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For Ben Lerner, panic obtains. In his first novel, Leaving the Atocha Station (2011), Lerner’s stand-in, Adam Gordon, talks about the “chemical sting” he has known since childhood as the “particular aftertaste of panic.” Walking around Madrid, on a poetry fellowship, the twentysomething Gordon tilts against anxiety with unsupervised blends of “tranqs” and “spliffs” and booze and coffee. In Lerner’s next novel, 10:04 (2014), he voices the slightly older “Ben” narrator and sees anxiety sprout across the social field in response to the Sandy-like storm hitting New York.