Los límites de la literatura y la política: Leaving the Atocha Station de Ben Lerner

Abstract

Leaving the Atocha Station is Ben Lerner’s first novel. It is a first-person narration of a year spent in Madrid by Adam Gordon, a young poet from the United States given a Fulbright Scholarship to carry out a project on literary representations of the Spanish Civil War. The novel, based on Lerner’s own experiences in Spain, presents a traveler’s point of view on a global event such as the terrorist attack of March 11, 2004 in Madrid and its local repercussions with the memory of the recent experience of 9/11 in mind; it also reflects on the relationship between literature and politics, a narrative game that moves between poetry and reality. Taking a critical stance with post-9/11 literature, Lerner proposes a radical demystification of the political role of literature and art and, above all, expresses serious doubts about the supposed obligation of offering an immediate response to an historic event from the artistic sphere; he even challenges the political usefulness of the artistic work. A clear «glocal» perspective in which both the echoes of a global event such as a terrorist attack, and its social repercussions are intertwined.