Benjamin Taylor (author)
Benjamin Taylor was born and raised 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 Joseph A. Mazzeo, Steven Marcus, Paul Oskar Kristeller, Sidney Morgenbesser, Michael Wood, Carl Woodring, Quentin Anderson, Frank Kermode, and Edward W. 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 Hundert. 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." Taylor's novel was one of three 2009 Barnes & Noble Discover Award winners, 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 País". 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. He 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. A selection of the letters appeared in the April 26, 2010 issue of "The New Yorker". 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" and "New York Times" literary critic Michiko Kakutani chose "Letters" as one of her "Top Ten Books of 2010. "
Benjamin Taylor's travel memoir, "Naples Declared: A Walk Around the Bay", was released on May 10, 2012 by Marian Wood Books, a division of Penguin (USA). Publishers Weekly named "Naples Declared" as one of its "Top Ten Travel Books of 2012." "Naples Declared" was also named a Best Book of 2012 by "The New Yorker", where Judith Thurman wrote, "It is a work of voluptuous erudition; a meditation on place and displacement; a paean to the chance encounter—a worldly adventure story... I found it transporting." His edition of the collected non-fiction of Saul Bellow, "There Is Simply Too Much to Think About", was published by Viking in March 2015. Writing in the "New York Review of Books", Nathaniel Rich described the collection as "magnificent...an intimate portrait of Bellow’s defiant, irascible mind, and a milestone of twentieth-century criticism... The collection offers a triumphant overabundance of riches—which is exactly why we read Bellow in the first place. "
Taylor's biography of Marcel Proust, "Proust: The Search", was chosen as a "Best Book of 2015" by Robert McCrum of "The Observer" and Thomas Mallon of the "New York Times Book Review". In 2017, Penguin Random House released "The Hue and Cry at Our House: A Year Remembered," a memoir of one year in Taylor's childhood in Forth Worth, Texas, following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It won the 2017 "Los Angeles Times" – Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose. Later that year, Farrar, Straus and Giroux released "Debriefing: Collected Stories of Susan Sontag," which was edited by Taylor. "Here We Are: My Friendship with Philip Roth", was published in May 2020 by Penguin Books.
Taylor appeared on the March 16, 2012, episode of the ABC series "Primetime: What Would You Do?". He was shown berating an actress portraying an abusive fashion editor. Non-fiction
Career
Taylor's biography of Marcel Proust, "Proust: The Search," was published in October 2015 by Yale University Press as part of its newly launched Yale Jewish Lives series.