Writing the Novel as He Simultaneously Narrates It: Ben Lerner’s 10:04

by

Ben Lerner’s new novel, 10:04 (244 page; Faber and Faber), is at once nonfiction, fiction, and poetry, a rumination on the relation of the three, a work flickering in the liminal spaces among these forms. It asks of its readers that they allow the traditional structure of the novel—including the presence of plot—to momentarily leave center stage and that they make room for a form perhaps more engaging, one that sings “existential crisis!” Lerner, who is first and foremost a poet, is a writer’s writer. His first novel, Leaving the Atocha Station, came out to great acclaim in 2011. He […]

Continue Reading

The Slippery Nature of Experience: Ben Lerner’s ‘Leaving the Atocha Station’

by

Acclaimed poet Ben Lerner’s first novel is a fascinating and often brilliant investigation of the distance (or the communication) between experience and art. In Leaving the Atocha Station, an aspiring American poet on fellowship in Madrid finds himself in the places between languages, between feeling and thought, between places, and, most often, between lived experience and “the moment of art.” The narrator, Adam Gordon, is highly conscious of these various thresholds. The idea of translating language saturates his every encounter, as Adam pretends to understand an event or a person. Perceived misunderstandings about his grasp of Spanish lead him to […]

Continue Reading