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Leaving the Atocha Station

by Ben Lerner
Leaving the Atocha Station

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ISBN13: 9781566892742
ISBN10: 1566892740



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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

Adam Gordon is a brilliant, if highly unreliable, young American poet on a prestigious fellowship in Madrid, struggling to establish his sense of self and his relationship to art. What is actual when our experiences are mediated by language, technology, medication, and the arts? Is poetry an essential art form, or merely a screen for the reader's projections? Instead of following the dictates of his fellowship, Adams “research” becomes a meditation on the possibility of the genuine in the arts and beyond: are his relationships with the people he meets in Spain as fraudulent as he fears his poems are? A witness to the 2004 Madrid train bombings and their aftermath, does he participate in historic events or merely watch them pass him by?

In prose that veers between the comic and tragic, the self-contemptuous and the inspired, Leaving the Atocha Station is a portrait of the artist as a young man in an age of Google searches, pharmaceuticals, and spectacle.

Review

“A hilarious and insightful account of an artist's development in the digital age.” Electric Literature

Review

“I admire Ben's poetry, but I love to death his new book, Leaving the Atocha Station. Ben Lerner's novel...chronicles the endemic disease of our time: the difficulty of feeling....[A] significant book.” Los Angeles Review of Books

Review

"One of the Top 10 of 2011....[Leaving the Atocha Station] is remarkable for its ability to be simultaneously warm, ruminative, heart-breaking, and funny.” Shelf Unbound

Review

"Leaving the Atocha Station is, among other things, a character-driven ‘page-turner and a concisely definitive study of the “actual” versus the ‘virtual as applied to relationships, language, poetry, experience. It's funny and affecting and as meticulous and “knowing” in its execution of itself, I feel, as Ben's poetry collections are.” The Believer

Review

"Lerner's novel is timely and relevant and, most importantly, a damn good book.” Hey Small Press

Review

"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

Review

"An extraordinary novel about the intersections of art and reality in contemporary life." John Ashbery

Review

"Ben Lerner incisively explores the way our own obsessive critical thinking can make us feel that our role in the world is falsified, unreal, and inauthentic, even as, without knowing it, we're slowly growing into our future skin. Leaving the Atocha Station is a deft and meticulous reading of the development of an artist." Brian Evenson

Review

"[A] noteworthy debut....Lerner has fun with the interplay between the unreliable spoken word and subtleties in speech and body language, capturing the struggle of a young artist unsure of the meaning or value of his art....Lerner succeeds in drawing out the problems inherent in art, expectation, and communication. And his Adam is a complex creation, relatable but unreliable, humorous but sad, at once a young man adrift and an artist intensely invested in his surroundings." Publishers Weekly

Synopsis

Adam Gordon is a brilliant, conflicted American poet on a prestigious fellowship in Madrid. With a feigned interest in his research topic, Adam falls into a habit of using drugs, lying, and spending excessive amounts of money and simultaneously becomes besieged by feelings of fraudulence.

But when a sudden bombing occurs at the Atocha Station, Adam is forced to come to terms with his role as an artist. In layers of hilarity and erudition, ironic hesitation and self-contempt, Leaving the Atocha Station poses the complex and timeless question of the connection between art and experience for a new generation of readers.


About the Author

Born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1979, Ben Lerner is the author of three books of poetry The Lichtenberg Figures, Angle of Yaw, and Mean Free Path. He has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the Northern California Book Award, a Fulbright Scholar in Spain, and the recipient of a 2010-2011 Howard Foundation Fellowship. In 2011 he became the first American to win the Preis der Stadt Münster für Internationale Poesie. Leaving the Atocha Station is his first novel.


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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating 4.5 (2 comments)

`
lukas , June 04, 2015 (view all comments by lukas)
It would've been easy for this debut novel to get decimated in the mine field of cliches and overly-familiar situations. You've got a feckless American poet on a fellowship in Spain who spends much time doing drugs and pursuing Spanish women than writing. You've got a narrator is a bit of a jerk, yet self-aware enough to make him less of a jerk. And you've got the Madrid bombing of 2004 for some historical weight. Yet Ben Lerner, a poet himself, makes it all hum beautifully, taking these hackneyed elements and creating something funny, nuanced, and moving. Partly it's because he pays unusually close attention to language and the book reads very well and partly it's because he embraces the cliches and breathes new life into them. The title comes from the poet John Ashbery, who is quoted several times in the book. Also see Lerner's most recent novel "10:04."

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Tornado393 , January 02, 2012
This is a wonderful one!

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Product Details

ISBN:
9781566892742
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
08/23/2011
Publisher:
Coffee House Press
Pages:
181
Height:
.70IN
Width:
5.40IN
Thickness:
1.00
Illustration:
Yes
Author:
Ben Lerner
Author:
Ben Lerner
Subject:
Literature-A to Z

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Add to Cart
$16.95
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