Leaving the Atocha Station (2011)

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

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. He also pursues romantic and sexual relationships with two Spanish women, lying to them and others to elicit sympathy and avoid responsibility. He tells several people that his mother has recently died, recounts a friend's experience of a failed attempt to rescue a drowned woman as if it was his own, and uses his (sometimes feigned) lack of Spanish fluency to falsely suggest that his thoughts are too profound and complex to convey outside of his native language. Especially when called upon to participate in poetry readings or discussion panels, Gordon grapples with feelings of fraudulence and anxiety.

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.

The mentioned station is Madrid Atocha railway station.

Critical reception

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