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Home > Fiction and Literature Books > Fiction: general and literary > MODERN & contemporary fiction > An Underachiever's Diary
An Underachiever's Diary

An Underachiever's Diary


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About the Book

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.

Review :
"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 "Very funny...a masterpiece of controlled failure in which the narrator fails to deliver on every front."--"New York Post" "The book's veils of irony are light enough to charm even the coolest reader, and its emotional details, particularly those of William's bond with his faultless brother, ring true."--"The New Yorker" Fantastic...A fun, funny book."--"Detroit Free Press" "Recalls Frederick Exley's masterpiece of the genre, A Fan's Notes."--"The New York Times Book Review"


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Product Details
  • ISBN-13: 9780385319980
  • Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc
  • Publisher Imprint: Bantam USA
  • Height: 201 mm
  • Returnable: N
  • ISBN-10: 0385319983
  • Publisher Date: 09 Feb 1998
  • Binding: Hardback
  • Language: English
  • Width: 136 mm


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