Benjamin Anastas (born 1969) is an American novelist, memoirist, journalist and book reviewer born in

Gloucester, Massachusetts Gloucester () is a city in Essex County, Massachusetts, in the United States. It sits on Cape Ann and is a part of Massachusetts's North Shore. The population was 29,729 at the 2020 U.S. Census. An important center of the fishing industry and a ...

. He teaches literature and writing at

Bennington College Bennington College is a private liberal arts college in Bennington, Vermont. Founded in 1932 as a women's college, it became co-educational in 1969. It claims to be the first college to include visual and performing arts as an equal partner in ...

and is on the faculty of the Bennington Writing Seminars MFA program.

Writing career

Fiction

Anastas started publishing his short fiction while still a graduate student at the

Iowa Writer's Workshop The Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa, is a celebrated graduate-level creative writing program in the United States. The writer Lan Samantha Chang is its director. Graduates earn a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in Creative Wri ...

. 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 Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...

. On the jacket of Anastas's second book, ''The Faithful Narrative of a Pastor's Disappearance: A Novel'',

Daniel Handler Daniel Handler (born February 28, 1970) is an American author, musician, screenwriter, television writer, and television producer. He is best known for his children's book series ''A Series of Unfortunate Events'' and ''All the Wrong Questions ...

called it "hands down, the best novel of the year". It concerns the disappearance of the pastor of a liberal Congregational church in suburban Boston and was a ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' Notable Book.

Journalism and other writings

Anastas's fiction, criticism, essays and journalism have appeared in ''Story'', ''GQ'', ''

The Paris Review ''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published works by Jack Kerouac, Philip ...

'', ''The New Republic'' online, ''The New York Observer'', ''The New York Times Book Review'', ''The Washington Post'', and ''

Bookforum ''Bookforum'' is an American book review magazine devoted to books and the discussion of literature that was based in New York City, New York. The magazine was founded in 1994 and announced in December of 2022 it would cease publishing after ...

''. In 2005, ''

The Yale Review ''The Yale Review'' is the oldest literary journal in the United States. It is published by Johns Hopkins University Press. It was founded in 1819 as ''The Christian Spectator'' to support Evangelicalism. Over time it began to publish more on hi ...

'' published his novella ''Versace Enthroned with Saints: Margaret, Jerome, Alex and the Angel Donatella'' and later awarded it the Smart Family Foundation Prize for Fiction. Anastas has published articles on the

Mayan Calendar The Maya calendar is a system of calendars used in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and in many modern communities in the Guatemalan highlands, Veracruz, Oaxaca and Chiapas, Mexico. The essentials of the Maya calendar are based upon a system which had ...

2012 hoax in ''The New York Times Magazine'', the

prosperity gospel Prosperity theology (sometimes referred to as the prosperity gospel, the health and wealth gospel, the gospel of success, or seed faith) is a religious belief among some Protestant Christians that financial blessing and physical well-being are a ...

in ''

Harper's Magazine ''Harper's Magazine'' is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. Launched in New York City in June 1850, it is the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. (''Scientific American'' is older, b ...

'' and a short piece about his father's nude portrait on ''

Granta ''Granta'' is a literary magazine and publisher in the United Kingdom whose mission centres on its "belief in the power and urgency of the story, both in fiction and non-fiction, and the story’s supreme ability to describe, illuminate and ma ...

'''s website. 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.Robert Atwan (ed.), David Brooks (guest ed.). ''The Best American Essays 2012'', Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. His essay on the

Gullah language Gullah (also called Gullah-English, Sea Island Creole English, and Geechee) is a creole language spoken by the Gullah people (also called "Geechees" within the community), an African-American population living in coastal regions of South Caro ...

folktale ″Buh Black Snake Git Ketch″ appeared in the Spring, 2020 issue of The

Oxford American The ''Oxford American'' is a quarterly magazine that focuses on the American South. First publication The magazine was begun in late 1989 in Oxford, Mississippi, by Marc Smirnoff (born July 11, 1963). The name "Oxford American" is a play on ''T ...

Memoir

His memoir, ''Too Good To Be True'', was published in 2012. The title is taken from a sign that the author was made to wear around his neck by a childhood therapist. It tells the story of his stalled career as a writer, the end of his marriage, and his attempts to rebuild his life again. Anastas published the book with

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology c ...

's fledgling publishing imprint in New York City and numerous bookstores have refused to stock it. Giles Harvey, writing in

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

, groups ''Too Good to Be True'' in a category he calls the "failure memoir" and cites

F. Scott Fitzgerald Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age—a term he popularize ...

's ''

The Crack-Up ''The Crack-Up'' (1945) is a collection of essays by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. It includes previously unpublished letters and notes, along with the three essays Fitzgerald originally wrote for ''Esquire'' magazine, which were first pu ...

'' essays as an influence.

Works

* ''An Underachiever's Diary'', Dial Press, 1998 * ''The Faithful Narrative of a Pastor's Disappearance'', FSG, 2001 * ''Am Fuß des Gebirgs'', Jung und Jung Verlag, Wien, 2005 * ''Too Good to Be True'', New Harvest, October 16, 2012,

References

External links

* *
Interview
with

The Rumpus ''The Rumpus'' is an online literary magazine launched on January 20, 2009. The site features interviews, book reviews, essays, comics, and critiques of creative culture as well as original fiction and poetry. The site runs two subscription-base ...

, August 19, 2009
Interview with The Onion's A.V. ClubAnastas Talking about Emerson's "Self-Reliance" on WBUR's "On Point with Tom Ashbrook"Interview with The Days of Yore
{{DEFAULTSORT:Anastas, Benjamin Living people American male journalists Journalists from New York City 1969 births Novelists from Massachusetts Writers from New York City People from Gloucester, Massachusetts Iowa Writers' Workshop alumni 20th-century American novelists 20th-century American male writers American memoirists 21st-century American novelists Bennington College faculty American male novelists American male short story writers 20th-century American short story writers 21st-century American short story writers 21st-century American male writers Novelists from New York (state) Novelists from Vermont 20th-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers