Summary

The first chapter of Leaving the Atocha Station introduces the narrator and main character of the novel, an American poet on a subsidized fellowship in Madrid, named Adam Gordon. Adam begins his narration by explaining, somewhat wryly, the first phase of his project. This involves a daily routine of preparing espresso and smoking on the roof of his Madrid apartment, followed by strolling to one of Madrid’s fine art museums to contemplate Roger Van der Weyden’s painting, Descent from the Cross (8). Adam contemplates not simply the painting but the act of contemplating art and attempts to track the experience of being moved by it that the museum seems to be unable to contain in an unproblematic manner. Adam is intrigued by the museum guards whose work it is to monitor the physical encounter between art and the theoretically unpredictable human subjects that...