Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner (review)

The narrator of acclaimed poet Ben Lerner’s debut novel is an older Holden Caulfield, who has made the unsettling discovery that he too is a phony. An American poet on fellowship in Madrid, he insulates himself from experience with a fog of booze and hash, supplemented by various mood-managing pharmaceuticals, and by his imperfect grasp of the language; many of the best and funniest passages in the book involve extended speculations on what someone might have said in Spanish that the narrator can’t, or doesn’t even try to, understand. Indifferently pursued romantic entanglements, along with Lucky Jim–style dodging of the obligations attendant on his fellowship, fill up an existence so weightless that even the bombings of 2004 fail to deliver a punctum powerful enough to break through the narrator’s self-absorption. But if his postmodern doubt of his own existence ultimately wears thin, much of the novel is sharp, clever, and plausible. Anyone who’s ever struggled with impostor syndrome will feel a rueful spark of recognition.