“The Media”
by Ben Lerner
from the April 20, 2020 issue of The New Yorker
Usually I excerpt the first paragraph or so in these little New Yorker stories posts, but if I did that this week I’d post the entire story. That’s right, “The Media” is a single-paragraph story, though a pretty short one that should take only a few minutes to read. Posting the first few sentences will provide some distinctive flavor, so I’ll do that.
Walking at dusk through the long meadow, recording this prose poem on my phone, that’s my job, as old as soldiery, the hills, the soldered hills where current flows, green current. When you are finished recording, your lips are dried flowers. The trees are full of black plastic bags and hornets’ nests but not significance; the task of imbuing them falls to me. And it’s me, Ben, just calling to check in.
I haven’t read what this story is about, and I have read only the lines I just put down, but I’m intrigued. I’ve liked quite a bit of Lerner’s work over the years, and I’m looking forward to setting down with this later tonight.
Please comment below with your thoughts on the story, Lerner’s work in general, or whatever. I hope you are all doing well and are starting a good week.
I finished this, and it took me much longer than I anticipated. It is dense and meandering, and I haven’t the first clue yet what I was really reading. It needs some real unpacking, but I’m not sure anything in it convinced me to put in the work.
I have enjoyed Ben Lerner’s previous fiction pieces for The New Yorker, so much that I purchased and read his three novels in quick succession…He never condescended the intelligence of his reader, and he uses language in a really technical but somehow simultaneously poetic way, for example this description from his previous New Yorker piece:
[He’d hear people talk about “seeing stars” when they hit their head, but he saw no stars; he saw rings of red or yellow light or tessellated feather shapes that started to shake if he attended to them or dull gold spirals that spun across his field of vision—or whatever you call your field of vision when your eyes are shut.]
I also like the interesting ways he inserts himself into his writing in a way that feels (at least to me) honest but not navel gazing. He is critical and self aware without being self-deprecating. His novels are all inward and ethos based with little plot, but very readable. He writes about poetry in ‘The Atocha Station’ in a way that makes me want to read more poetry…
However, that said ‘The Media’ was a bit of a rambling block of text.. In the author interview on The New Yorkers website, Cressida Leyshon asks Lerner if he considers this piece poetry or prose: It clearly falls between somewhere. But to my mind it leans closer to poetry.
I agree with Trevor Berrett’s comments on this piece.
Trevor, At least you finished it. I didn’t.
Hey, guys —
I’m not commenting on the Lerner story, haven’t read it yet. This is about Nicole Krauss’s story “Seeing Ershadi”, which was in the BSS of 2019 volume.. Rather than read it, I went back to listen to Krauss reading it. It was so much better than reading it. I wonder if this is true of all stories? Maybe it’s because of the nature of this story, very atmospheric.
More important, I was impressed again by what a great story it is. One of the best of all time? How can I say this if I don’t understand it? My impression is based solely on feeling. Not my usual approach, but there it is.
Now I’d like to go back and se what we wrote about it when it appeared. Trevor, can you send me a link?
Here you go, William: “Seeing Ershadi.
By the way, I read Lerner’s interview this morning and found it nearly as impenetrable as the story itself. I just cannot get excited by what he’s doing here. If someone is, I hope they comment because I’d love to find something here.
Mellifluous blather. Does it actually hold up to scrutiny, of course not. Dendritic venations only buy you so much, guy. Formal complexity in lieu of something to say. Like a basketball player with a great handle and a fantastic first step who flummoxes his defender, drives right by him, and then misses the shot.
“Through the blinds I can see the blue tip of the neighbor’s vape pen signalling in the dark, cold firefly.” Would have been a wonderful freakin’ sentence without the last two words, dude. I just don’t see the hype realized here. Lerner is smart, but as much as people bag on Franzen, there’s purpose in his words when he writes (the first paragraph of The Corrections is a better prose poem than this, by far). Same for other masters of this form – Russell Edson, Gary Lutz, Anne Carson, C.D. Wright, Maurice Riordan, but I digress.
As half of a combination with a visual artist, it’s not awful, I’ll say that for Ben’s piece. Give him points for trying to be original, seriously. And he can darn a phrase. I’ll even grant Lerner’s defenders his braininess and a semblance of talent. But at worst he’s poetry’s Jonathan Safron-Foer – pedantic, wormy, not a complete fraud, but far more gristle than meat. At best he’s Jack Spicer’s erudite but mostly hollow and masturbatory musings for the ivory tower. I’m not saying you’ve gotta be Bukowski to be “real” or Borges to be “experimental,” Lerner, though, he’s an amuse-bouche, not literary sustenance.
While this I kept in mind that Lerner is not only a skillful fiction writer but an award-winning poet. In this piece he is melding experimental fiction and word-poetry. I don’t understand word poetry, but here a couple of readings reveal connections and repetitions that are trying to make a story, I think. It’s not a traditional narrative, but more of a description of a situation and relations among people He is working to combine the kind of 1-page story that Robert Coover has published in the NYer with a modified version of Ashbery’s poetics. I’ll give the guy who wrote “Atocha” some leeway. Does this piece work? I have no idea. But I enjoyed reading it.
It was strange when I saw ‘The Media’ by Ben Lerner in this week’s The New Yorker. I had just finished The Topeka School and really enjoyed the poetry type prose. I know/knew nothing about Mr. Lerner’s background. I read ‘The Media’ three times….really tried to understand…..I don’t…..is he an artist building glass flowers or working on a fountain? I understood his analogy to his writing. Beyond that…..I have NO idea what he was saying. I REALLY appreciate seeing the other opinions here. Now I found Mooks and Gripes.
I’m feeling a bit better about not liking this after reading the comments above. I had thought maybe it was my mood. Plus, I don’t really like poetry all that much I must admit. But…I’ve liked stories with poetic flare by Joy Williams and Lauren Groff in the NYer. This struck me as flailing and indulgent and dull and, per Trevor, not worth unpacking.
thanks for Moosie guys validating my reaction to this work, no second reading for me.
I generally agree with the comments above; I, too, found this nearly unreadable. Sean H’s observation of the tacking-on of a superfluous metaphor to an otherwise sound sentence actually brought me a little clarity on what Lerner might have been doing. That sentence seems like a nod back to the first bit of the story, where the narrator says that, as a poet (or presumably a poet), “the task of imbuing [significance] falls to me” — and, as the example Sean H pointed out, this is done to varying degrees of success. Imbuing a vape pen with significance seems a monumental task, though I applaud Lerner for trying.
I just let it wash through my brain as word entertainment, and it was fine that way.
Mehbe —
Good for you. “The Media” is impressionistic for sure. Yet as I read it once again, I saw new connections. For instance, lots about bees and wasps. “Overwintering queens” for instance. And “complex hexagons” can refer to combs in the hive. One of his techniques it to change referents, so that a word or phrase can refer to a former context or a new context.
No one is obligated to “unpack” a piece like this. But on the other hand I don’t believe that anyone is privileged to dismiss it without putting in some work.
BTW, Sean: I went back and re-read the opening graf of “The Corrections”. Nice writing, but no way is it a prose poem.
OK, William, I’ll bite. What precludes it from being a prose poem? (I would recommend reading the introduction to The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem, From Baudelaire to Anne Carson, edited by Jeremy Noel-Tod before answering. Yes, it sounds like a bit of a supercilious thing to say, but if I’m actually going to have an actual argument about “prose poems” + “Jonathan Franzen” it ought to actually come with some citations, yes? [triad of “actual”s = intentional])
Has anybody listened to Ben Lerner read this on the NYer website? When I was able to hear him pause and inflect in the way I suppose he intended, it brought some clarity (and, believe it or not enjoyment!) to the piece. It may be unfair to reassess it based on that; or, it may be evidence that it lives in the poetry camp — for me, somebody for whom most poetry doesn’t readily open itself, I often find more enjoyment and understanding listening to poets read their work.
Thanks for the great comments above exploring and finding the value in Lerner’s piece. It is helpful, and it’s always nice to know that just because something doesn’t work for you doesn’t mean it’s bad or not worth time and attention.
Chad —
Good work. No, it’s not unfair to assess a poem based on hearing it read out loud. Quite the opposite — it’s unfair to assess it if you don’t hear it out loud, at least in your own voice. Poetry is meant to be listened to.
Sean —
I’m not going to get into an argument about whether the first paragraph of “The Corrections” is a prose poem. That’s too subjective. Look at this definition of “prose poem” from the Web: a prose piece that has intensity, compactness, imagery and prominent rhythms. I think that describes all good writing.
Nor am I going to read the book you cited. At least not now, for this comment. Here is something simple to access and short and easy to read:
https://digitalcommons.providence.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1461&context=prosepoem
It includes a complete short prose poem by Kenneth Koch, a master of the form, as well as a part of another writer’s prose poem. I believe that both comport with Lerner’s piece but not the Franzen paragraph. If you disagree, that’s fine. Your call. Also, in Willis’s intro she says straight out that the border of prose and prose poem is fluid. I’m happy to leave it there.