Ben Lerner's Big Feelings
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Ben Lerner's Big Feelings
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Re: Ben Lerner's Big Feelings
#2Re: Ben Lerner's Big Feelings
#3" But before the interview, the narrator drops his phone in water. Unable to explain to Thomas he has no way to record their conversation, the narrator pretends his broken phone is working — and the interview commences."
Phone companies really need to start advertising the fact that their phones are water resistant and can survive a quick dunk in the water.
Re: Ben Lerner's Big Feelings
#4I am a huge fan of Ben Lerner and have a copy of “Transcription” at home, waiting to be read. Autofiction is in many ways _the_ dominant mode of contemporary American literature, particularly among the literati of NYC/London (cf. Ocean Vuong, Tao Lin, Patricia Lockwood, etc., etc.). It can, for this reason, feel overdone and out of touch. But Lerner comes to the topic with such skill and intelligence, he really defines the genre for me, in a positive light.
Re: Ben Lerner's Big Feelings
#5I am a huge fan of Ben Lerner and have a copy of “Transcription” at home, waiting to be read. Autofiction is in many ways _the_ dominant mode of contemporary American literature, particularly among the literati of NYC/London (cf. Ocean Vuong, Tao Lin, Patricia Lockwood, etc., etc.). It can, for this reason, feel overdone and out of touch. But Lerner comes to the topic with such skill and intelligence, he really defin…
Agreed. Lerner has an unique way of digging into solipsism that's truly genuine and comical (whereas I feel Knausgård and most of the autofiction crowd's stuff comes across as glorified navel-gazing). It's no wonder he's been compared to Foster Wallace in that regard, who also wrote about deeply human struggles yet still is dismissed as a lit-bro pseudointellectual.
Re: Ben Lerner's Big Feelings
#6> , and Lerner ordered, for the both of us, a glass of “something dry and cold.” For lunch, he requested the chicken: a roasted baby chicken from a farm upstate, to be exact, an order that, in its comically artisanal specificity,
Stuff like this is so upper-middle class (or aspirational upper-middle class, which is the same thing) coded that it hurts, somehow I thought we left all that behind in the pre-Covid era, looks like I was wrong. Imo it all started with the Lunch with the FT (again, see the upper-middle class larp-ing) gonzos, and it went downhill from there.
Re: Ben Lerner's Big Feelings
#7" But before the interview, the narrator drops his phone in water. Unable to explain to Thomas he has no way to record their conversation, the narrator pretends his broken phone is working — and the interview commences." Phone companies really need to start advertising the fact that their phones are water resistant and can survive a quick dunk in the water.
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Re: Ben Lerner's Big Feelings
#8> , and Lerner ordered, for the both of us, a glass of “something dry and cold.” For lunch, he requested the chicken: a roasted baby chicken from a farm upstate, to be exact, an order that, in its comically artisanal specificity, Stuff like this is so upper-middle class (or aspirational upper-middle class, which is the same thing) coded that it hurts, somehow I thought we left all that behind in the pre-Covid era, lo…
What's wrong with it?
Re: Ben Lerner's Big Feelings
#9> , and Lerner ordered, for the both of us, a glass of “something dry and cold.” For lunch, he requested the chicken: a roasted baby chicken from a farm upstate, to be exact, an order that, in its comically artisanal specificity, Stuff like this is so upper-middle class (or aspirational upper-middle class, which is the same thing) coded that it hurts, somehow I thought we left all that behind in the pre-Covid era, lo…
What's wrong with it?
The tone, for one thing. Normal people don't care about "il Buco" nor about what some nobody has eaten while recounting things, articles like this one should solely focus on the "recounting things" part, not on the eating and name-dropping part.
Now, I get it that for the Anglos normal food might as well have been a thing given to us by the Gods up there in the sky, but, as I was saying, this should have been a thing of the past now, cooked fish is just cooked fish, cooked pasta is just cooked pasta, we don't care about that shit, get to the point of the article.
Re: Ben Lerner's Big Feelings
#10> , and Lerner ordered, for the both of us, a glass of “something dry and cold.” For lunch, he requested the chicken: a roasted baby chicken from a farm upstate, to be exact, an order that, in its comically artisanal specificity, Stuff like this is so upper-middle class (or aspirational upper-middle class, which is the same thing) coded that it hurts, somehow I thought we left all that behind in the pre-Covid era, lo…
What's wrong with it?
Probably they feel this is performative