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A review by cattytrona
Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner
5.0
I loved this, somehow. And it’s not not a lovable book. It’s an undeniable part of the self-absorbed man genre, compounded by the fact that it’s also about art, but it’s very beautiful and (dare I say it) true in its haze of selfish anxiety: after all, self-absorbed men are people like the rest of us. I wouldn’t say I related to the narrator, but I got it, still, all the more for the sort of highness (as in brow, not drugs, although that’s also there) of the prose.
This felt like writing about poetry that was fundamentally good enough to earn the subject matter (and John Ashbury is worth earning), and about the creative process that was knowing (cynical and hopeful) enough to be convincing. My conviction, in the text, without me having to put in the work, has felt increasingly hard to come by: Leaving the Atocha Station did it, almost instantly (it’s got a great opening).
My experience was added to by the fact I started reading it in Madrid, and read most of it in an exhausted rush on the plane back, which lent itself to the sort of dizzy breakdown the story falls into. The frenetic sense of it all is sometimes unpleasant, but not gratuitous, and feels worth it. The writing, the writing, the reflection without reflection of it.
This felt like writing about poetry that was fundamentally good enough to earn the subject matter (and John Ashbury is worth earning), and about the creative process that was knowing (cynical and hopeful) enough to be convincing. My conviction, in the text, without me having to put in the work, has felt increasingly hard to come by: Leaving the Atocha Station did it, almost instantly (it’s got a great opening).
My experience was added to by the fact I started reading it in Madrid, and read most of it in an exhausted rush on the plane back, which lent itself to the sort of dizzy breakdown the story falls into. The frenetic sense of it all is sometimes unpleasant, but not gratuitous, and feels worth it. The writing, the writing, the reflection without reflection of it.