An Underachiever's Diary - Softcover

Benjamin Anastas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 033037267X ISBN 13: 9780330372671

Publisher: Picador, 2000

Synopsis

With his debut novel, Benjamin Anastas has written a hymn to the imperfect; in the character William, he has created a definitive antihero for the 90s. `Sparkling . . . extremely funny, bursting with one-liners and the familiar, sharp wit of the New York neurotic' Observer `As a diarist, William is a sit-down comedian. We are in the nerdy, nervy territory of Woody Allen and Nicholson Baker here . . . both funny and moving' Time Out `A richly comic novel that directs its satirical energies against the idea of success . . . a deft performance' Daily Telegraph `Unconcerned as to whether he is liked or loathed, William can cast a curious rhetorical spell and, in the end, we love him despite ourselves' The Times `The sly fiction's greatest strength is the finely tuned voice Anastas has created for William, who takes us . . . through his childhood, adolescence and early adulthood without ever faltering in his often droll, deadpan delivery . . . his celebration of less over more serves as an unusual tonic' LA Times

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Review

Benjamin Anastas's filigreed novella is grounded in a very slim conceit. Of two brothers born into a trendy Cambridge, Massachusetts, household, one twin is set for success, the other for chronic failure. Although ill-fated William actually beat Clive into the world by seven minutes, it's straight downhill from there. The first chapter is filled with hilarious scenes of equal opportunity gone wrong, our narrator balancing each of Clive's triumphs with his own pratfalls. Even their hair is woefully unequal. At three the younger sports a Beatles mop par excellence, while William is the eternal victim: "My mother, no artist with the scissors, had run into some trouble with a cowlick on my top, and I looked more like a lesbian, or David Bowie in his glitter years."

Unfortunately, as the boys hit puberty and William exiles himself to boarding school ("the Boys' Prison"), the book goes awry. The underachiever's later misadventures are no less acutely rendered, but with his foil at more of a distance, William's sorrows and sarcasms lose some of their strength. Despite its brevity, An Underachiever's Diary should not be read in one sitting but savored slowly (or even dipped into in very small doses) for its balanced prose and arch self-deprecation.

From the Publisher

"I would be proud of myself if I ever underachieved so brilliantly."
--Ann Beattie

"Ben Anastas's underachiever is the most heartbreakingly likeable, brilliantly convincing character of this type since Holden Caulfield."
--Francisco Goldman

"From the first paragraph, Benjamin Anastas has got you. His witty, sorrowful hero speaks in a voice that snares the listener as fully as Salinger's Seymour Glass once did. An Underachiever's Diary--the cleverest literary monologue in a long while--is in fact an extremely precocious debut."
--Thomas Mallon

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 033037267X
• ISBN 13: 9780330372671
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1