A review by dcmr
Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner
1.0
This book is one indulgent sentence after another.
I loathed the narrator. Did the author intentionally create an awful American male poet/traveler/poser character? Is the point of this novel to confirm that Americans really are lazy, self-centered, and pretentious?
If the aim is satire, it only works for a very short time and only with some sort of payoff at the end — and not, as this story suggests, that the pseudo-intellectual poet is not a bumbling idiot but rather a brilliant fountain of creativity. Give me a break!
I loathed the narrator. Did the author intentionally create an awful American male poet/traveler/poser character? Is the point of this novel to confirm that Americans really are lazy, self-centered, and pretentious?
If the aim is satire, it only works for a very short time and only with some sort of payoff at the end — and not, as this story suggests, that the pseudo-intellectual poet is not a bumbling idiot but rather a brilliant fountain of creativity. Give me a break!