Ben Lerner’s 'Transcription' Is a Brilliant Meditation on Tech

Authenticity, performance, the thin line between fact and fiction: these are, by now, the well-known central preoccupations of Ben Lerner’s fiction. His first novel, Leaving the Atocha Station, follows an American poet named Adam Gordon in Madrid in 2004, who witnesses the aftermath of the 11-M commuter train bombings. Adam is a divisive lead; he’s solipsistic and drifts through the city on a self-medicated cocktail of marijuana and coffee. He can barely speak Spanish, though he somehow captures the romantic attention of two beautiful women. “I was a violent, bipolar, compulsive liar,” Adam says. “I was a real American.”