Ben Lerner

For whatever reason (perhaps it's envy), I rarely read novels written by authors who are my age. Ten or twenty years older, sure. But the way I figure: if we were in college together, I'll take a pass. 

In any event, I broke this unspoken rule recently when I read Ben Lerner's Leaving the Atocha Station. The book has garnered some significant praise from critics like James Wood and novelists like Jonathan Franzen. 

For me, the novel was part Keith Gessen's All the Sad Young Literary Men and part Florien Zeller's Artificial Snow. 

I suppose Leaving the Atocha Station - which is book primarily concerned with the torturous process by which art is created, and the subsequent interactions between life and art - was better than Gessen's novel, but not close to Zeller's. 

For one, Zeller gets at sex and sexuality in a manner far more organic and convincing than does Lerner. And Zeller also has a way of more seamlessly integrating ideas and philosophies into his work. Still, Lerner is better, I suppose, than Gessen in his ability to mold his self-pity into something interesting (as opposed to something which simply wallows). 

So, while I'm impressed by Lerner's book, I'm not selling the farm just yet. That'd be silly: I'm still too young.