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can white boys have swag? the answer is: kind of, maybe, not really, no.

ben lerner can write (this isn’t saying much; he’s a poet; i expect him to be attendant to the sentence as an individual unit), but he writes ‘annoying� so convincingly that his book began to annoy me. excellent depiction of self-obsessed wants-to-be-a-writer-but-doesn’t-read poseur male poet who thinks every woman should immediately want to fuck him or something has gone critically wrong with him/her/the world. reviewers suspect this to be another book in the tradition of “poet pivots to fiction with a fiction debut that is actually just a thinly veiled autobiography.� i don’t know how true that is of lerner.

regardless, this was a fascinatingly scathing take on politics + poetry, veers into roberto bolaño territory (at least aesthetically), but ultimately a book i found too minute and meandering in construction. i didn’t ever really truly fear for the narrator or find that he was forced to confront himself or his interpersonal dynamics beyond the surface-level. the ending especially i thought was a letdown.

not much story here at all. just a downward narcissism spiral intercut with cig breaks and esoteric drug-fueled inner monologues.

favorite character: spain/the spanish language.
least favorite character: everyone else.