10 (29 page)

Time in this novel (when
The Clock
was viewable in New York, when a particular storm made landfall, etc.) does not always correspond to time in the world. I never had the chance to see
The Clock
reach midnight; I've borrowed details from Daniel Zalewski's essay on Christian Marclay, “The Hours,” in
The New Yorker.

I first encountered the text I use as an epigraph in Georgio Agamben's
The Coming Community
, translated from the Italian by Michael Hardt. It is typically attributed to Walter Benjamin.

 

ALSO BY BEN LERNER

FICTION

Leaving the Atocha Station

POETRY

Mean Free Path

Angle of Yaw

The Lichtenberg Figures

 

A Note About the Author

Ben Lerner was born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1979. He has been a Fulbright Fellow, a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry, a Howard Foundation Fellow, and a Guggenheim Fellow. His first novel,
Leaving the Atocha Station
, won the 2012 Believer Book Award, and excerpts from
10:04
have been awarded
The Paris Review
's Terry Southern Prize. He has published three poetry collections:
The Lichtenberg Figures
,
Angle of Yaw
, and
Mean Free Path
. Lerner is a professor of English at Brooklyn College.

 

Illustration Credits

Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848–1884),
Joan of Arc
(detail), 1879. Oil on canvas, 100
×
110". The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, gift of Erwin Davis, 1889 (89.21.1). Photograph copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY.

Image from the film
Back to the Future
provided courtesy of Photofest.

Photograph of Christa McAuliffe by Keith Meyers of
The New York Times
provided courtesy of Great Images in NASA.

Paul Klee (1879–1940),
Angelus Novus
, 1920. Oil transfer and watercolor on paper, 12½
×
9½". The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, gift of Fania and Gershom Scholem, Jerusalem, and John Herring, Marlene and Paul Herring, and Jo Carole and Ronald Lauder, New York (B87.0994). Photograph by Elie Posner, copyright © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

Photograph of the Cydonia region of Mars taken by the
Viking 1
orbiter provided courtesy of Great Images in NASA.

Photograph of Claude Roy on the Brooklyn Bridge, New York, 1947, by Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) provided courtesy of Magnum Photos.

Photograph of graffito in Chinati (Marfa, Texas) provided by Tim Johnson. Copyright © 2013 by Tim Johnson.

Image of brontosaurus skeleton provided by Wikimedia Commons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Brontosaurus_skeleton_1880s.jpg.

Brontosaurus © 1989 United States Postal Service. All Rights Reserved. Used with Permission.

Illustration of apatosaurus provided by Scott Hartman. Copyright © 2013 by Scott Hartman.

Photograph provided courtesy of the author.

Vija Celmins (b. 1938),
Concentric Bearings B
, 1984. Aquatint, drypoint, and mezzotint on paper. Image left: 4
¹⁵
/
₁₆
×
4
⁵
/
₁₆
", image right: 4
¹¹
/
₁₆
×
3
¹¹
/
₁₆
". Tate, London, acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through the d'Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008. Photograph copyright © 2014 by Tate, London.

 

Faber and Faber, Inc.

An affiliate of Farrar, Straus and Giroux

18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

Copyright © 2014 by Ben Lerner

All rights reserved

First edition, 2014

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the poem “Midsummer” by William Bronk. Copyright © 1955 by William Bronk. Reprinted with permission of the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York.

Owing to limitations of space, illustration credits can be found at the back of the book.

eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lerner, Ben.

10:04: a novel / Ben Lerner.

    pages   cm

ISBN 978-0-86547-810-7 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-374-71134-4 (ebook)

1. Writers—Fiction. 2. Mortality—Fiction. 3. Fatherhood—Fiction. 4. Man-woman relationship—Fiction. I. Title.

 

PS3612.E68 A33 2014

813'.6—dc23

2014004041

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