Benjamin Taylor (author)

Benjamin Taylor
Born August 20, 1952(1952-08-20)
Fort Worth, Texas
www.benjamintaylorauthor.com

Benjamin Taylor (born 1952) is an American writer whose work has appeared in a number of publications including Esquire, Bookforum, BOMB, the Los Angeles Times, The Georgia Review, Raritan Quarterly Review, Threepenny Review, Salmagundi, Provincetown Arts and The Reading Room. He is a founding member of the Graduate Writing Program faculty of The New School in New York City, and has also taught at Washington University in St. Louis, the Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y, Bennington College and Columbia University. He has served as Secretary of the Board of Trustees of PEN American Center, has been a fellow of the MacDowell Colony and was awarded the Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger Residency at Yaddo.

Contents

Life and career

Benjamin Taylor was born and grew up in Fort Worth, Texas. He received his B.A. from Haverford College and his Ph.D. in English and comparative literature from Columbia University where his teachers included Michael Wood, Carl Woodring, Quentin Anderson, Frank Kermode, and Edward Said.

Taylor's debut novel Tales Out of School (1995) is set on Galveston Island, Texas in 1907 and revolves around the Mehmels, a once prosperous German-Jewish immigrant family whose fortunes are in decline. The novel won the 1996 Harold J. Ribalow Prize and was reissued in 2008 by Zoland Books. Taylor's second novel The Book of Getting Even (Steerforth Press, 2008) tells the story of Gabriel Geismar, a young aspiring astronomer, who becomes involved with a charismatic but troubled family named the Hunderts. Philip Roth wrote that "The Book of Getting Even is among the most original novels I have read in recent years...[It] is exuberant and charming and heartbroken by turns."[1] Taylor's novel was a 2009 Barnes & Noble Discover Award Finalist, a 2008 Los Angeles Times Favorite Book of the Year, and a Ferro-Grumley Prize Finalist. In October 2009, The Book of Getting Even appeared as El Libro de la Venganza in Spain, where it was named a best book of the year by El Pais.[2]

In addition to his fiction, Taylor has published a book-length essay titled Into the Open: Reflections on Genius and Modernity (NYU Press, 1995) in which he examines three influential minds—Walter Pater, Paul Valéry, and Sigmund Freud—and how they viewed a figure widely considered the first great modern genius, Leonardo da Vinci.

Taylor's review of Muriel Spark: A Biography by Martin Stannard appeared in the May 2010 issue of Harper's Magazine.[3]

Taylor has also edited Saul Bellow: Letters, which appeared on November 4, 2010 from Viking Press. The book is the collected correspondence of Canadian-born American author and Nobel laureate Saul Bellow and includes Bellow's letters to such authors as William Faulkner, Lionel Trilling, Alfred Kazin, Robert Penn Warren, J. F. Powers, John Berryman, John Cheever, Karl Shapiro, Wright Morris, Norman Podhoretz, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, Stanley Elkin, Allan Bloom, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Martin Amis.[4] A selection of the letters appeared in the April 26, 2010 issue of The New Yorker.[5] Of Saul Bellow: Letters, Leon Wieseltier, in The New York Times Book Review, wrote "Taylor has selected and edited and annotated these letters with exquisite judgment and care. This is an elegantissimo book. Our literature's debt to Taylor, if the culture still cares, is considerable"[6] and New York Times literary critic Michiko Kakutani chose Letters as one of her "Top Ten Books of 2010."[7]

Benjamin Taylor's travel memoir, Naples Declared: A Walk Around the Bay, is scheduled for release in 2012 by Marian Wood Books, a division of Penguin (USA).

Bibliography

Non-fiction

Fiction

References

  1. ^ The Book of Getting Even: A Novel Steerforth Press Website, retrieved October 19, 2010
  2. ^ "Babelia: los Libros del Año," El Pais, retrieved October 19, 2010
  3. ^ "Goodbye Very Much: The Many Lives of Muriel Spark" (abstract) Harper's Magazine, May 2010 , retrieved October 19, 2010
  4. ^ Saul Bellow: Letters, edited by Benjamin Taylor (Viking, New York 2010)
  5. ^ "Saul Bellow, Life & Letters, 'Among Writers'" (abstract), retrieved October 19, 2010
  6. ^ Wieseltier, Leon (11-18-10)."Saul Bellow's Quest for the Vernacular Sublime", New York Times Book Review, Retrieved November 18, 2010
  7. ^ Kakutani, Michiko (11-23-10). "Top Ten Books of 2010 New York Times, retrieved November 29, 2010

External links