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Leaving the Atocha Station

February 1, 2012 in fiction, online, poetry, reviews by Stephanie

Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner
 (Coffee House Press, August 2011)
Adam Reger

Poetry in Prose

There’s no getting around the fact that Ben Lerner, author of the novel Leaving the Atocha Station, is primarily a poet, having published three collections before this foray into fiction. It’s not, in itself, a criticism. Beautifully written and keenly observed, the novel is more than passable as a sustained piece of fiction, coherent and effective at characterization, and with a number of compelling scenes.  But in his narrator’s concern with issues of translation, his asides on the function of poetry and the aesthetics of verse quoted in prose, and his pointed choice of words and phrases like “insufflation,” “hemic,” “the law of excluded middle,” to carry his meaning, Lerner imports the economy of language and density of thought more commonly associated with poetry.

Leaving the Atocha Station documents the stay in Madrid of Adam Gordon, a young poet on a fellowship in early 2004, tracing his development as a poet over that period. Gordon’s project, as described to the fellowship committee, is to produce a long, research-driven poem on the lingering effects of the Spanish Civil War on present-day Spaniards. The actual project Gordon has undertaken is more nebulous—a mystery even to himself—and not explicitly concerned with poetry. He avoids the other fellows and foundation staff and spends most days alone, reading Tolstoy and visiting a local art museum. Eventually he makes friends with locals, and is drawn into Madrid’s arts culture.

The first phase of my research involved waking up weekday mornings in a barely furnished attic apartment . . . then putting on the rusty stovetop espresso machine and rolling a spliff while I waited for the coffee. When the coffee was ready I would open the skylight . . . and drink my espresso and smoke on the roof overlooking the plaza where tourists congregated with their guidebooks on the metal tables and the accordion player plied his trade. In the distance: the palace and long lines of cloud.

This early passage encapsulates Gordon’s approach to his time in Spain as well as Lerner’s direct, borderline laconic, prose style. Gordon is forever modulating his state via spliffs, tranquilizers, alcohol, and “white pills” (probably antidepressants) that he self-administers in varying doses according to whim. Lerner documents moments like these in a straightforward, clipped style, alternating them with the rambling yet incisive intellectual meditations of Gordon’s internal monologue.

Lerner’s evocation of place is one of the novel’s great strengths. His use of Madrid as a backdrop is nearly as inspired as his choice to place Gordon there in 2004. Asked by his girlfriend, Isabel, why he is studying Spain and Franco now, instead of America under George W. Bush, Gordon can only make pretentious replies even he finds unsatisfying: “‘The language of poetry is the exact opposite of the language of mass media,’ I said, meaninglessly.”  When Isabel further challenges him, he greets her anger, “with silence, so as to allow her to imagine an array of responses I was in fact incapable of producing,” in his rudimentary Spanish. His clumsiness with the Spanish language parallels the inherent difficulty of his relations with other people—Isabel doesn’t remain his girlfriend for long—which in turn evokes the myriad difficulties Gordon has with poetry.  Even when he stumbles into a historic moment for Spain, it serves to rouse him only briefly: as all of Madrid masses for street demonstrations, Gordon pursues Teresa, a translator whose polite disinterest in Gordon as anything more than a fellow poet and friend is maddeningly clear.

Gordon is daft, arrogant, and petulant, while also being thrillingly sharp in his internal monologue. Lerner integrates a number of engrossing mini-treatises into the text in the guise of Gordon’s stream of consciousness. Reading the work of John Ashbery on a long train ride, Gordon notes that although Ashbery’s poetry uses “language that implied narrative development—‘then,’ ‘next,’ ‘later’—such  terms were merely propulsive.”  It’s a credit to Lerner’s facility sustaining the world of Gordon’s heightened, drug-addled intellect that such an observation feels not only unforced but fresh and engaging.

That observation also suggests a way of reading Leaving the Atocha Station. Time passes, and occasionally one of Gordon’s actions leads to something, but mostly the framework suggesting narrative development is, indeed, “merely propulsive.”  The novel is full of fascinating ideas, often displaying beautifully repeating patterns and surprising connections, but it falls short when it comes to plot. Lerner derives some narrative excitement from the historic moment mentioned above, and a bit more from Gordon’s pursuit of Teresa, and a tiny bit from his dilemma over whether to remain in Spain at the end of his fellowship. But by and large the novel’s events, such as they are, feel desultory, a string of occasions about which Gordon can pontificate. Combined with Lerner’s somewhat cool tone, the result is often a sluggish read.

But it seems fair to conclude that crafting a white-knuckle thrill ride was not Ben Lerner’s intent in taking on the novel.  As much as the novel is about anything, it is about Gordon fighting his way to an uneasy peace with poetry.  Where he begins the novel somewhat cynically, assembling meaningless poems by taking random phrases and then translating and mistranslating them, by novel’s end Gordon has reached a place of greater comfort in his relationship to poetry.  He arrives there by way of an almost-mystical process of gaining experience and confidence. It’s the same slow artistic growth encountered by any artist, and here it is rendered carefully, in invisible increments, by Lerner.  Poets, poetry readers, and especially fans of Lerner’s work will likely be excited, and rightfully so, to explore the author’s fascinating meditations in this new and fertile form.

Adam Reger is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh’s MFA program in fiction. He is the author of U.S. Navy Pirate Combat Skills.


You Might Have Missed… Brick Lane

January 15, 2012 in fiction, reviews by Stephanie

Brick Lane by Monica Ali
 (Scribner, 2003)
Eileen Y. Lee

“If God wanted us to ask questions, he would have made us men.”

Monica Ali’s most recently published novel, Untold Story, is the “what-if” tale of Princess Diana—what if the glamorous icon had not died in a Parisian car crash and instead had moved secretly to Midwest America with a new identity and taken up the simpler life?  The book was released in the UK during the run-up to this past year’s royal wedding media extravaganza.  Ali, however, started her writing career in different waters with the socially aware Brick Lane, the story of a married Bangladeshi woman living in London public housing.  This first novel thrust the Dhaka-born, Oxford-educated author into the literary stratosphere, earning her a nod as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists, while Brick Lane was short-listed for the Man Booker prize.

The beating heart of Brick Lane is Nazneen, a village girl who is sent to London for an arranged marriage to a 40-year-old man.  Part immigrant story and part meditation on the fate of women from a particular religious and cultural background, the novel is ultimately focused on Nazneen’s transformation from passive Muslim housewife into an individual possessed of free will who says, “I will decide what to do.  I will say what happens to me. I will be the one.”  This transformation happens—but not before one begins to wonder whether her richly-detailed life will simply collect dust as the narrative moves from 1985 to the months following September 11th.

During its quiet unfolding, Brick Lane flits between Nazneen’s childhood memories of her sorrowful mother and letters from Hasina, the sister she had to leave behind in Bangladesh.  The letters depict a life filled with hardship and small joys, all written in Hasina’s broken English and naïve voice.  Even shocking details about her own rape and then a story about a friend burned with acid as punishment is told in several letters rather matter-of-factly.

As a chronicle of Nazneen’s marriage, Brick Lane is delightfully comical and at other times, sadly painful.  Early on, Nazneen learns to put aside any “high notions” of herself when she overhears her husband, Chanu, on the telephone: “Perhaps when she gets older she’ll grow a beard on her chin, but now she is only eighteen.  And a blind uncle is better than no uncle.  I waited too long to get a wife.”  Pretentious Chanu is continually the source of a good chuckle whenever he rails against the “ignorant types” of British society or forces his wife to listen to his pedantic speeches on philosophy or his “first love,” English literature.  “Have you heard of Richard II?” he says, “It’s not easy to translate.  Give me one minute.  This is a wonderful passage.”

Chanu is as equally proud of his university degrees as he is of his numerous framed certificates from night classes and correspondence courses on such varied topics as cycling and IT communications.  Driven to improve himself, yet ineffectual in his career, Chanu speaks constantly of a promotion that the reader—and Nazneen, as she grows more insightful—knows he will never get.  While a gentle soul, he can sometimes be heartless towards Nazneen, such as when he condescendingly mocks her suggestion to go to Dhaka to locate Hasina, who leaves her love marriage and must fend for herself in Bangladesh’s capital city.  He says:

“Shall I pack a suitcase?  Perhaps you have prepared one.  I shall go to Dhaka and pluck her instantly from the streets and bring her back to live with us.  On the way, I could pick up the rest of your family and we could make a little Gouripur right here.  Is that what you have in mind?”

It is only because of Ali’s sensitive regard for her characters that Chanu does not become a caricature of a husband.  Chanu eventually garners his own sympathy as his full portrait is painted, showing that he is a decent husband, loving father to their two daughters, and a man of quashed ambitions in a society that lumps him together with every other dark-skinned immigrant.

At its most incisive, Brick Lane is a sustained study of both its major and minor characters.  Even when the novel’s plot languishes midway through, the supporting cast in Nazneen’s life continues to shine.   Her best friend, Razia, is feisty (“Do you know why I’m going to learn English?  So that when my children start telling dirty jokes behind my back, I’ll be able to whip their backsides.”), but chooses to turn a blind eye to her son’s worsening drug addiction until nearly all the furniture in their home is sold.  She lives a life that matches her independent spirit only after her controlling husband is killed in a factory accident by the crush of “seventeen frozen cows.”  If there is a villain in Brick Lane it is Mrs. Islam, the elderly, sweet-tongued usurer lady, who will bring along her thug sons to enforce payments in the neighborhood.  Her changing relationship with Nazneen is woven throughout the story.

The most pivotal character is the decisive community organizer, Karim, who also delivers clothes for Nazneen’s sewing jobs and is therefore able to cross the threshold into her domestic world.  His appearance as her younger lover comes as a surprise, as is Nazneen’s decision to start attending radical Bengal Tigers meetings at his encouragement.  This is the first time the outside world penetrates her narrow life—as talk of the World Trade Center attacks comes to dominate the local meetings and her family’s mailbox becomes the target of a “leaflet war” that seeks to draw or erase the battle lines between “native” and “Islamic” elements.

Nazneen finds herself in turmoil over her relationship with Karim.  At these times, Ali’s graceful writing can unfortunately veer towards romance novel territory with such sentences as this: “Unbidden, a memory of Karim came, entering her as he entered her, tearing apart her passive soul.”

Karim sees Nazneen as a concept of maternity and security (“A Bengali wife.  A Bengali mother.  An idea of home”) and hopes they may marry, but time is running out as Chanu aspires to take his wife and daughters back to Bangladesh.  In the end, Nazneen’s choice is not between her husband and Karim, or London and Bangladesh, instead she must decide to be the director of her own destiny.  For those who have waited patiently for the dust on the pages to be swept away, the last chapters provide a frenetic energy and offer an ending filled with hope and new beginnings.

Eileen Y. Lee has a B.A. from Vassar College and a J.D. from Boston College Law School.  She studied abroad in London for one year and counts it as one of her favorite cities in the world.

Radioactive: A Tale of Love and Fallout

January 1, 2012 in nonfiction, reviews by Stephanie | No comments

Radioactive: A Tale of Love and Fallout by Lauren Redniss
(HarperCollins, December 2010)
Maria Sholtis

Powers of Attraction

Lauren Redniss’s Radioactive offers an illustrated history of Pierre and Marie Curie, whose partnership and research changed the world—for better and for worse. This 2011 National Book Award finalist cannot be called a picture book, though, or even a book with pictures. The former suggests something suitable for young children, and though its cover and spine glow in the dark, Radioactive wouldn’t work well as a bedtime story. Yet, “a book with pictures” isn’t quite right either, because the images are not subordinate to the text; to the contrary, they’re absolutely vital to the narrative’s success. The most pleasing term I’ve found to describe Radioactive—from sources ranging from The New York Times to NPR to Vogue—is a “visual” or “graphic” biography.

Redniss dedicates the first part of her book to the Curies’ lives prior to their discovery of radioactivity. We learn about Pierre and Marie’s upbringings, early romances, and eventual meeting in a Paris laboratory. Redniss quotes the Curies at length, selecting and arranging their words to allow these two long-deceased lovers to tell their story. The overlapping dialogue provides a vivid portrait of a relationship built not only upon love, but upon a shared passion for science:

MARIE: “He caught the habit of speaking to me of his dream of an existence consecrated entirely to scientific research, and asked me to share that life.”

PIERRE: “It would, nevertheless, be a fine thing . . . to pass our lives near each other, hypnotized by our dreams, your patriotic dream, our humanitarian dream, and our scientific dream.”

The second part of Radioactive occupies nearly four times as many pages as the first. It concerns the repercussions of the Curies’ research and the latter half of their relationship, which ends tragically with Pierre’s death. As one may expect, this marks a significant shift in the book. Suddenly, Marie is left to juggle multiple roles alone: mother, professor, Nobel Prize-winning scientist. Her later research and subsequent affair with another scientist—and interestingly, the work and relationships of her children—occupy significant space in the latter part of the narrative.

Throughout the book, Redniss’s own writing style takes a backseat to story. Her straightforward voice mingles with those of her subjects, a pleasant contrast to the lyrical quality of the quotes:

After four years of steady labor, four hundred tons of water, and forty tons of corrosive chemicals, on March 28, 1902, they managed to extract one tenth of a gram of radium chloride.

MARIE: “I shall never be able to express the joy of the untroubled quietness of this atmosphere of research and the excitement of actual progress.”

With the constant companionship that accompanied their research, the Curies’ love deepened. They cosigned their published findings. Their handwritings intermingle in their notebooks. On the cover of one black canvas laboratory log, the initials ‘M’ and ‘P’ are scripted one atop the other.

Aside from directly chronicling the Curies’ history, Redniss relates radioactivity to period developments such as the X-ray, spiritualism, and Art Nouveau. She also makes frequent leaps forward in time to visit the contemporary uses (and misuses) of radiation: a boy being treated for cancer, the bombing of Hiroshima, the accidents at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, the technology needed to protect and dispose of nuclear materials. The majority of these cutaways worked quite well, though some felt a little too abrupt and even tedious compared to the main plotline.

And amidst all of this, supporting and enhancing the narrative, is the art. Redniss’s drawings are unearthly, eye-catching, and faintly grotesque. This is “a tale of love and fallout,” after all, so the oversized eyes and curving limbs and strangely delicate hands suit Radioactive’s inherent strangeness. Redniss also used a process called “cyanotyping” to give some of the images a beautifully surreal, luminous appearance, like a negative image lit from beneath. Yet, I often stopped reading to wonder: “Who is that man, and why does he have three eyes, two noses, and two mouths? What is this mass of green and yellow meant to signify? . . . And why is that person suddenly naked?”

Color, text placement/shape, and the use of empty space also affect the reading experience in Radioactive. In the black and while illustrations at the beginning of the book, Pierre’s story occupies the left-hand pages, while Marie’s occupies the right. When they meet, this pattern starts to dissolve; their quotes are placed on the same pages, and they begin appearing in color illustrations together. This is a clever gesture to how Pierre and Marie’s lives ran parallel to one another before finally veering into a relationship.  And the chapter’s name? “Symmetry.”

While much of Radioactive is illustrated by Redniss’s own hand, she also includes copies of historical documents and photographs. More of the latter would have been a welcome addition to this book, as there are only three realistic renderings of Marie in the book, and none of Pierre. (While the book’s subtitle gives them equal billing, Radioactive offers more attention to Mme. Curie. Every chapter opens with a quote from her; two pages are dedicated to listing “luminaries, flora and fauna” of Poland, her homeland; she is the one illustrated on the cover. This imbalance isn’t too much of a problem, as Marie’s experiences are textured enough to fill these rich pages.)

Page by page, this book confronts traditional notions of what nonfiction “should be” and what the form can accomplish. By challenging the boundaries of its medium, Radioactive doesn’t just leave its reader looking forward to Redniss’s future material, but also the works that it might inspire other artists to create—a fitting outcome for a story about discovery and transformation.

Maria Sholtis is a nonfiction MFA candidate at the University of Pittsburgh. Follow her on Twitter here.