Ben Lerner (1) (1979–)

While this novel has received critical acclaim, I struggled to connect
with it. I guess it's a bit unfair, but I really have come to dislike
"autofiction" (how many novels about writers does one need?) That
said, there are some very captivating passages---the author is very
gifted, his vocabularly is astounding---but on the whole I found it
tedious. The repeated, interlocking touchstones (again impressive)
felt to me like "the spread," the nonsensical overflow of
argumentation from "competitive" debaters referenced in the novel.
Ultimately the novel seems to want to say something about the crisis
of masculinity and its relationship to the present socio-political
situation in America. But I think it's extremely difficult for a
semi-autobiographical work from someone whose own upbringing is so far
outside the typical experience---super famous psychologist parents, et
cetera---to write something with universal meaning.… (lisätietoja)

After reading Ben Lerner’s debut novel I searched out John Ashberry’s poem of the same name.

A hadn’t read either Ashberry’s poem nor Lerner’s for that matter.

Nor had I made the connection between Ashberry’s poem and the setting for the 2004 terrorist attack at the Madrid train station of the same name. But I do sense a kinship between the two as Ashberry’s poetry clangs like the explosions in the tunnels.

More than 190 people died in the attack.

So what is the connection between the poem, the explosion, and poet about whom this novel is centred?

Fragments of the story tie in directly to Lerner’s lived experience. His mother and father appear as characters by the narrator, although they are the stuff of lies he tells a woman to gain her confidence.

The narrator is a poet so different from the swaggering Jake Barnes of Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises to whom he is compared.

This writer is on tranquilizers, is constantly smoking hash or grass, and is drunk most of the time. He considers himself a fraud. He pretends that his Spanish is rudimentary, and he fears his translator will discover that he is no poet at all.

His friends think otherwise.

The themes are familiar, the setting exotic to a N. American audience, and the narrator as spoiled and dishonest as J.P. Donleavy’s Ginger Man.

What is new is our understanding of the mind and the constructions he makes to make sense of his blurry landscape, grabbing from memory what he makes of himself and filling in the rest with not what is real, but what will work.

This is what we know of the mind today.

When the terrorist attacks galvanize the opposition on the eve of a national election, the narrator’s friends act as one. To them it is history in the making. He is not a part of this history, or only the history of poetry.
… (lisätietoja)

This is on my DNF (did not finish) list. I can't. It literally gives me a headache. The writing trend may be to jump back and forth and sideways, but when you have this many characters, forget about it. I do have a little psychology background, so the explanations regarding deviancy or unwanted behaviors were highly interesting. However, this story focuses on chasing so many butterflies, going back and forth in time to describe the characters and the events that shaped them, with no clue where the story is going or why so much mundane is necessary. Each night I read the story, I would TRY to stop at a point where I would not lose what I had learned. But there was so much I did not understand. There was a ton of historical background you needed to appreciate this story (I guess), and I don't think the average reader will have it. I don't usually consider myself an average reader until I have to read a highly historical book. I also think references to Palin and Trump were just an excuse to throw a current political viewpoint in the book. It didn't have any other meaning to me, otherwise. Good grief! I wanted to relate to the characters, but the passages had so many terms and vocabulary that did not aid to building to whatever tied it all together. At the half mark, I made the call to take my life back and stop reading. I refuse to read a book that I have to rewrite in my mind to make it make sense. And the reviews are so mixed. Either people totally agree like I do, or totally think it is wonderful. Lots of times, readers will have a taste of a style from other books by that author. Even so, I could have read nearly all those reviews and still gotten frustrated with reading this book. I appreciate Goodreads giving me the opportunity to read it, but this genre, whatever it may be, is DEFINITELY not my style. All I could get out of it was adults and their offspring have problems that are often passed on from one generation to the next. If that theme could have been built and all the other extraneous ideas removed, chances are great I would have finished this book. That is one great storyline lost in the middle of the ramble.… (lisätietoja)