ÒI am proud to be a disappointment to almost everybody. Lend me money, and I will never pay you back. Fall in love with me, and I will fail to acknowledge you. Save your compassion for someone who really needs it, I am well engaged, trying to be my own worst enemy. I would call this my manifesto, or autobiography, but that would mean I have an ideal audience in mind. Call it a diary.Ó
_______________________________________________________________ An UnderachieverÕs Diary A Novel By
Benjamin Anastas A CLASSIC TALE OF PERVERSE PERSEVERANCE ÒA wonderful, overlooked novel gets a new lifeÉ An UnderachieverÕs Diary may have been the funniest, most underappreciated book of the 1990s. And that makes this new reprint most welcomeÉ.WilliamÕs voice is sharp and hilariously scathing; he comes off like a latter-day Holden Caulfield. But his riffs and observations add up to a surprisingly tender narrative — a coming-of-age story thatÕs well worth retelling.Ó – Very Short List (on the 2009 Dial Press edition) ÒBitterly funnyÉThe bookÕs veils of irony are light enough to charm even the coolest reader, and its emotional detailsÉring true.Ó –The New Yorker ÒRecalls Frederick ExleyÕs masterpiece of the genre, A FanÕs Notes.Ó –The New York Times Book Review ÒVery funnyÉa masterpiece of controlled failure in which the narrator fails to deliver on every front.Ó –New York Post ÒFantasticÉA fun, funny bookÉDiary is the work of a careful, thoughtful writer, one gifted enough to make what must have been hard-fought prose seem effortless.Ó –Detroit
Free Press ÒThere are just the right amounts of candor, wit, puerile humor and perverse irreverence.Ó – Publishers Weekly ÒThe sly fictionÕs greatest strength is the finely tuned voice Anastas has created for William, who takes us (in a non-linear way) through his childhood, adolescence and early adulthood without ever faltering in his often droll, deadpan deliveryÉ. In our culture, where fame, celebrity, wealth and other forms of empty achievement are overly venerated, it is bracing to meet this thoughtful narrator.Ó – Los Angeles Times
Benjamin Anastas is the author of The Faithful Narrative of a PastorÕs Disappearance, which was a New York Times Notable Book. His prize-winning short fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, GQ and The Yale Review. AnastasÕs reviews, essays and magazine writing have been published in Bookforum, The New York Times Magazine, Granta and MenÕs Vogue. |
