failed

“Now, I was quite willing to contend that there were a number of things wrong with the novel, that it had failed in a number of places, but I had not quite”

如今，我完全愿意承认这部小说存在诸多问题，在许多地方都失败了，但我未曾想过……

“So I think it fair to say that, by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale.”

所以我认为，按任何常规标准来看，仅仅在我毕业七年后，我就遭遇了史诗般的惨败。