10:04: A Novel

by Ben Lerner

Overview

A stunning, urgent, and original novel from Ben Lerner (The Topeka School and Leaving the Atocha Station) about making art, love, and children during the twilight of an empire.

Winner of The Paris Review's 2012 Terry Southern Prize

A Finalist for the 2014 Folio Prize and the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award

In the last year, the narrator of 10:04 has enjoyed unlikely literary success, has been diagnosed with a potentially fatal medical condition, and has been asked by his best friend to help her conceive a child. In a New York of increasingly frequent superstorms and social unrest, he must reckon with his own mortality and the prospect of fatherhood in a city that might soon be underwater.

A writer whose work Jonathan Franzen has called "hilarious . . . cracklingly intelligent . . . and original in every sentence," Lerner captures what it's like to be alive now when the difficulty of imagining a future is changing our relationship to both the present and the past.

Named One of the Best Books of the Year By:
The New Yorker The New York Times Book Review The Wall Street Journal The Village Voice The Boston Globe NPR Vanity Fair The Guardian (London) The L Magazine The Times Literary Supplement (London) The Globe and Mail (Toronto) The Huffington Post Gawker Flavorwire San Francisco Chronicle The Kansas City Star The Jewish Daily Forward Tin House

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374711344
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	09/02/2014
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	197,272
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Ben Lerner was born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1979. He has received fellowships from the Fulbright, Guggenheim, Howard, and MacArthur Foundations. His first novel, Leaving the Atocha Station, won the 2012 Believer Book Award, and excerpts from 10:04 have been awarded The Paris Review's Terry Southern Prize. He has published three poetry collections: The Lichtenberg Figures, Angle of Yaw (a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry), and Mean Free Path. Lerner is a professor of English at Brooklyn College.
Ben Lerner is the author of books of poetry and prose, as well as several collaborations with visual artists. The recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Foundations, Lerner has been a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, among many other honors. He is a Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College.

Editorial Reviews

★ 09/15/2014
A philosophical meditation on poetry's attempt—and ultimate failure—to approximate abstract beauty, Lerner's Leaving the Atocha Station still resonates among literary critics as one of the best novels of 2011. Similarly, the relentless striving to understand our own mortality even as we negotiate the infinite future effectively underscores this new work. Set in New York City, the story features an unnamed protagonist with a modicum of literary fame, a heart condition, and a best friend who needs his assistance to conceive a child. Though graciously contributing to the start of another life, the narrator is constantly aware of his own fragile existence. This vexing awareness of time forms the core of the novel. Whether wandering through dinosaur exhibits, ruminating over the Challenger explosion, or staring at the Marfa lights, our storyteller is continually musing on the triadic relationship of the present to the unknown past and the uncertain future. VERDICT An autoethnography that skillfully weaves Back to the Future, the brontosaurus, and Ronald Reagan into a narrative about living in the moment; highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 3/31/14.]—Joshua Finnell, Denison Univ. Lib., Granville, OH

Library Journal

Mr. Lerner is among the most interesting young American novelists at present for several reasons, one being that he's akin to a young Brooklynite version of the Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard. That is, in his books, little happens, yet everything happens. Small moments come steeped in vertiginous magic…In 10:04, he's written a striking and important novel of New York City, partly because he's so cognizant of both past and present. He's a walker in the city in conscious league with Walt Whitman, but also with writers up through Teju Cole…

The New York Times - Dwight Garner

06/02/2014
In his second novel, an associative, self-aware roman à clef that ably blends cultures high and low, Lerner (Leaving the Atocha Station) explores the connections between contemporary life, art, and literary writing. The unnamed narrator is a 33-year-old Brooklyn-based novelist, poet, and teacher, at work on his second autobiographical novel, a follow-up to his debut, which was a surprise success (though a limited one). Much of his future hangs on the book’s marketability, and whether he can secure a sizable advance for it. Though he is in poor health (possibly Marfanoid), he has consented to the request of his best friend, Alex, that he help her conceive a child by being a sperm donor for her. Still, he frets over the degree to which he wants to be involved in the process and worries that it might jeopardize his relationship with the “mysterious” artist Alena. In his spare time, he also mentors a boy named Roberto, whose company leads him to even more self-doubt regarding his fitness for fatherhood. Lerner’s insistence on showing off his skill and his display of syntactical acrobatics sometimes result in overwrought constructions that detract from the narrative momentum, but readers who can overlook the sluggish start will be rewarded with engaging streams of thought and moments of tenderness. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Ben Lerner's Leaving the Atocha Station is a slightly deranged, philosophically inclined monologue in the Continental tradition running from Büchner's Lenz to Thomas Bernhard and Javier Marías. The adoption of this mode by a young American narrator--solipsistic, overmedicated, feckless yet ambitious--ends up feeling like the most natural thing in the world.

New Statesman's Books of the Year 2011 on Leaving Benjamin Kunkel

A character-driven 'page-turner' and a concisely definitive study of the 'actual' versus the 'virtual' as applied to relationships, language, poetry, experience.

Tao Lin

Last night I started Ben Lerner's novel Leaving the Atocha Station. By page three it was clear I was either staying up all night or putting the novel away until the weekend. I'm still angry with myself for having slept.

Stacy Schiff on Leaving the Atocha Station

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 on Leaving the Atocha Station

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

John Ashbery on Leaving the Atocha Station

Leaving the Atocha Station is a marvelous novel, not least because of the magical way that it reverses the postmodernist spell, transmuting a fraudulent figure into a fully dimensional and compelling character.

The Wall Street Journal on Leaving the Atocha Stat Sam Sacks

The overall narrative is structured round [these] subtle, delicate moments: performances, as Adam would call them, of intense experience. They're comic in that obviously, Adam is an appalling poseur. But they're also beautiful and touching and precise.

The Guardian on Leaving the Atocha Station Jenny Turner

Remarkable . . . a bildungsroman and meditation and slacker tale fused by a precise, reflective and darkly comic voice.

The New York Times Book Review on Leaving the Atoc Gary Sernovitz

Flip, hip, smart, and very funny . . . Reading it was unlike any other novel-reading experience I've had for a long time.

NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross on Leaving the A Maureen Corrigan

One of the funniest (and truest) novels . . . by a writer of his generation.

The New York Review of Books on Leaving the Atocha Lorin Stein

[A] subtle, sinuous, and very funny first novel . . . There are wonderful sentences and jokes on almost every page.

The New Yorker on Leaving the Atocha Station James Wood

Lerner's writing [is] beautiful, funny, and revelatory.

Bookforum on Leaving the Atocha Station Deb Olin Unferth

A work so luminously original in style and form as to seem like a premonition, a comet from the future.

The Observer on Leaving the Atocha Station Geoff Dyer

Ben Lerner is a brilliant novelist, and one unafraid to make of the novel something truly new. 10:04 is a work of endless wit, pleasure, relevance, and vitality.

author of The Flamethrowers Rachel Kushner

Reading Ben Lerner gives me the tingle at the base of my spine that happens whenever I encounter a writer of true originality. He is a courageous, immensely intelligent artist who panders to no one and yet is a delight to read. Anyone interested in serious contemporary literature should read Ben Lerner, and 10:04 is the perfect place to start.

author of The Marriage Plot Jeffrey Eugenides

Lerner's perceptiveness makes his writing not only engaging but funny . . . Ben Lerner tells a story that moves and provokes.

The Huffington Post Maddie Crum

Lerner conjures a compelling vision of what it means to live now, examining our ties to the past and the forces that threaten to sunder us from it.

Commonweal Magazine Joe Fassler and Margot E. Fassler

[10:04 is] disarmingly clever, unstintingly intelligent, and intensely a product of our contemporary moment.

Haaretz Josh Lambert

Lerner as author is a master manipulator, immersing you into the flow of a story and then pulling you back up to the surface at will . . . What makes Lerner one of the most compelling young writers working in both fiction and poetry is that he's fascinated by, and engaging convincingly with fascinating things.

Open Letters Monthly Elisa Gabbert

Rampant self-deprecation and deft humor . . . separates 10:04 from other novels that focus on writers writing about writing . . . Lerner has now established himself firmly in the realm of fiction, adding to his triumphs in poetry and criticism. He will prove, if not already, to be an important figure in contemporary American literature.

Slant Magazine Alexander Norcia

In an era of ironic detachment and political apathy, Lerner's 10:04 makes a strong case for art that can move from irony to sincerity.

The Last Magazine Alisa Sniderman

10:04 may be the best contemporary work of meta-fiction that I've ever read.

Flavorwire Emily Temple

A brilliant novel . . . As promising a second effort as Atocha Station was a debut.

The New Republic Juliet Lapidos

A funny, deeply observational metafictional romp.

Entertainment Weekly Jacob Shamsian

Frequently brilliant . . . Lerner writes with a poet's attention to language.

The New York Times Book Review Hari Kunzru

Lerner writes rich, ruminative fiction . . . Like Whitman, and like W. G. Seabld and Teju Cole, Ben Lerner is a courageous chronicler of meditative ambulation, of the mind reflecting on its own vibrant thinking processes before they congeal into inert thoughts.

San Francisco Chronicle Steven G. Kellman

10:04, Ben Lerner's ingenious new novel, is a Sebaldian book made from starkly American material . . . If we are able to see things a little differently, the novel seems to say, if amid the chaos we can locate pockets of potential--for connection, for collectivity--then there's hope. Where Sebald mourns what has been lost in translation from life, Lerner steadfastly seeks what might be found.

Bookforum Alexander Benaim

Lerner, with his keen poetic eye, manages to fill 10:04 with deft, breathtaking observations and possibilities . . . If indeed, as many postmodern critics tell us, there is no longer the prospect of the certified masterpiece or the Great American Novel, Lerner has created a meaningful substitute: a thinking text for our time.

Interview Christopher Bollen

Lerner is talented at noticing his mind's feints and twitches, and thereby making the quotidian engaging . . . As I read 10:04 I began to feel life itself take on the numinous significance, the seriousness, or art.

The Slate Book Review Gabriel Roth

This masterful, at times dizzying novel reevaluates not just what fiction can do but what is is . . . Hilarious and incisive, Lerner's [10:04] would succeed without the layers of fiction (on reality on fiction). But with that narrative device, the book achieves brilliance, at once a study of how fiction functions and an expansive catalog of life.

Time Out New York [Five-star review] Tiffany Gilbert

[Lerner's] concerns wrap around the modern moment with terrifying rightness . . . 10:04 describes what it feels like to be alive.

The Boston Globe John Freeman

[10:04] is a beautiful and original novel . . . it signals a new direction in American fiction, perhaps a fertile one.

Bookforum Christian Lorentzen

10:04, with its slippery relationship between narrator and author, its beautifully wrought sentences, and its intricate network of leitmotifs, allusions, and recurring phrases--from a jar of instant coffee to time travel, to the speech Ronald Reagan gave after the Challenger exploded--demonstrates the pleasures and insights . . . literariness can still afford.

Public Books Daniel Hack

Deeply intelligent, just as deeply funny, and ultimately quite moving. Plus, it's the only book this year to talk about Back to the Future AND Walter Benjamin with equal insight.

Commonweal Anthony Domestico

The boundaries between 10:04 and real life are porous, and it's exciting. But none of it would matter if it weren't for Lerner's excellent prose, which is galloping yet precise, his humorous, complex scene-settings (including one of the best extended party scenes I have ever read), his charming obsessions, and poingnant world-view.

Electric Literature Halimah Marcus

What is 10:04 by Ben Lerner? It is a book for people who like great writing--"great," here, meaning frequently brilliant, electrically hyper-conscious, extravagnatly verbose, aggressively sesquipedalian throw-the-book-across-the-room-in-despair-that-you-will-never-invent-that-metaphor-because-he-just-did writing . . . Nothing much happens, except for writing. But let me tell you: The writing happens.

Derek Thompson

I've only reread two novels this year: John Darnielle's Wolf in White Van and Ben Lerner's 10:04 . . . they are also two of the finest works of fiction I have read in a long time . . . As much as I adored Leaving the Atocha Station, 10:04 is an improvement . . . in every single way. The book is more ambitious, more intelligent, and, somehow, even more hysterical . . . Lerner's work feels so fluid, so natural that it feels like a magic trick when he moves from meditations about fatherhood to greater considerations of the world at large without batting an eye.

Grantland Kevin Nguyen

This is only Lerner's second novel (and he is only thirty-five), and yet to talk about mere 'promise,' as is customary with the young, seems insufficient. Even if he writes nothing else for the rest of his life, this is a book that belongs to the future.

New York Review of Books Giles Harvey

Ingenious . . . Lerner packs so much brilliance and humor into each episode. Some, like the narrator's blunders while making his donation to a hospital fertility specialist, are worthy of Woody Allen in their comic neurosis. Others yield sparkling essayistic reflections on the blurred lines between art and reality . . . This brain-tickling book imbues real experiences with a feeling of artistic possiblity, leaving the observable world 'a little changed, a little charged'.

The Wall Street Journal Sam Sacks

At 240 pages, his new novel does not announce itself as a magnum opus. But given Lerner's considerable humor, rigorous intelligence, and shred breed of conscience--his bighearted spirit and formal achievement--it is. A generous, provocative, ambitious Chinese box of a novel, 10:04 is a near-perfect piece of literature, affirmative of both life and art, written with the full force of Lerner's intellectual, aesthetic, and empathetic powers, which are as considerable as they are vitalizing.

The Los Angeles Review of Books Maggie Nelson

Just how many singular reading experiences can one novelist serve up? . . . 10:04 is a mind-blowing book; to use Lerner's own description, it's a book that's written 'on the very edge of fiction' . . . Lerner obviously loves playing with language, stretching sentences out, folding them in on themselves, and making readers laugh out loud with the unexpected turns his paragraphs take . . . 10:04 is a strange and spectacular novel. Don't even worry about classifying it; just let Lerner's language sweep you off your feet.

NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross Maureen Corrigan

Mr. Lerner is among the most interesting young American novelists at present . . . In 10:04. he's written a striking and important novel of New York City, partly because he's so cognizant of both past and present. He's a walker in the city in conscious league with Walt Whitman . . . We come to relish seeing the world through this man's eyes.

The New York Times Dwight Garner

2014-07-02
An acclaimed but modest-selling novelist (not unlike the author himself) muses semiautobiographically on time, life and art. "Proprioception": The narrator of Lerner's knotty second novel returns often to that word. It refers to the sense of where one's own body is in relation to things, a signature theme for an author who's determined to pinpoint exactly where he is emotionally and philosophically. As the novel opens, our hero has earned a hefty advance for his second book on the strength of his debut and a New Yorker story. This echoes Lerner's real life, in which his first novel, Leaving the Atocha Station (2011), was a critical hit; the New Yorker story included in this novel did indeed appear in the magazine. What to make of such self-referentiality? More than you'd expect. Lerner blurs the lines between fact and fiction not out of self-indulgence but as a way to capture experience that emphasizes detail over narrative structure. That can pack both an emotional and an intellectual punch. Watching Christian Marclay's art film The Clock (from which the book derives its title), Lerner is free to consider the distinctions between real time and imaginary time. Writing about his dead-ended attempt to make a novel out of fake letters between well-known writers, he plays with real and invented identities. There's plenty of dry wit in 10:04 and some laugh-out-loud moments too (as when he's asked to deliver a sperm sample on behalf of a friend eager to have a child). But as in his first novel, Lerner's chief tone is somber; Topic A remains whether his ambition will fully connect with his art. At times he seems to strain to make scraps of experience (a residency in Texas; prepping for Superstorm Sandy; a shift at a Brooklyn grocery co-op) relevant to his themes, but few novelists are working so hard to make experience grist for the mill. Provocative and thoughtful, if at times wooly and interior.

Kirkus Reviews