Breakthrough book by the now fêted writer Benjamin Lerner. The story is an young unnamed writer on scholarship to Madrid where he spends his time avoiding to write, going to museums, and ingesting various drugs. The thing about Lerner is his artful prose and the observations. There is not much by way of plot. The end of the book involves a portrayal of the events of the Madrid Metro bombings of 2004, as seen by a 20-something American abroad. It’s a little bit cringeworthy, but most likely based on Lerner’s real experiences.
The book is full of poetry-like observations and prevarications, most of which are interesting. I have read Lerner’s books in the wrong order, so I started with the one called “11:14” which involves the Hurricane Sandy and the title refers to the exact time when a borough-wide blackout occurred in Manhattan. This means I recognized Lerner’s predilection for incorporating recent catastrophies or news events and giving them a literary treatment. Apart from that, it’s pretty straightforward autofiction. A lot of the story is about courting Teresa and Isabel, and their various travels to Toledo, Granada or the Madrid Hilton.
I could sympathize with the portrayal of what it’s like to be an exchange student in a foreign country. Language problems, certain “paralinguistic” forms of communication, cultural differences – it’s not always a smooth ride. All things said, Lerner is pretty good with words. Here is a representative sample:
When I awoke it was a little after three in the morning and I was perhaps hungrier than I had ever been. I’d been eating very little for two weeks, and the turn of my appetite, I assumed, represented a shift in my body’s relation to the white pills. I ate an entire two-day-old baguette and as I ate I checked my e-mail and there was a message in English from Teresa, who had only e-mailed me once or twice in the past, saying that she had heard I was back from “traveling with Isabel” and that she missed me.
or this weird drug-induced parataxis:
My mouth was dry and I poured myself a glass of white wine and said I didn’t care which poems I read but that I would only read one or two. Teresa said to read the one about seeing myself on the ground from the plane and in the plane from the ground and I said, in my first expression of frustration in Spanish, that the poem wasn’t about that, that poems aren’t about anything, and the three of them stared at me, stunned. I said I was sorry, drained and refilled my glass, noting that Teresa seemed genuinely hurt; I found that to be a greater indication of her affection for me than the fact that she had favorites among my poems. We’ll read it, I said.
Lerner is the son of a feminist psychologist who wrote a noted book in the field in the mid 80s. I see it in second-hand bookstores all the time – it’s called The Dance of Anger.
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Kinship of all Species 