Straight Man

Adjectives cling to Ben Lerner like cockleburs. He is “subtle and sinuous,” per James Wood in the New Yorker. His work is “virtuosic,” in the words of Tao Lin for The Believer. The MacArthur Foundation bestowed a fellowship upon him. Of or pertaining to the intellect — these are the descriptors that pile before his feet. It predated his turn into fiction, too. Back when he was exclusively a poet, his post-Language melding of theory and lyricism was similarly feted for its erudition. C. D. Wright declared that he possessed “an unfettered mind” when his first book of poetry, The Lichtenberg Figures, was published in 2004. (Lerner was only 25 years old at the time. He was precocious too!) The praise is accurate enough. His books contain dense paragraphs on Spanish prosody and historical trauma. But that misses the most important aspect of his work, the one that provides much of the pleasure his books offer. Lerner, you see, is funny.