Ben Lerner

Adam Gordon, lahjakas mutta epäluotettava amerikkalainen runoilijanalku, viettää stipendiaattivuotta Madridissaetsien itseään ja kestävää suhdetta taiteeseen. Kunnianhimoisen runoprojektin toteuttamisen sijaan hänjuopottelee, napsii masennuslääkkeitä ja tapailee tyttöjä, ja päätyy lopulta tekemään kokonaisvaltaista ”tutkimusta”aitouden mahdollisuudesta taiteessa ja elämässä.Onko runous tärkeä taidemuoto vai pelkkä tyhjä kangas, jolle lukijat heijastavat odotuksiaan? Ovatko Adamin suhteet Espanjassa tapaamiinsa ihmisiin yhtä onttoja kuin hän pelkää runojensa olevan?Lähtö Atochan asemalta häilyy komiikan ja tragiikan, itseinhon ja innoituksen välillä. Ben Lernerin älyllinen irrottelu saa aikaan nopealiikkeistä ja koukuttavaa proosaa taiteen, itsereflektion ja todellisuuden suhteista.

Ben Lernerin pienoisromaani pohtii, miten uudet teknologiat muuttavat suhteitamme muihin ihmisiin ja omaan itseemme. Samalla se on romaani sukupolvien välisestä yhteydestä; lapsista ja vanhemmista keskellä palavaa maailmaa. Ennen kaikkea teos on puolustuspuheenvuoro painetulle sanalle ja kaunokirjallisuudelle. Romaanillaan Lerner näyttää, että taide pystyy asioihin, joihin puhelimesi ei pysty.

A writer returns to his college town, where he is to conduct what will be the final published interview with Thomas, his ninety-year-old mentor. But after he drops his smartphone in the hotel sink, he arrives at Thomas's house with no recording device - a fact he is mysteriously unable to confess. What unfolds from this dreamlike circumstance is both a brilliant meditation on those technologies that enrich and impoverish our connections to each other, that store and obliterate our memories, and a moving exploration of the relationships that make us who we are.

From the "most talented writer of his generation" (The New York Times), a lightning flash of a novel that is at once a gripping emotional drama and a brilliant examination of the devices, digital and literary, we use to store--or to erase--our memories. The narrator of Ben Lerner's new novel has traveled to Providence, Rhode Island, where he is to conduct what will be the final published interview with Thomas, his ninety-year-old mentor and the father of his college friend, Max. Thomas is a giant in the arts who seems to hail "from the future and the past simultaneously" and who "reenchants the air" when he speaks. But the narrator drops his smartphone in the hotel sink. He arrives at Thomas's house with no recording device, a fact he is mysteriously unable to confess. What unfolds from this dreamlike circumstance is both the unforgettable story of the triangle formed by Thomas, Max, and the narrator, and a brilliant meditation on those technologies that enrich or impoverish our connection to one another, that store or obliterate memory. Haunted by Kafka (there are echoes of "The Judgement" and "A Hunger Artist"), but utterly contemporary, Lerner combines trenchant insight with lyric mystery. Ultimately, Transcription demonstrates what only a work of fiction can record.

The narrator of Ben Lerner's new novel has travelled to Providence, where he is to conduct what will be the final published interview with Thomas, his ninety-year-old mentor, and the father of his college friend, Max. But after the narrator drops his smartphone in the hotel sink, he arrives at Thomas's house with no recording device, a fact he is mysteriously unable to confess. What unfolds from this dreamlike circumstance is both a brilliant meditation on those technologies that enrich and impoverish our connections to each other, that store and obliterate the memories that make us who we are, and a moving exploration of the experience of being a son, of becoming a man, and of trying to be a good father.

From the celebrated author of The Topeka School, a collection of poetry that is dazzlingly intelligent, moving and speaks directly to our complex times. The Lights is a constellation of verse and prose, voice memos and vignettes, songs and silences, that brings the personal and the collective into startling relation. These are poems at once alive to the forces that shape human society and to the rhythms of the natural world, to the power of new technologies and the wonder of our timeless planet. Sometimes the scale is intimate and quiet and sometimes the poems are sweeping, Orphic experiments in the "collectivization of feeling": "I want everybody out there to sing along, even the stones." Written over a span of fifteen years, The Lights records the pleasures, risks, and absurdities of making art and family and meaning against a backdrop of interlocking, accelerating crises. And, even while alert to the darkness, it is the light in the book that remains, in dusk, in images from space, in old poems, in power cuts, in the flickering connections between people. From one of the most celebrated writers of his generation, the poems in this collection come to us as beacons, illuminating new possibilities of thought and feeling.

This book brings together for the first time Ben Lerner's three acclaimed volumes of poetry, along with a handful of newer poems, to present a decade-long exploration of the relationship between form and meaning, between private experience and public expression. No Art is an exhilarating argument both with America and with poetry itself, in which online slang is juxtaposed with academic idiom, philosophy collides with advertising, and the language of medicine and the military is overlaid with echoes of Whitman and Keats. Here, clichés are cracked open and made new, made strange, and formal experiments disclose new possibilities of thought and feeling. No Art confirms Ben Lerner as one of the most searching and ambitious poets working today.

Longlisted for the Griffin Poetry PrizeA New Yorker Essential Read Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Vulture, NPR, Financial Times, The Telegraph, and Electric Literature A formally ambitious and intensely felt new volume from the author of 10:04 and The Topeka School. The Lights is a constellation of verse and prose, voice mails and vignettes, songs and felt silences, that brings the personal and the collective into startling relation. Sometimes the scale is intimate, quiet, and sometimes the poems are sweeping, Orphic experiments in the animation of our common world. Written over a span of fifteen years, The Lights registers the pleasures, risks, and absurdities of making art and family and meaning against a backdrop of interlocking, accelerating crises, but for all their insight and critique, Ben Lerner's poems ultimately communicate--in their unpredictability, in their intensities--the promise of mysterious sources of lift and illumination.

No matter your age or success, you may be living far below God’s intended purpose for your life. You’re called to accomplish greater things than you can possibly imagine, but it will take a wild expectance to get you there. Wild Expectance reveals how learning to hear and follow God’s voice will lead you into remarkable experiences and impact that would otherwise be impossible. These adventures are available to everyone, but only those who listen and act will ever experience them. Don’t allow another day to go by without the power of wild expectance in your life. This may be the key to your next promotion, more fulfilled relationships, a more profitable business, and memories that last a lifetime. WARNING: If you desire an average life then this book is not for you. Once you read Wild Expectance, it will be impossible to ignore the exciting new opportunities that await.Get this book if you want to:• Read incredible real-life God stories so wild they seem untrue • Learn to hear from God for yourself • Discover the power of the Spirit of God in your own life • Step into exciting new opportunities that God has for you • Experience the peace of knowing you accomplished your purpose

Den begavede og fuldstændig upålidelige unge amerikanske digter Adam Gordon er på stipendieophold i Madrid. Idéen er egentlig, at han skal forske, men han bruger i stedet det meste af sine vågne timer på at ryge hash og drive omkring i den spanske hovedstad. Han er en fremmed i byen og i sproget, men usikkerheden omkring hans egen identitet stikker dybere end som så og berør hele kernen i hans kunstneriske virke. Som dagene går, kommer Adams ”forskning” da også til at handle mere og mere om selve tilværelsen – og imens vokser hans mistanke om, at alle hans relationer, ja, hele hans liv, i virkeligheden er et lige så udspekuleret fupnummer, som den poesi, han skriver.Farvel til Atocha er en sjov og intelligent bog om kunstens og kunstnerens plads i vores senmoderne samfund.”En af USA’s bedste forfattere.” – JYLLANDS-POSTEN”Et værk så selvlysende originalt i stil og form, at det fremstår som et varsel, en komet fra fremtiden.” – THE GUARDIAN”Hylende morsom og knitrende intelligent, fuldt ud levende og original i hver eneste sætning.” – JONATHAN FRANZEN”Helt og aldeles charmerende.” – PAUL AUSTER

Bern Lerner er den kritikerroste poeten som ble den hyllede romanforfatteren og som med sin tredje roman om sitt alter ego Adam Gordon, kombinerer selvbiografiske elementer med ren fiksjon på sin egen helt unike måte.Topeka-skolen er en historie om en familie, men det er også en slående forhistorie til samtiden: den offentlige samtalens kollaps, trolling og tyranner på den nye høyresiden og hvite menns pågående identitetskrise.Det er 1997 og Adam Gordon går siste året på Topeka videregående skole. Hans mor Jane, er en kjent feminist og hans far, Jonathan er ekspert på å få «fortapte gutter» til å åpne seg. Begge jobber på en psykiatrisk klinikk som har tiltrukket seg ansatte og pasienter fra hele verden. Adam har ryktet for å være skolens beste i å debattere og forventes å vinne en nasjonal debattkonkurranse for deretter å begynne på Universitetet. Han er en av de kule folka, klar til å sloss om det trengs, eller bedre, fristilrappe seg ut av situasjoner om det bidrar til at hans jevnaldrende ikke ser på ham som svak. Adam er også en av sisteårselevene som trekker den sky Darren Eberheart, som uten at Adam vet det, er en av farens pasienter, inn i vennegjengen, med katastrofale følger.

Parallel Movement of the Hands collects five long, serial poems (and prose poems) which John Ashbery left unfinished and will become part of his archive at Harvard University's Houghton Library. 'In-progress and realised' as their editor Emily Skillings puts it, these abundant poems are characteristic of the mature work of this American master, an adept of the glories of American speech, who is alert to its insinuating logics and its wild goose chases through popular culture and secret histories. In these poems, Carl Czerny rubs shoulders with the Hardy Boys, Robert Mapplethorpe and Eadweard Muybridge, all of them integrated into Ashbery's generous, omnivorous forms. 'How could I have had such a good idea?' the poet asks in 'The History of Photography'. So many good ideas, such a wealth of surprising points of departure.

”Romanens fremtid er lige her.” SALLY ROONEY Et mesterligt fortalt drama om fortrængte familiehemmeligheder, amerikansk identitet og sprogets magt. Topeka, Kansas, sidst i 1990erne. I centrum står high school-eleven Adam Gordon og hans forældre, psykologerne Jane og Jonathan. Jane er en berømt feministisk forfatter, og Jonathan er ekspert i at nå ind til problematiske teenagedrenge. Adam selv er en dygtig debattør og freestylerapper med et spirende poetisk talent. Herfra spindes tråde fremad og tilbage i tiden. Fra forældrenes opvækst og første møde til Adams liv som voksen familiefar i Brooklyn. Fra at begære sin næstes hustru til en fatal billardkugle i en kælder. TOPEKASKOLEN er en historie om en familie, om hvordan man opdrager en søn til at begå sig i en verden gennemsyret af giftig maskulinitet, og samtidig en forhistorie til vores samtid: den offentlige samtales sammenbrud, den nye højrebølge og den hvide mands identitetskrise. Ben Lerners roman er blevet hyldet af kritikerne og var blandt finalisterne til Pulitzerprisen 2020. ”En svimlende intelligent forfatter. Et godt sted at starte for alle, der ønsker at forstå nutidens USA bedre.” THE TIMES "Modig, vild og, ikke mindst, en kærlighedshandling.” OCEAN VUONG