10:04: A Novel

Ben Lerner's 10:04 is a poetic meditation on projection - through time and space, through thought and action, and through fiction and reality. It is a brilliant work, requiring careful readers to wrestle with the finely-detailed visions of Lerner's own self-examinations.I couldn't help making comparisons to Don DeLillo and Nicholson Baker. DeLillo writes of urban individuals trying to make deeper connections to the world, and to each other. What does it mean to be a master financier who cloisters himself inwardly in a moving Manhattan limousine as his outer life crashes and burns? What does it mean to make one's own life and body into a work of art?What does it mean to remove yourself from the world - to seek a mutual abandonment of any such relationship with the outside - and yet find yourself forced to confront individuals who terrorize and demand the ultimate of it? And what does it mean when the world suffers a disaster? What is "the world"? What is "society"? At what point does a collection of individual people become a "society"? And how can such a vaguely-defined entity experience (the rest of) the world?Lerner confronts many of these themes - self-cloistering, art as life / life as art, and shared-society disasters - but wonders more about how a person projects one's self into the world, and how people act in, around and through the particulars.And more fundamentally: What does it mean that moments advance through time? What does it mean that people advance though space? How do people interact through time, with time, against time, and in defiance of it? How do the artifacts of the world around us represent the results of past activity, or the promises of future results?In "Mezzanine", Nicholson Baker deconstructs a single act in such painfully excruciating but exuberantly brilliant detail that Proust himself would have needed to rest between chapters. Lerner is highly observant himself, and also quite keen to find connections between all manner of people, places and things.But Lerner's observations here are never as obsessive-compulsive as Baker's in Mezzanine. They are deeply insightful, however, and lend support to his interest in illustrating the ways people project themselves through the many dimensions of the world.The theme's third leg is the exploration of fiction and reality. He discusses a book advance. His book advance. He prepares a treatment, and submits it to his publisher, but isn't exactly sure he intends to finish it. (He writes many times of freely spending his advance on non-writing activities).The book itself - meaning the one he has promised with questionable intent to the publisher - is a false epistolary document of the deleted email correspondence of the poet William Bronk, as if an executor had chosen, like Kafka's, to publish the writings instead of burning them.But his treatment of the material is problematic, not least of all because he's not even sure Bronk used email all that much. Nor is Lerner's narrator too keen on solving the problems he faces. So he writes the current book instead. By which I mean this book, the one entitled 10:04. The one where he discusses writing it instead of the promised one.Which makes this book a documentary of its own writing, and Lerner's narrator an agent of himself! But wait! Lerner is spending so much of the book discussing fiction and reality that we need to wonder where the line is. There are passages in this book where I almost laughed out loud because I had completely forgotten which version of reality I was supposed to be keeping in mind at that point in the text.As to plot, the book is certainly event-driven, and the characters do develop in time, but it is not strongly plotted nor dramatically structured. There is no climax as such, no denouement. Only plenty of drama. Navel-gazing, if you must.Like DeLillo he starts the story at one point in time, and ends it at another, hopefully illustrating enough of his theme that the reader leaves satisfied. I'm not sure if I'm satisfied by the totality of the book - I don't know that I put the book down after the last page and issued a final exhalation of satisfaction - but I am glad to have given thought to the issues Lerner raises, and I have a feeling I will return to this book again.Lerner is a master craftsman of prose, and a fine turner of phrase. He is also a published poet, which may explain his facility with the language (tho I admit I entirely disliked the real-Ben-Lerner poem sandwiched inside the text at one point). This is both a writer's-writer's book and a reader's-reader's book. If you're in either of those categories, it will be a great joy to read.

This very trim and lean novel offers a lot, strives to say even more, while coming up if only just a bit short in the end. While not a spoiler, a main conceit and device here is that a non-linear and / or recursive narrative timeline is being spooled out. At first, the effect of this is wildly satisfying: a kind of labyrinthine and rococo series of elisions, sentiments and straight memories cascades forth between and around the characters who move populate a plain plot set in the near future of a rather insular slice of Manhattan (the later issue becomes a problem discussed below). Like any nice trick, the impact of this method lessens as it's employed later and on a repeated basis as the plot moves forward. Tone also matters: in early chapters, the idea that time, memory and impressions are unreliable to the narrative is first broached in a modest, elliptical or almost naively and romantically sincere fashion; in later chapters you can hear the author plod around the issue a bit, and the device becomes somewhat didactic or cynical.Apart from that invention, the prose is mainly punchy, smart and loaded for bear--the author intends to drive a lot home with each graph, sentence and phrase. The vocabulary is a bit showy and self-conscious, but otherwise gets used to good, and more than sometimes impressive, effect. On balance though, the stylistic approach also gets heavier as your reading moves forward: the smart author (in a good, earnest way) becomes bit too clever, and starts hammering away with glossy and dense writing--lighter and more efficient work would often come off with greater effect.This relates closely to a core, maybe somewhat disqualifying issue: the plot is hermetically sealed in a bubble of literary New York. I have a love for that city and largely enjoyed this story: still, the characters, developments and tonal aspects of the tale can be narrow, stale and un-relatable. The author bends his good prose into evocative devices, the thrust of which elicits a very dreamy, satisfying and warm feeling. The target of all that hard work, however, fits poorly into a payload of notably smaller narrative scope: prepare to tread through the anxieties of late-30-somethings concerning pregnancy and parenthood; decisions concerning a literary and correspondence estate; and rumination concerning particular streets, climes and politics of certain blocks of Brooklyn and Manhattan.So a young talent is dragging you through the mud of a cloistered, maybe pointless diorama of a world you don't and likely wouldn't care to understand or inhabit, and maybe doing so in a way that may seem to some as chauvinistic or possessive towards a sound narrative / authorial purpose. In confidence, I can say all that doesn't matter too much: the novel carries a sentiment and healthy weight that pushes (effortfully) towards a territory somewhere above and beyond the constraints of its characters whose island is too small, even when ignores the rising, encroaching waters around it.

This is unlike anything else I have read this year, at times a fascinating meditation on the American psychological state and at times an interesting interpersonal story. Lerner has either learnt or forced himself not to be so sexist since his poetry days and has done a decent job of writing female characters in this book. Good to see some progress in a writer - plus if you were born in the 80s you'll enjoy all the references!

I think this might be a book that benefits from being read in a single sitting. I found it very easy to lose the thread of what was going on but this might be because I was not very structured in my reading. I got a bit lost in some places and felt that there was lots of connections that I missed. Having said that I did enjoy the writing in places and (spoiler alert, don't read any more if you don't want any ...) did enjoy the sex scene though I'm not sure if I felt sorry for the author and his best friend or not. It seems quite sad that they had such a close friendship, close enough to want a child together, but couldn't quite make it work as a partnership.

Lerner's prose is always readable in this interesting novel of ideas. There are some excellent uses of language and ideas. However some of the ideas don't quite come off and some parts of the narrative are stronger than others.On

Ben Lerner's writing has always gripped me, and '10:04' was no exception to read. It's clever rendering of narratives– both factual and fictional– provided a fascinating and sometimes brilliantly frustrating book, that was complex and experimental. Fans of Lerner will recognise a number of key styles and characters that are characteristic to his writing, notably the dry, self awareness that could potentially be infuriating to some, whilst for others suggests a mature and reflecting author.

The book raised some interesting ideas. The first person narrator was likeable. But it is not the kind of novel I like. I found it difficult to follow though the reader read it well