Ekphrastic Literature
Granta magazineâs âbest of young American novelists.â His short story
The Polish Rider first appeared in the Summer 2016 fiction issue of the
New Yorker. If a short story were capable of ambition and could dream, it might dream of exactly this: a second life as a slim hardcover volume published by MACK, a UK-based small press, with embossed lettering on the cover, the text accompanied by full-colour illustrations printed on fine paper.
The Polish Rider is a meta-fictionalized take on a real-life event that occurred to Lerner and his friend, the painter Anna Ostoya: just before a gallery showing of her paintings, Ostoya accidentally left two of the canvases in an Uber in New York City. The story describes the efforts of an unnamed narrator (Lerner) and the artist (renamed Sonia) to recover the lost paintings. Along the way the narrator muses on âplatform capitalism,â the clash of technologies, high art and popular culture, and differences between the visual arts and literature. At one point the narrator, who describes himself as a writer of âekphrastic literatureâ (consult your OED if needed), confesses to a feeling of jealousy, his sense that âa work of visual art is more real, more actual, than writing,â before eventually taking some comfort from the realization that âliteratureâs lack of actuality relative to the plastic arts [is] a power, not a weakness.â Ironic, then, that the beauty of this book comes in part from its non-literary elements, which include reproductions of a number of Ostoyaâs paintings.