An Underachiever's Diary

This is the diary of William, a devout underachiever. He lives by the following principles:

1. Alone in an age of increasing competition and diminished possibilities, the underachiever, when faced with doing battle, will forfeit rather than draw blood in the modern arena. He is powerless, and deliberately weak.

2. The underachiever is misanthropic by default. He will use negativity as his greatest weapon, and reserve the right to criticize all that is exalted in both secular and religious society. He lives at a calculated distance from the mainstream, longing secretly to be included, while, at the same time, voicing his contempt for those who play by the rules, that is, achievers of the garden variety, and especially his nemesis, the overachiever.

3. Rather than saying "Yes, yes" to life, the underachiever will say   "No, thank you." If pressed, he will turn belligerent.


4. Underachievers are not to be confused with younger, slower brothers of southern presidents, like Billy Carter and Roger Clinton. These gentlemen do the best with whatever genetic leftovers they've been given, while the underachiever is entrusted with a master key to opportunity's home office, and misplaces it.

5. If the underachiever were a mixed drink, he would be a dry martini, one part obscurity (vermouth), three parts unhappiness (gin).

--from Underachieving: A Theory
(William's college term paper)

With his debut novel, An Underachiever's Diary, Benjamin Anastas has written a hymn to the imperfect and created a definitive antihero for the 90s.

Benjamin Anastas is a winner of the Frederick Exley Fiction Prize from GQ, as well as Story magazine's College Fiction Competition. After graduating from the Iowa Writers' Workshop he was awarded the Paul Engle Fellowship for distinguished work. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.