“Totaled City”: The Postdigital Textualities of Ben Lerner’s 10:04

Jordan, Spencer

Abstract

The chapter argues that Ben Lerner’s 10:04 is a response to the new ontological condition of metamodernism. Not only is 10:04 deliberately playful in its mash-up of fiction and autobiography; it also encapsulates extreme levels of anxiety concerning the way twenty-first century city space and technology are now indelibly intertwined. The chapter argues that 10:04 is a kind of metamodernist thought-experiment, an attempt to formulate new ways by which prose writing can address the contemporary need for meaningful connection and affect. In 10:04 Lerner argues for new forms of creative hybridity, new assemblages of digital and non-digital entanglement, what I term postdigitality, as a means by which human dignity in the post-crash city can be reclaimed.

Citation

Jordan, S. (2021). “Totaled City”: The Postdigital Textualities of Ben Lerner’s 10:04. In A. Evans, & K. Kramer (Eds.), Time, the City, and the Literary Imagination. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55961-8

• Book Type: Edited Book
• Acceptance Date: Oct 31, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Nov 19, 2020
• Publication Date: 2021
• Deposit Date: Mar 9, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 20, 2022
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Series Title: Literary Urban Studies
• Series ISSN: 2523-7888
• Book Title: Time, the City, and the Literary Imagination
• ISBN: 978-3-030-55961-8
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55961-8
• Keywords: Postdigital time space
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/4944902
• Publisher URL: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-55961-8_11