The Museum of Future Mistakes

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Gruesome scenarios take a tender turn; beautiful moments become sources of derision. Winner of the BOA Short Fiction Prize, The Museum of Future Mistakes is packed with inventive narrative choices and sharp lyricism, upending expectations on every page.

In “Brother and Not-Brother,” the residents of an entire city transform into perfect copies of the narrator’s deceased brother; these uncanny doppelgängers spark meditations on childhood scars, grief taking root within the body, and how painful memories can bloom into joy, laughter, and love. In “The Last Dinosaurs of Portland,” two anthropomorphic dinosaurs yearn for companionship and empathy while fighting for a meager existence under the weight of past traumas. In “Three-Month Autopsy,” a character visits ex-lovers and returns Ziploc baggies full of their body parts, exploring infatuation, jealousy, regret, and the contours of both giving and receiving within a relationship.

Through these and other fabulist and magical realist stories, James R. Gapinski considers our physical relationship with our own bodies, how we process love and loss, and the fragility of identity amid moments of personal crisis. With elements of the grotesque and the surreal, fans of Carmen Maria Machado and Kelly Link will find much to admire in this award-winning collection.

Praise for The Museum of Future Mistakes

“The Museum of Future Mistakes is an eclectic romp through the challenges of dating, loving, and simply trying to exist in a strange, at times hostile, world. As inventive as they are deeply felt, these stories find beauty in the absurd and absurdity in the status quo. As these bite-sized stories build upon one another, the collection accrues a propulsive weight. I wanted to slow down and savor each piece, but I could never stop at just one.” —Gwen E. Kirby, author of Shit Cassandra Saw

“In The Museum of Future Mistakes, James R. Gapinski takes a blade to the seams of ordinary lives to reveal the uncanny nature of the storm that roils beneath the surface for us all. Dead brothers, haunted fingernails, injuries that produce vines, lonely dinosaurs, a magical laundromat, and so much more, spill forth from Gapinski’s singular imagination and ask us to confront our grief, our vulnerability, our identity, and our leaps into love. Shot through with a mischievous sense of humor and a keen grip on the alienation that permeates modern life, all of these stories coalesce into the revelation that there is a fragile beauty underpinning every moment that we experience. A stunning and utterly original collection.” —Talia Lakshmi Kolluri, author of What We Fed To The Manticore

“By juxtaposing the mundane with the fantastical, James R. Gapinski captures the unique alienation of navigating reality from the margins. The Museum of Future Mistakes is a compulsively readable journey through everyday devastations, pyrrhic victories, and the absurdity of modern life.” —Jasmine Sawers, author of The Anchored World: Flash Fairy Tales and Folklore

Excerpt from The Museum of Future Mistakes (Page 1):

I have a gold membership for the Museum of Future Mistakes. If you have a local zip code, membership is twenty percent off. The museum is huge, filled with everybody’s mistakes—line art of broken condoms, still life of bad takeout, a retrospective on poorly planned camping trips. I usually breeze through these displays until I find my own rotating exhibit, nestled in an alcove with good lighting.

My exhibit has helped me avoid so many mistakes. A marble bust of me puking outside the karaoke bar helped me pace myself last Saturday. Before that, there was a painting of a one-star Amazon review—I removed that cardigan from my cart pronto. Abstract paintings can be initially frustrating—but they’re also intriguing because it’s like a game to figure out what mistake I’ll make. In those cases, the placard with a description and info about the artist helps. I love the glimpses that the Museum of Future Mistakes provides. It helps me live my best life without having to fuck around with motivational Instagrammers.

Today, I’m less excited about what I see: a statue of my girlfriend Devin. The statue is vaguely Grecian, with thick muscles and stout haunches, exposed breasts, a fig leaf covering her crotch. Her fingers are stretched skyward as if to say Follow me into oblivion! Despite the otherwise regal appearance, she’s wearing tennis shoes, and her favorite pair of plaid socks are carved into her ankles.