I read
Too Good to be True because the arc of my own story is
similar to the author’s and I wanted to see how it affected him and what
conclusions he drew from it.
Ben Anastas' memoir is set in the recent past, when publishing industry economics forced
many of us verbal types to watch our jobs, career paths, bank accounts, lovers,
and dreams fly out the window faster than a speeding bullet. In well-crafted
prose that carefully avoids predictable platitudes, Anastas shows us a writer
full of promise, educated at the best MFA program in the country, who authors
well-reviewed books for esteemed publishers, then falls quite suddenly into a
black hole.
This is Job territory, where it’s all coming so fast and
thick that it feels like a deeply personal, targeted attack: Marital strife and
separation. Divorce. Abandonment. Unexpected fatherhood. Career failure.
Poverty. Loss of self-confidence. And not knowing when, or if, it will ever end.
Some of the answers lie in Anastas’ past, where his parents
battled mental illness, poverty,
and marital strife while embracing some of the clichés that made the ’70s so
colorful. His beatnik dad, also a writer, struggled to both write and
feed a family of five. His mom’s hospitalization for depression left her son with attachment scars that ultimately affected his relationships with women. The
template of these painful childhood experiences have etched his current-day
crises with an eerie symmetry. “How much of our lives do we write, and how much
of them are written for us?” he reflects.
Though much is lost on the outside, Anastas does manage to gain the very insights into his family and past that give him a
foothold toward exiting his pain. In a lovely final chapter, he begins to share
his earned wisdom with his young son:
“…The fog was thick and it
kept roiling in, the darkness of the woods was looming all around you. I know
that you will wander in someday. It’s inevitable in this life. There are
shadows there to draw you deeper than you meant to go, voices that will leave
you spellbound. I will not be there to stop you. I will not be there to call
your name and make you turn back. There will be the woods, and there will be
you. A boy with a flashlight.”
And there is a flashlight here, though it’s not the big
lantern-battery neon-yellow kind.
It’s more the soft, gentle light thrown by someone who lives consciously
and reflects on the page genuinely and wisely. For those who have been through
the wringer—literary or otherwise—Too Good to be True compels reading and reflection.
