Metamodernismo, mapeamento cognitivo e a construção de uma imagem de escritor em 'Estação Atocha' de Ben Lerner

Abstract

This study offers an interpretation of Ben Lerner’s novel Atocha Station, based on its placement within a postmodern context characterised by a sense of historical time standing still (Jameson, 1997). Based on the understanding that Lerner is drawing on elements of both modernist and postmodernist fiction, thereby engaging with so-called ‘metamodernism’, we aim to demonstrate how the novel is in fact a major exploration of the proximities and distances between literature (especially poetry) and politics, utilising elements of genres such as the essay, poetic prose, and a deeply ironic relationship with the clichés of contemporary Literary Theory. Ultimately, what emerges is the construction of a ‘writer’s image’ (Gramuglio, 2017), with the character Adam Gordon, the book’s narrator, serving as a vehicle for various tensions and contradictions surrounding the position of literature in a chaotic world undergoing profound transformation.