"Lerner spoke in freely flowing paragraphs about the paintings on the walls and the memories they stirred in him, much like the narrators of his form-breaking autofictions."
"He believed he'd been spared the anxiety of influence, which, in Harold Bloom's telling, is largely patrilineal. The idea struck me as a little too neat."
"Shifting to prose, he'd suggested earlier, was his way of creating distance from Ashbery, whose echo resounds in those earlier texts."
"The lucid discussion I remembered now read like a stream of dissociative drivel."
Ben Lerner's reflections on art and memory during a visit to the Whitney Museum reveal his unique literary influences, particularly from women writers. He believes this has alleviated the anxiety of influence typically associated with male predecessors. Despite his admiration for John Ashbery, Lerner's shift from poetry to prose was an attempt to create distance from Ashbery's influence. However, a transcription service's output of their conversation distorted the clarity of Lerner's insights, highlighting the challenges of capturing nuanced discussions.
Read at The New Yorker
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