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...