Ben Lerner (b. 1979) is the author of three of my favorite poetry collections—The Lichtenberg Figures (2004), Angle of Yaw (2006), Mean Free Path (2010)—and now, to my surprise and delight, one of my favorite novels, Leaving the Atocha Station. Ben’s poetry collections had a “virtuosic” quality that made me both very interested in what he’d do with the novel form and aware that he probably wouldn’t ever write a novel. I felt this in a similar way to how a person interested in drumming might, without at all expecting it to happen, feel reflexively curious about what it would be like if Glenn Gould mastered drums with the same intensity and aesthetic and intent—not as a secondary thing or “for relaxation”—as he did piano, which, against similar unexpectedness, is what I feel Ben has done with his first novel.

Leaving the Atocha Station is about a young writer on a poetry fellowship in Spain. It spans the 2004 Madrid train bombings and is, among other things, a character-driven “page-turner” and a concisely definitive study of the “actual” versus the “virtual” as applied to relationships, language, poetry, experience. It’s funny and affecting and as meticulous and “knowing” in its execution of itself, I feel, as Ben’s poetry collections are. I was additionally surprised that Ben did not, with the automatic permission of a new form to do so, either ignore his previous poetry collections or directly address them—as an essay might—but seemed to allow an assimilation, in either direction, to occur, to a degree that I think if Ben’s four books didn’t have publication dates, and I didn’t know otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to easily discern in what order they were written.

Increasingly, each book by Ben seems to be edited with the knowledge of some future position (like how one edits previous pages of a book after completing the final pages, then edits the final pages again, then the previous pages again, etc.), as if Ben’s oeuvre were a single work that is already completed and is being released in parts. I don’t think I know of anyone else I feel similarly about. It feels exciting and unprecedented. I recommend reading all of Ben’s work. The following interview was done on Gmail Chat and by email.

—Tao Lin

I. FINGERS AND CLAWS

THE BELIEVER: Where are you right now?

BEN LERNER: Marfa, Texas. I’m in a very nice bungalow in the high desert and there are, at this moment, wild turkeys in my front yard.

BLVR: Wild turkeys?

BL: Yes. I don’t know if they are aggressive, but it’s a good time to chat, because I am afraid of them. Are you in...