Ben Lerner—he of autofiction, he of 10:04 and The Topeka School—recently underwent open heart surgery. Judging from his remarkable essay about it in the new issue of NYRB, it didn’t weaken his ability to look deeply inward. To the contrary: he seems newly aware of his interior, in more ways than one.
It isn’t the pain that I need to describe for you; there was little pain. It is how I suddenly became aware of a space—the pleural space—inside my body that I did not previously know existed, that hadn’t existed until they pulled something out of it. It’s how I could feel the tube moving along the tissue, a shifting deep in my thorax where I previously had no sensory awareness at all, where I was never meant to have sensation, my interior becoming wrongly tangible. And it was as if only now, when the tube was being extracted, I experienced the violation of its insertion, and so these events transpired in the wrong order, or in no order, happening simultaneously; the extraction made present what I could not remember. One moment you’re in the OR, the next moment you’re in recovery, but the tubes and wires run between those experiences, and when they pull them, they tug some of the controlled trauma into consciousness.
More picks from NYRB
The Hardy Men
“Why is a right-wing press reissuing century-old adolescent mystery novels?”
She Knows a Place
“For seven decades, the gospel singer Mavis Staples has troubled the opposition between chorus and soloist, background and lead.”
The Docteur Is In
“The Congolese rumba pioneer Docteur Nico helped define the sound of African decolonization—and became one of the great visionaries of the electric guitar.”
Poisonous Objects
“Two exhibitions in Los Angeles respond to the racist monuments to Confederate soldiers that have been erected all over the United States.”
Bang the Drumstick Slowly
“About 26 billion chickens occupy Earth, but apart from the lucky ones in backyards, most are condemned to the hellscape that is industrial farming.”
A Total Breakdown of All the Easter Eggs
“Major film studios embracing AI, newspapers announcing the death of moviegoing, critics devoid of values: all of this can instill a great sense of defeat. We have to write against it.”
