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10:04 is a novel about how Ben Lerner signs a contract to write a particular novel, and then does a bunch of other things rather than write it. He goes to an artists' colony in Texas, where he works on poetry instead of on the novel. He decides whether to serve as a sperm donor for his best friend Alex, who cautions him not to put her in his novel. He weathers two (literal) hurricanes. He serves as a "big brother" of sorts for an elementary school student (they self-publish a brief book on dinosaurs, included here). He frets about writing the novel but doesn't really get serious about writing it. This novel is the result. It's a novel about not writing a novel.

At this point, this idea is nothing new; the film Adaptation and Geoff Dyer's Out of Sheer Rage spring to mind, and of course there are many other meta-novels out there. By the same token, Ben Lerner inserting himself into works that are ostensibly fiction is also nothing new. Of course, reading 10:04 we're aware that some of the stuff that seems to be autobiographical is really just made up—but do we really care enough to want to sort it all out?

More so even than Lerner's previous novel, Leaving the Atocha Station, 10:04 has a forced quality. There are various themes he keeps circling back to, but it never feels organic, and for me there was never a moment when it all clicked into place. I noticed what he was doing every time: "Oh," I would think, "he's bringing that idea in again." It was benign but extremely self-conscious.

Yet, I enjoyed the experience of reading this much more than Atocha. This time around, I was OK wandering around in Lerner's head as Lerner wandered around town—maybe because he experienced no language barrier in this book and, because he was therefore freer with this speech and actions, he was also freer with his thoughts? 10:04 just had an easier prose style to me, and was more emotionally accessible. With Atocha I could never tell when Lerner was trying to be funny or not; I felt constantly off-balance. With 10:04 I could tell when I was supposed to laugh and when I was supposed to feel moved. This doesn't sound like high praise, but it enabled me to relax into the story (or "story") in a way I couldn't with Atocha.

And as it turns out, Lerner is perfectly (or newly) capable of crafting scenes with genuine emotional impact. When I laughed, it was because I genuinely found things funny. When I was moved, it was because I had read something that genuinely moved me. Lerner has also gotten much better at setting: There was a vividness and tactile quality to his descriptions of places here that I just don't remember from Atocha, despite the latter's more foreign (to me), and thus potentially more fascinating, locale.

Ben Lerner would probably not want to hear this, but I would really like to see him put these newly revealed skills to use in a more conventional novel, one that still has intellectual and literary themes but that manages to work them into an actual plot. Granted, this type of novel is not particularly fashionable at the moment. Still, as it always does, a new moment is bound to come around again. Everything will be as it is now, just a little different.