5/25/2023 0 Comments 10 04 ben lerner summaryHe is trying, more or less unsuccessfully, to produce his second novel, after an excerpt in the New Yorker has prompted a rush of interest in his work. The equally unnamed narrator has just been diagnosed with Marfan syndrome, which can lead to an aortic dissection, almost always fatal. In that novel, as in his new one, Lerner aspired towards what WG Sebald described as “poetic truth” – “What I’m striving for is authenticity none of it is real.” This line of Sebald’s, describing his own explorations of the generic hinterlands, might be the epigraph for 10:04, a work of fiction that never quite believes in its own fictitiousness, a novel that fails and fails again at being novelistic.ġ0:04 is bookended by two storms – Irene and Sandy (although they are never named). B en Lerner’s first novel, Leaving the Atocha Station, was a surprise 2011 hit, its unprincipled, truth-bending narrator barely keeping his balance atop the fact/fiction divide.
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