Omphaloskepsis Assessed

The Nation has a review of Ben Lerner’s 10:04 that contrasts the American “novel of detachment” (think writers in Brooklyn obsessing over how strange it is to be a writer in Brooklyn, how strange it is to be anything at all) with the international “novel of engagement” (think Europeans and Canadians who are equally self-absorbed but a lot more hopeful about it). If you can stand to see one more story with the names Heti, Kunkel, Knausgaard and Waldman in it (and if just reading them in this sentence was tough to take you have both my sympathies and apologies) you should give it a go: Even if you are someone whose opinion of contemporary fiction is that it shows the logical result of awarding advanced degrees for professionalized navel gazing to people whose fragile, precious gift precludes them from doing any other kind of work, you will find that it gives you something to think, or at the very least roll your eyes, about.