Benjamin Anastas Explained

Benjamin Anastas
Birth Place:Gloucester, Massachusetts, U.S.
Education:Iowa Writers' Workshop

Benjamin Anastas (born 1969) is an American novelist, memoirist, journalist and book reviewer born in Gloucester, Massachusetts. He teaches literature and writing at Bennington College and is on the faculty of the Bennington Writing Seminars MFA program.[1]

Writing career

Fiction

Anastas started publishing his short fiction while still a graduate student at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.[2] His first novel, An Underachiever's Diary, is a comic send-up of the meritocracy narrated by the underachieving half of a set of identical twins, and is set in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[3] On the jacket of Anastas's second book, The Faithful Narrative of a Pastor's Disappearance: A Novel, Daniel Handler called it "hands down, the best novel of the year".[4] It concerns the disappearance of the pastor of a liberal Congregational church in suburban Boston[5] and was a New York Times Notable Book.[6]

Journalism and other writings

Anastas's fiction, criticism, essays and journalism have appeared in Story, GQ, The Paris Review, The New Republic online,[7] The New York Observer,[8] The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, and Bookforum. In 2005, The Yale Review published his novella Versace Enthroned with Saints: Margaret, Jerome, Alex and the Angel Donatella[9] and later awarded it the Smart Family Foundation Prize for Fiction.[2]

Anastas has published articles on the Mayan Calendar 2012 hoax in The New York Times Magazine,[10] the prosperity gospel in Harper's Magazine[11] and a short piece about his father's nude portrait on Granta's website.[12] His essay "The Foul Reign of Emerson's 'Self Reliance, also from The New York Times Magazine, was selected for The Best American Essays 2012, guest edited by David Brooks.[13] His essay on the Gullah language folktale ″Buh Black Snake Git Ketch″ appeared in the Spring, 2020 issue of The Oxford American.

Memoir

His memoir, Too Good To Be True, was published in 2012.[14] [15] The title is taken from a sign that the author was made to wear around his neck by a childhood therapist.[16] It tells the story of his stalled career as a writer, the end of his marriage,[17] and his attempts to rebuild his life again.[18] Anastas published the book with Amazon's fledgling publishing imprint in New York City and numerous bookstores have refused to stock it.[17] Giles Harvey, writing in The New Yorker,[19] groups Too Good to Be True in a category he calls the "failure memoir"[20] and cites F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Crack-Up essays as an influence.

Works

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Authors: Benjamin Anastas . . April 21, 2012 . https://web.archive.org/web/20120114034921/http://www.pen.org/author.php/prmAID/714/prmID/1832 . January 14, 2012 . dead .
  2. Web site: Subversive Satire and Antiheroes: Novelist Benjamin Anastas Reads from His Fiction, October 6 . . September 21, 2005 . April 21, 2012 . March 18, 2012 . https://web.archive.org/web/20120318031814/http://news.washcoll.edu/press_releases/2005/09/21_anastas.php . dead .
  3. News: Very Good for Nothing . New York Times Sunday Book Review . Polk, James. April 12, 1998. February 5, 2013.
  4. Book: The Faithful Narrative of a Pastor's Disappearance: A Novel . . Anastas, Benjamin. 2002. 9780312420680 . April 21, 2012.
  5. News: There'll Always Be a New England . New York Times Sunday Book Review . Carey, Jacqueline. May 20, 2001. February 13, 2013.
  6. News: Notable Books:Fiction . New York Times Sunday Book Review. December 2, 2001. February 5, 2013.
  7. The Irony Scare . Anastas, Benjamin . The New Republic . May 18, 2001. April 21, 2012.
  8. News: Benjamin Anastas . . May 12, 2011 . https://web.archive.org/web/20121012102358/http://observer.com/term/benjamin-anastas/ . October 12, 2012 . dead .
  9. Versace Enthroned with Saints: Margaret, Jerome, Alex and the Angel Donatella. The Yale Review . Anastas, Benjamin. 93. 1 . Yale University. January 2005 . 106–143 . 10.1111/j.0044-0124.2005.00878.x .
  10. News: Anastas . Benjamin . Apocalypse – Maya – Armageddon – Rapture – End of Days – New York Times . . July 1, 2007 . May 12, 2011.
  11. Mammon from heaven: The prosperity gospel in recession . Anastas, Benjamin. Harper's Magazine. Harpers.org . May 12, 2011.
  12. Web site: Anastas, Benjamin . Portrait of my father . Granta.com . February 26, 2009 . May 12, 2011 . https://web.archive.org/web/20110625001849/http://www.granta.com/Online-Only/Portrait-of-my-Father-Benjamin-Anastas . June 25, 2011 . dead .
  13. Robert Atwan (ed.), David Brooks (guest ed.). The Best American Essays 2012, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012.
  14. Book: Too Good to Be True: A Memoir . 978-0-547-91399-5 . Anastas, Benjamin . . 2012 . registration .
  15. News: On the Rocks: Benjamin Anastas Talks About 'Too Good to Be True' . New York Times Artsbeat . Williams, John. October 18, 2012. October 18, 2012.
  16. News: Memoir Helps Ben Anastas Bridge Gap with His Father . Boston Globe North . Sullivan, James . January 31, 2013. February 4, 2013.
  17. News: The Dark Memoir Some Bookstores Don't Want You to Buy . The Wall Street Journal Speakeasy Blog . Trachtenberg, Jeffrey A. . November 13, 2012. February 4, 2013.
  18. News: How to Rack Up Debt and Ruin Your Life . Time Business & Money . Sanburn, Josh . November 14, 2012. February 4, 2013.
  19. News: Cry Me a River: The Rise of the Failure Memoir. The New Yorker . Giles Harvey. March 25, 2013. March 22, 2013.
  20. News: Cry Me a River: The Rise of the Failure Memoir. The New Yorker . Giles Harvey. March 25, 2013. March 22, 2013.

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