Benjamin Taylor (author)
Encyclopedia
Benjamin Taylor is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 writer whose work has appeared in a number of publications including Esquire
Esquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...

, Bookforum
Bookforum
Bookforum is a New York-based magazine devoted to books and the discussion of literature. It is edited by Albert Mobilio, Chris Lehmann, , and Michael Miller.-History: Bookforum was launched in 1994 as a literary supplement to Artforum...

, BOMB
Bomb
A bomb is any of a range of explosive weapons that only rely on the exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy...

, the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

, The Georgia Review
The Georgia Review
The Georgia Review is an award-winning, nationally respected literary journal founded in 1947 that includes poetry, art, fiction, essays and reviews. It won the National Magazine Award for Fiction in 1986 and the National Magazine Award for Essay in 2007...

, Raritan Quarterly Review
Raritan Quarterly Review
Raritan is a well-regarded literary journal that publishes poetry, fiction and essays. The journal is based at Rutgers University in New Jersey...

, Threepenny Review, Salmagundi
Salmagundi
Salmagundi is a salad dish, originating in the early 17th century in England, comprising cooked meats, seafood, vegetables, fruit, leaves, nuts and flowers and dressed with oil, vinegar and spices. There is some debate over the meaning and origin of the word...

, Provincetown Arts and The Reading Room. He is a founding member of the Graduate Writing Program faculty of The New School
The New School
The New School is a university in New York City, located mostly in Greenwich Village. From its founding in 1919 by progressive New York academics, and for most of its history, the university was known as the New School for Social Research. Between 1997 and 2005 it was known as New School University...

 in New York City, and has also taught at Washington University in St. Louis
Washington University in St. Louis
Washington University in St. Louis is a private research university located in suburban St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1853, and named for George Washington, the university has students and faculty from all fifty U.S. states and more than 110 nations...

, the Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y
92nd Street Y
92nd Street Y is a multifaceted cultural institution and community center located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States, at the corner of E. 92nd Street and Lexington Avenue. Its full name is 92nd Street Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association...

, Bennington College
Bennington College
Bennington College is a liberal arts college located in Bennington, Vermont, USA. The college was founded in 1932 as a women's college and became co-educational in 1969.-History:-Early years:...

 and Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

. He has served as Secretary of the Board of Trustees of PEN American Center
PEN American Center
PEN American Center , founded in 1922 and based in New York City, works to advance literature, to defend free expression, and to foster international literary fellowship. The Center has a membership of 3,300 writers, editors, and translators...

, has been a fellow of the MacDowell Colony
MacDowell Colony
The MacDowell Colony is an art colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, U.S.A., founded in 1907 by Marian MacDowell, pianist and wife of composer Edward MacDowell. She established the institution and its endowment chiefly with donated funds...

 and was awarded the Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger Residency at Yaddo
Yaddo
Yaddo is an artists' community located on a 400 acre estate in Saratoga Springs, New York. Its mission is "to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment."...

.

Life and career

Benjamin Taylor was born and grew up in Fort Worth, Texas. He received his B.A. from Haverford College
Haverford College
Haverford College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college located in Haverford, Pennsylvania, United States, a suburb of Philadelphia...

 and his Ph.D. in English and comparative literature from Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 where his teachers included Michael Wood
Michael Wood
Michael David Wood is an English historian and broadcaster. He has presented numerous television documentary series, has made over 80 documentary films, most notably, Great Railway Journeys , Art of the Western World, Legacy: A Search for the Origins of Civilization, In the Footsteps of Alexander...

, Carl Woodring, Quentin Anderson
Quentin Anderson
Quentin Anderson was an American literary critic and cultural historian at Columbia University. His research focused on 19th-century American authors, especially Henry James, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walt Whitman, and their attempts to define American identity as both connected to and...

, Frank Kermode
Frank Kermode
Sir John Frank Kermode was a highly regarded British literary critic best known for his seminal critical work The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction, published in 1967 ....

, and Edward Said
Edward Said
Edward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism...

.

Taylor's debut novel Tales Out of School (1995) is set on Galveston Island
Galveston Island
Galveston Island is a barrier island on the Texas Gulf coast in the United States, about 50 miles southeast of Houston. The entire island, with the exception of Jamaica Beach, is within the city limits of the City of Galveston....

, 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
Philip Roth
Philip Milton Roth is an American novelist. He gained fame with the 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus, an irreverent and humorous portrait of Jewish-American life that earned him a National Book Award...

 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." Taylor's novel was a 2009 Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble, Inc. is the largest book retailer in the United States, operating mainly through its Barnes & Noble Booksellers chain of bookstores headquartered at 122 Fifth Avenue in the Flatiron District in Manhattan in New York City. Barnes & Noble also operated the chain of small B. Dalton...

 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.

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
Walter Pater
Walter Horatio Pater was an English essayist, critic of art and literature, and writer of fiction.-Early life:...

, Paul Valéry
Paul Valéry
Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. His interests were sufficiently broad that he can be classified as a polymath...

, and Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...

—and how they viewed a figure widely considered the first great modern genius, Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...

.

Taylor's review of Muriel Spark: A Biography by Martin Stannard appeared in the May 2010 issue of Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts, with a generally left-wing perspective. It is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. . The current editor is Ellen Rosenbush, who replaced Roger Hodge in January 2010...

.

Taylor has also edited Saul Bellow: Letters, which appeared on November 4, 2010 from Viking Press
Viking Press
Viking Press is an American publishing company owned by the Penguin Group, which has owned the company since 1975. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheim...

. The book is the collected correspondence of Canadian-born American author and Nobel laureate
Nobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...

 Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...

 and includes Bellow's letters to such authors as William Faulkner
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...

, Lionel Trilling
Lionel Trilling
Lionel Trilling was an American literary critic, author, and teacher. With wife Diana Trilling, he was a member of the New York Intellectuals and contributor to the Partisan Review. Although he did not establish a school of literary criticism, he is one of the leading U.S...

, Alfred Kazin
Alfred Kazin
Alfred Kazin was an American writer and literary critic, many of whose writings depicted the immigrant experience in early twentieth century America....

, Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the influential literary journal The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks in 1935...

, J. F. Powers
J. F. Powers
J. F. Powers was a Roman Catholic American novelist and short-story writer who often drew his inspiration from developments in the Catholic Church, and was known for his studies of midwestern Catholic priests...

, John Berryman
John Berryman
John Allyn Berryman was an American poet and scholar, born in McAlester, Oklahoma. He was a major figure in American poetry in the second half of the 20th century and was considered a key figure in the Confessional school of poetry...

, John Cheever
John Cheever
John William Cheever was an American novelist and short story writer. He is sometimes called "the Chekhov of the suburbs." His fiction is mostly set in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the Westchester suburbs, old New England villages based on various South Shore towns around Quincy,...

, Karl Shapiro
Karl Shapiro
Karl Jay Shapiro was an American poet. He was appointed the fifth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1946.-Biography:...

, Wright Morris
Wright Morris
Wright Marion Morris was an American novelist, photographer, and essayist. He is known for his portrayals of the people and artifacts of the Great Plains in words and pictures, as well as for experimenting with narrative forms. Wright Morris died April 25, 1998 at the age of 88 years. He is...

, Norman Podhoretz
Norman Podhoretz
Norman B. Podhoretz is an American neoconservative pundit and writer for Commentary magazine.-Early life:The son of Julius and Helen Podhoretz, Jewish immigrants from the Central European region of Galicia, Podhoretz was born and raised in Brownsville, Brooklyn...

, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick
Cynthia Ozick
Cynthia Ozick is an American short story writer, novelist, and essayist. She is the niece of the Hebraist Abraham Regelson.-Background:Cynthia Shoshana Ozick was born in New York City, the second of two children...

, Stanley Elkin
Stanley Elkin
Stanley Lawrence Elkin was a Jewish American novelist, short story writer, and essayist. His extravagant, satirical fiction revolves around American consumerism, popular culture, and male-female relationships.-Biography:...

, Allan Bloom
Allan Bloom
Allan David Bloom was an American philosopher, classicist, and academic. He studied under David Grene, Leo Strauss, Richard McKeon and Alexandre Kojève. He subsequently taught at Cornell University, the University of Toronto, Yale University, École Normale Supérieure of Paris, and the University...

, Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Daniel Patrick "Pat" Moynihan was an American politician and sociologist. A member of the Democratic Party, he was first elected to the United States Senate for New York in 1976, and was re-elected three times . He declined to run for re-election in 2000...

 and Martin Amis
Martin Amis
Martin Louis Amis is a British novelist, the author of many novels including Money and London Fields . He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester, but will step down at the end of the 2010/11 academic year...

. A selection of the letters appeared in the April 26, 2010 issue of The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

. Of Saul Bellow: Letters, Leon Wieseltier
Leon Wieseltier
Leon Wieseltier is an American writer, critic, and magazine editor. Since 1983 he has been the literary editor of The New Republic.Wieseltier was born in Brooklyn, New York and attended the Yeshiva of Flatbush, Columbia University, Oxford University, and Harvard University, and was a member of...

, in The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to The New York Times in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry. The offices are located near Times Square in New York...

, 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" and New York Times literary critic Michiko Kakutani
Michiko Kakutani
is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning critic for The New York Times and is considered by many to be a leading literary critic in the United States.-Life and career:...

 chose Letters as one of her "Top Ten Books of 2010."

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
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...

 (USA).

Non-fiction

  • Into the Open: Reflection on Genius and Modernity (1995)
  • Saul Bellow: Letters, Editor (2010)
  • Naples Declared (forthcoming 2012)

External links

  • The Website of Benjamin Taylor, Author
  • "Prodigal Son" essay by Taylor that appears in Loss Within Loss: Artists in the Age of AIDS, edited by Edmund White, The University of Wisconsin Press, 2001
  • The New Yorker review of The Book of Getting Even June 9, 2008
  • "Last Line: Benjamin Taylor, Author of The Book of Getting Even" Esquire
    Esquire (magazine)
    Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...

    , June 10, 2008
  • LA Times review of The Book of Getting Even June 30, 2008
  • "Indignation Day" Video of Benjamin Taylor's interview with Philip Roth, live webcast sponsored by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, September 16, 2008
  • "Fiction as Fibbing: Benjamin Taylor" Interview with Carlin M. Wragg of Open Loop Press, November 2008
  • "The Epistolary Adventures of Saul Bellow" Interview with Evan R. Goldstein in The Chronicle of Higher Education
    The Chronicle of Higher Education
    The Chronicle of Higher Education is a newspaper and website that presents news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty, staff members and administrators....

    , July 28, 2010
  • Bellow in His Dream Car: An Interview with Benjamin Taylor Dissent Magazine, November 4, 2010
  • "An Epistolary Performer" A Review of Saul Bellow: Letters by Gabriel Josipovici
    Gabriel Josipovici
    Gabriel David Josipovici FBA, FRSL is a British novelist, short story writer, critic, literary theorist, and playwright.-Biography:...

    , The Wall Street Journal
    The Wall Street Journal
    The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....

    , November 6, 2010
  • Saul Bellow: Letters Review by Justin Cartwright
    Justin Cartwright
    Justin Cartwright is a British novelist.He was born in South Africa, where his father was the editor of the Rand Daily Mail newspaper, and was educated there, in the United States and at Trinity College, Oxford. Cartwright has worked in advertising and has directed documentaries, films and...

    , Financial Times
    Financial Times
    The Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....

    , November 8, 2010
  • "Saul Bellow: Letters" Review, The New Statesman, November 11, 2010
  • Reading Saul Bellow's Letters Interview with Benjamin Taylor, Gloria Cronin and Nathan Englander
    Nathan Englander
    Nathan Englander is a Jewish-American author born in Long Island, NY in 1970. He wrote the short story collection, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., in 1999...

     on NPR
    NPR
    NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...

    's On Point
    On Point
    On Point is a two-hour call-in radio show hosted by Tom Ashbrook, a former The Boston Globe foreign editor and reporter, author and Internet entrepreneur. It is produced by WBUR in Boston and syndicated by National Public Radio...

    with Tom Ashbrook
    Tom Ashbrook
    Tom Ashbrook is an American journalist and radio broadcaster. He hosts the public radio call-in program, On Point.-Early life and education:...

    , November 15, 2010
  • "Mr. Bellow's Planet" Interview with Benjamin Taylor, The Jewish Week
    The Jewish Week
    The Jewish Week is an independent weekly newspaper serving the Jewish community of the metropolitan New York City area. The Jewish Week covers news relating to the Jewish community in NYC and has world-wide distribution.-Editorial staff:...

    , November 16, 2010
  • "Saul Bellow letters - Review" by John Banville
    John Banville
    John Banville is an Irish novelist and screenwriter.Banville's breakthrough novel The Book of Evidence was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and won the Guinness Peat Aviation award. His eighteenth novel, The Sea, won the Man Booker Prize in 2005. He was awarded the Franz Kafka Prize in 2011...

    , The Guardian
    The Guardian
    The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

    , November 20, 2010
  • "The Whole Human Mess: Saul Bellow" Review of Saul Bellow: Letters by William Deresiewicz, The Nation
    The Nation
    The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...

    , retrieved November 23, 2010
  • "The Year in Reading: Richard Brody" Post on Saul Bellow: Letters by Richard Brody, The New Yorker digital edition, December 14, 2010
  • "In un libro di lettere di Saul Bellow" Review of Saul Bellow: Letters, Il Foglio
    Il Foglio
    Il Foglio is a Italian centre-right daily newspaper, with circulation of about 13,000 copies per day. It was founded in 1996 by the Italian journalist and politician Giuliano Ferrara, after he left as editor of the magazine Panorama- Characteristics :...

    ,
    December 18, 2010
  • "Epistle Whip" Review of Saul Bellow: Letters, The Australian
    The Australian
    The Australian is a broadsheet newspaper published in Australia from Monday to Saturday each week since 14 July 1964. The editor in chief is Chris Mitchell, the editor is Clive Mathieson and the 'editor-at-large' is Paul Kelly....

    , December 29, 2010
  • "Hurricane Man" Review of Saul Bellow: Letters by Michael O'Donnell, The Wilson Quarterly, Winter 2011
  • "Fine Jewish Whine" Review of Saul Bellow: Letters by Benjamin Balint, Haaretz
    Haaretz
    Haaretz is Israel's oldest daily newspaper. It was founded in 1918 and is now published in both Hebrew and English in Berliner format. The English edition is published and sold together with the International Herald Tribune. Both Hebrew and English editions can be read on the Internet...

    , January 9, 2011
  • "Saul Bellow's Emotional Crucible" Excerpt from Benjamin Taylor's introduction to Saul Bellow: Letters in The National Post (Canada), January 20, 2010
  • "Writers' Letters: A Roundtable" The Book Show
    The Book Show
    The Book Show is an Australian ABC radio program for the discussion of everything relating to the written word. It is broadcast live around Australia on Radio National with a daily weekday morning show which is then replayed nightly and also has a Sunday evening show. The show is hosted by Ramona...

    , Australian Broadcasting Corporation
    Australian Broadcasting Corporation
    The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...

    , January 28, 2011.
  • "Lasting Man" Review of Saul Bellow: Letters by Cynthia Ozick, The New Republic
    The New Republic
    The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...

    , February 10, 2011
  • "Well-Written 'Letters': Saul Bellow Shows Us How" Review of Saul Bellow: Letters by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein on NPR's All Things Considered
    All Things Considered
    All Things Considered is the flagship news program on the American network National Public Radio. It was the first news program on NPR, and is broadcast live worldwide through several outlets...

    , March 15, 2011
  • "Philip Roth: I'm not caged in by reality," Benjamin Taylor interviews Philip Roth, The Telegraph
    The Daily Telegraph
    The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...

    , May 20, 2011
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