Caught on the Hinge

Is there a living writer more interested in flickering than Ben Lerner? It’s not just that his books flicker between fiction and nonfiction. (To take one example: in his novel 10:04, the Lerner-like narrator gets an advance for a book based on a short story published in The New Yorker. The story, which is included in 10:04, happens to be a story that already had been published in The New Yorker under Lerner’s own name.). And it’s not just that his writing flickers between poetry and prose. (Lerner’s five collections of poems are often quite prosey, while his four novels feature discussions of Whitman and Ashbery). And it’s not just that his language flickers between high theory and low comedy. (A typical Lerner character will allude to Walter Benjamin on one page and then humiliate himself at a sperm bank on the next).