FM,LP. His 2026 email included a recently taken picture of my letter and the inscription that I had written him twelve years previous. He’d moved many times since then and had brought my words with him, simply because FM,LP had made him feel seen. He’s doing quite well these days, having graduated from high school, college, and one of the most prestigious graduate programs in the world. He now has a full-time job, the description of which sounds rather impressive. He claimed to have been raised by the kindness of strangers and still reminds himself to be a lighthouse keeper, just like good old Leonard Peacock. Then he said he was looking forward to reading my memoir.
As I read that incredibly kind email, the former teacher in me was thinking about the Thoreau quote that used to hang on my classroom wall—the one about meeting “a success unexpected in common hours,” which is also mentioned in my memoir.
The day after I received that beautiful and timely reminder, one of my current film producers texted me, asking if any important news had come in. She was referring to my forthcoming memoir. I initially told her there wasn’t anything to report that particular week, but my fingers were crossed for the prepublication buzz to build. I put my phone down. Then I picked it up again. I found myself texting my producer about the extraordinary email I had received and how much it had moved me. She texted back saying FM,LP was the one book of mine that she hadn’t yet read. When she added, Let’s talk more about this, I smiled.
I published Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock almost thirteen years ago, in August of 2013. I deemed it a commercial failure. Yet, even now, strange magic swirls around it. Maybe when you raise up something wild, it cannot help traveling a circuitous path. Maybe the key is learning to see the beauty in such unpredictability.
Even if FM,LP goes out of print and a movie adaptation never gets made, it will continue to exist, if only in the hearts and minds of the people who read it. Some say it helped them greatly. A struggling teenager carried it with him through many moves, as he grew up and became strong enough to tell others how much their actions mean to him. That’s the wild sort of magic I was after when I initially felt compelled to write the book. I wanted to send out some light—a great beam—that would let lonely and hurting people know they were not alone. The trappings of careerism did their best to poison that well, but somehow—even all these years later—the water is still drinkable. It’s also life-sustaining for me, especially here in sobriety.
I only had a brief part of the famous Thoreau quote on my classroom wall. Here is the longer quote from the conclusion of Walden:
I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundation under them.
The work of a lifetime.
Here’s hoping I have learned the above history lesson and that it will steady me as I march into the Dad, Love, Me publication season. Here’s also to putting the foundations under our sky castles.
Thanks for reading me this month. I appreciate you.
Am I coming to your part of the world this book tour? Click here to find out. (The Wellesley Books event near Boston is now ticketed. Click here for more info.)
Your man in the Lowcountry,
Matthew
PS - Did you read the April 21st post? Are You Casting A Shadow? (The Funny Thing About Grace)
PPS - If you respond to this email, your words will be sucked into an internet black hole; I will not see them. If you wish to contact me, please use the information on my website.