Leaving the Atocha Station

Leaving the Atocha Station (2011) is the debut novel by American poet and critic Ben Lerner. It won the 2011 Believer Book Award.^[1]

Story

The first-person narrator of the novel, Adam Gordon, is an American poet in his early 20s participating in a prestigious fellowship in Madrid circa 2004. The stated goal of his fellowship is to write a long narrative poem highlighting literature's role in the Spanish Civil War. Gordon, however, spends his time reading Tolstoy, smoking spliffs, and observing himself observing his surroundings.

Leaving the Atocha Station can be read as a Künstlerroman. However, Lerner has said:

The protagonist doesn't unequivocally undergo a dramatic transformation, for instance, but rather the question of "transformation" is left open, and people seem to have strong and distinct senses about whether the narrator has grown or remained the same, whether this is a sort of coming of age story or whether it charts a year in the life of a sociopath.^[2]

References to Ashbery

The title of the novel is taken from a John Ashbery poem of the same name published in The Tennis Court Oath.^[3]

During his time in Spain, Gordon often carries Ashbery's Selected Poems. At one point in the novel, Gordon reads a selection from Selected Poems. "The best Ashbery poems, I thought, although not in these words, describe what it's like to read an Ashbery poem."^[4]

Ashbery called Lerner's Leaving the Atocha Station "[a]n extraordinary novel about the intersections of art and reality in contemporary life."^[5]

Critical reception

The New Statesman named it one of the best books of 2011.^[6] The New Yorker included it in its Reviewers' Favorites from 2011.^[7] Jonathan Franzen considered it one of his favorite books of the year.^[8] It won the 2011 Believer Book Award.^[1]

Bibliography

• Leaving the Atocha Station: A Novel. Coffee House Press. 2011. ISBN 9781566892926. 

References

External links

• Review by James Wood in The New Yorker
• Interview by Tao Lin in Believer