Fact, fiction or farce? The American comic novel is becoming increasingly hard to define

The American comic novel is going through an odd phase. Just lately it seems like anything funny must sneak in behind an abstruse metafictional edifice, deployed, I suspect, by insecure authors who want to retain their jobs as teachers of creative writing. 10:04, Ben Lerner’s lopsided but often electric second novel, is the latest example of the comic genre via subterfuge, sprinkled with tricks and played so deadpan you might not know when
to laugh.

The narrator, who shares a first name with the author, is a resident of a New York City that is battered by storms, vulnerable to hurricanes and hipsters. He has health concerns which require regular hospital visits: first he has a dilated aorta which he thinks could rupture at any moment; second he is planning to donate sperm so that his best friend can have a baby, although he has some doubts about the quality of his essence.