Reviews
The overall narrative is structured round [these] subtle, delicate moments: performances, as Adam would call them, of intense experience. They're comic in that obviously, Adam is an appalling poseur. But they're also beautiful and touching and precise., [A] subtle, sinuous, and very funny first novel . . . There are wonderful sentences and jokes on almost every page., Praise for 10:04 "Reading Ben Lerner gives me the tingle at the base of my spine that happens whenever I encounter a writer of true originality. He is a courageous, immensely intelligent artist who panders to no one and yet is a delight to read. Anyone interested in serious contemporary literature should read Ben Lerner, and 10:04 is the perfect place to start." -Jeffrey Eugenides, author of The Marriage Plot "Ben Lerner is a brilliant novelist, and one unafraid to make of the novel something truly new. 10:04 is a work of endless wit, pleasure, relevance, and vitality." -Rachel Kushner, author of The Flamethrowers, This masterful, at times dizzying novel reevaluates not just what fiction can do but what is is . . . Hilarious and incisive, Lerner's [ 10:04 ] would succeed without the layers of fiction (on reality on fiction). But with that narrative device, the book achieves brilliance, at once a study of how fiction functions and an expansive catalog of life., Lerner is talented at noticing his mind's feints and twitches, and thereby making the quotidian engaging . . . As I read 10:04 I began to feel life itself take on the numinous significance, the seriousness, or art., Ben Lerner's Leaving the Atocha Station is a slightly deranged, philosophically inclined monologue in the Continental tradition running from Büchner's Lenz to Thomas Bernhard and Javier Marías. The adoption of this mode by a young American narrator--solipsistic, overmedicated, feckless yet ambitious--ends up feeling like the most natural thing in the world., 10:04, Ben Lerner's ingenious new novel, is a Sebaldian book made from starkly American material . . . If we are able to see things a little differently, the novel seems to say, if amid the chaos we can locate pockets of potential--for connection, for collectivity--then there's hope. Where Sebald mourns what has been lost in translation from life, Lerner steadfastly seeks what might be found., Deeply intelligent, just as deeply funny, and ultimately quite moving. Plus, it's the only book this year to talk about Back to the Future AND Walter Benjamin with equal insight., [ 10:04 is] disarmingly clever, unstintingly intelligent, and intensely a product of our contemporary moment., Last night I started Ben Lerner's novel Leaving the Atocha Station . By page three it was clear I was either staying up all night or putting the novel away until the weekend. I'm still angry with myself for having slept., Ben Lerner is a brilliant novelist, and one unafraid to make of the novel something truly new. 10:04 is a work of endless wit, pleasure, relevance, and vitality., Lerner writes rich, ruminative fiction . . . Like Whitman, and like W. G. Seabld and Teju Cole, Ben Lerner is a courageous chronicler of meditative ambulation, of the mind reflecting on its own vibrant thinking processes before they congeal into inert thoughts., Lerner as author is a master manipulator, immersing you into the flow of a story and then pulling you back up to the surface at will . . . What makes Lerner one of the most compelling young writers working in both fiction and poetry is that he's fascinated by, and engaging convincingly with fascinating things., At 240 pages, his new novel does not announce itself as a magnum opus. But given Lerner's considerable humor, rigorous intelligence, and shred breed of conscience--his bighearted spirit and formal achievement--it is. A generous, provocative, ambitious Chinese box of a novel, 10:04 is a near-perfect piece of literature, affirmative of both life and art, written with the full force of Lerner's intellectual, aesthetic, and empathetic powers, which are as considerable as they are vitalizing., Leaving the Atocha Station is a marvelous novel, not least because of the magical way that it reverses the postmodernist spell, transmuting a fraudulent figure into a fully dimensional and compelling character., [Lerner's] concerns wrap around the modern moment with terrifying rightness . . . 10:04 describes what it feels like to be alive., Lerner's perceptiveness makes his writing not only engaging but funny . . . Ben Lerner tells a story that moves and provokes., Rampant self-deprecation and deft humor . . . separates 10:04 from other novels that focus on writers writing about writing . . . Lerner has now established himself firmly in the realm of fiction, adding to his triumphs in poetry and criticism. He will prove, if not already, to be an important figure in contemporary American literature., Just how many singular reading experiences can one novelist serve up? . . . 10:04 is a mind-blowing book; to use Lerner's own description, it's a book that's written 'on the very edge of fiction' . . . Lerner obviously loves playing with language, stretching sentences out, folding them in on themselves, and making readers laugh out loud with the unexpected turns his paragraphs take . . . 10:04 is a strange and spectacular novel. Don't even worry about classifying it; just let Lerner's language sweep you off your feet., [ 10:04 ] is a beautiful and original novel . . . it signals a new direction in American fiction, perhaps a fertile one., Praise for 10:04 "This masterful, at times dizzying novel reevaluates not just what fiction can do but what is is . . . Hilarious and incisive, Lerner's [ 10:04 ] would succeed without the layers of fiction (on reality on fiction). But with that narrative device, the book achieves brilliance, at once a study of how fiction functions and an expansive catalog of life." - Time Out New York [Five-star review] "Reading Ben Lerner gives me the tingle at the base of my spine that happens whenever I encounter a writer of true originality. He is a courageous, immensely intelligent artist who panders to no one and yet is a delight to read. Anyone interested in serious contemporary literature should read Ben Lerner, and 10:04 is the perfect place to start." -Jeffrey Eugenides, author of The Marriage Plot "Ben Lerner is a brilliant novelist, and one unafraid to make of the novel something truly new. 10:04 is a work of endless wit, pleasure, relevance, and vitality." -Rachel Kushner, author of The Flamethrowers Praise for Leaving the Atocha Station "A work so luminously original in style and form as to seem like a premonition, a comet from the future." -Geoff Dyer, The Observer "Lerner's writing [is] beautiful, funny, and revelatory." -Deb Olin Unferth, Bookforum "[A] subtle, sinuous, and very funny first novel . . . There are wonderful sentences and jokes on almost every page." -James Wood, The New Yorker "One of the funniest (and truest) novels . . . by a writer of his generation." -Lorin Stein, The New York Review of Books "Flip, hip, smart, and very funny . . . Reading it was unlike any other novel-reading experience I've had for a long time." -Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross "Remarkable . . . a bildungsroman and meditation and slacker tale fused by a precise, reflective and darkly comic voice." -Gary Sernovitz, The New York Times Book Review "The overall narrative is structured round [these] subtle, delicate moments: performances, as Adam would call them, of intense experience. They're comic in that obviously, Adam is an appalling poseur. But they're also beautiful and touching and precise." -Jenny Turner, The Guardian " Leaving the Atocha Station is a marvelous novel, not least because of the magical way that it reverses the postmodernist spell, transmuting a fraudulent figure into a fully dimensional and compelling character." -Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal "An extraordinary novel about the intersections of art and reality in contemporary life." -John Ashbery "Utterly charming. Lerner's self-hating, lying, overmedicated, brilliant fool of a hero is a memorable character, and his voice speaks with a music distinctly and hilariously all his own." -Paul Auster "Last night I started Ben Lerner's novel Leaving the Atocha Station . By page three it was clear I was either staying up all night or putting the novel away until the weekend. I'm still angry with myself for having slept." -Stacy Schiff "A character-driven 'page-turner' and a concisely definitive study of the 'actual' versus the 'virtual' as applied to relationships, language, poetry, experience." -Tao Lin, The Believer "Ben Lerner's Leaving the Atocha Station is a slightly deranged, philosophically inclined monologue in the Continental tradition running from Büchner's Lenz to Thomas Bernhard and Javier Marías. The adoption of this mode by a young American narrator-solipsistic, overmedicated, feckless yet ambitious-ends up feeling like the most natural thing in the world." -Benjamin Kunkel, New Statesman 's Books of the Year 2011, Named one of the best books of 2014 by The New Yorker , The New York Times Book Review , The Wall Street Journal , The Boston Globe , NPR, Vanity Fair , The Guardian , L Magazine , The Times Literary Supplement , The Globe and Mail , The Huffington Post , Gawker , Flavorwire , Electric Literature , Commonweal , The Kansas City Star , and The Strand, McNally Jackson, Powell's and Greenlight Bookstores, Mr. Lerner is among the most interesting young American novelists at present . . . In 10:04 . he's written a striking and important novel of New York City, partly because he's so cognizant of both past and present. He's a walker in the city in conscious league with Walt Whitman . . . We come to relish seeing the world through this man's eyes., A character-driven 'page-turner' and a concisely definitive study of the 'actual' versus the 'virtual' as applied to relationships, language, poetry, experience., I've only reread two novels this year: John Darnielle's Wolf in White Van and Ben Lerner's 10:04 . . . they are also two of the finest works of fiction I have read in a long time . . . As much as I adored Leaving the Atocha Station , 10:04 is an improvement . . . in every single way. The book is more ambitious, more intelligent, and, somehow, even more hysterical . . . Lerner's work feels so fluid, so natural that it feels like a magic trick when he moves from meditations about fatherhood to greater considerations of the world at large without batting an eye., Praise for 10:04 "Reading Ben Lerner gives me the tingle at the base of my spine that happens whenever I encounter a writer of true originality. He is a courageous, immensely intelligent artist who panders to no one and yet is a delight to read. Anyone interested in serious contemporary literature should read Ben Lerner, and 10:04 is the perfect place to start." -Jeffrey Eugenides, author of The Marriage Plot "Ben Lerner is a brilliant novelist, and one unafraid to make of the novel something truly new. 10:04 is a work of endless wit, pleasure, relevance, and vitality." -Rachel Kushner, author of The Flamethrowers, Flip, hip, smart, and very funny . . . Reading it was unlike any other novel-reading experience I've had for a long time., Lerner, with his keen poetic eye, manages to fill 10:04 with deft, breathtaking observations and possibilities . . . If indeed, as many postmodern critics tell us, there is no longer the prospect of the certified masterpiece or the Great American Novel, Lerner has created a meaningful substitute: a thinking text for our time., Lerner conjures a compelling vision of what it means to live now, examining our ties to the past and the forces that threaten to sunder us from it., Remarkable . . . a bildungsroman and meditation and slacker tale fused by a precise, reflective and darkly comic voice., The boundaries between 10:04 and real life are porous, and it's exciting. But none of it would matter if it weren't for Lerner's excellent prose, which is galloping yet precise, his humorous, complex scene-settings (including one of the best extended party scenes I have ever read), his charming obsessions, and poingnant world-view., This is only Lerner's second novel (and he is only thirty-five), and yet to talk about mere 'promise,' as is customary with the young, seems insufficient. Even if he writes nothing else for the rest of his life, this is a book that belongs to the future., 10:04 , with its slippery relationship between narrator and author, its beautifully wrought sentences, and its intricate network of leitmotifs, allusions, and recurring phrases--from a jar of instant coffee to time travel, to the speech Ronald Reagan gave after the Challenger exploded--demonstrates the pleasures and insights . . . literariness can still afford., What is 10:04 by Ben Lerner? It is a book for people who like great writing--"great," here, meaning frequently brilliant, electrically hyper-conscious, extravagnatly verbose, aggressively sesquipedalian throw-the-book-across-the-room-in-despair-that-you-will-never-invent-that-metaphor-because-he-just-did writing . . . Nothing much happens, except for writing. But let me tell you: The writing happens ., In an era of ironic detachment and political apathy, Lerner's 10:04 makes a strong case for art that can move from irony to sincerity., Praise for 10:04 "Reading Ben Lerner gives me the tingle at the base of my spine that happens whenever I encounter a writer of true originality. He is a courageous, immensely intelligent artist who panders to no one and yet is a delight to read. Anyone interested in serious contemporary literature should read Ben Lerner, and 10:04 is the perfect place to start." -Jeffrey Eugenides, author of The Marriage Plot "Ben Lerner is a brilliant novelist, and one unafraid to make of the novel something truly new. 10:04 is a work of endless wit, pleasure, relevance, and vitality." -Rachel Kushner, author of The Flamethrowers Praise for Leaving the Atocha Station "A work so luminously original in style and form as to seem like a premonition, a comet from the future." -Geoff Dyer, The Observer "Lerner's writing [is] beautiful, funny, and revelatory." -Deb Olin Unferth, Bookforum "[A] subtle, sinuous, and very funny first novel . . . There are wonderful sentences and jokes on almost every page." -James Wood, The New Yorker "One of the funniest (and truest) novels . . . by a writer of his generation." -Lorin Stein, The New York Review of Books "Flip, hip, smart, and very funny . . . Reading it was unlike any other novel-reading experience I've had for a long time." -Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross "Remarkable . . . a bildungsroman and meditation and slacker tale fused by a precise, reflective and darkly comic voice." -Gary Sernovitz, The New York Times Book Review "The overall narrative is structured round [these] subtle, delicate moments: performances, as Adam would call them, of intense experience. They're comic in that obviously, Adam is an appalling poseur. But they're also beautiful and touching and precise." -Jenny Turner, The Guardian " Leaving the Atocha Station is a marvelous novel, not least because of the magical way that it reverses the postmodernist spell, transmuting a fraudulent figure into a fully dimensional and compelling character." -Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal "An extraordinary novel about the intersections of art and reality in contemporary life." -John Ashbery "Utterly charming. Lerner's self-hating, lying, overmedicated, brilliant fool of a hero is a memorable character, and his voice speaks with a music distinctly and hilariously all his own." -Paul Auster "Last night I started Ben Lerner's novel Leaving the Atocha Station . By page three it was clear I was either staying up all night or putting the novel away until the weekend. I'm still angry with myself for having slept." -Stacy Schiff "A character-driven 'page-turner' and a concisely definitive study of the 'actual' versus the 'virtual' as applied to relationships, language, poetry, experience." -Tao Lin, The Believer "Ben Lerner's Leaving the Atocha Station is a slightly deranged, philosophically inclined monologue in the Continental tradition running from Büchner's Lenz to Thomas Bernhard and Javier Marías. The adoption of this mode by a young American narrator-solipsistic, overmedicated, feckless yet ambitious-ends up feeling like the most natural thing in the world." -Benjamin Kunkel, New Statesman 's Books of the Year 2011, Reading Ben Lerner gives me the tingle at the base of my spine that happens whenever I encounter a writer of true originality. He is a courageous, immensely intelligent artist who panders to no one and yet is a delight to read. Anyone interested in serious contemporary literature should read Ben Lerner, and 10:04 is the perfect place to start., Ingenious . . . Lerner packs so much brilliance and humor into each episode. Some, like the narrator's blunders while making his donation to a hospital fertility specialist, are worthy of Woody Allen in their comic neurosis. Others yield sparkling essayistic reflections on the blurred lines between art and reality . . . This brain-tickling book imbues real experiences with a feeling of artistic possiblity, leaving the observable world 'a little changed, a little charged'., A work so luminously original in style and form as to seem like a premonition, a comet from the future., Utterly charming. Lerner's self-hating, lying, overmedicated, brilliant fool of a hero is a memorable character, and his voice speaks with a music distinctly and hilariously all his own.
