Provocative story in current New Yorker

Credit to The New Yorker editors for running another provocative story this week, Ben Lerner's The Golden Vanity (not sure what title means though it's referenced in the story) - this story pretty hard to recount (or recollect) and even if I could recollect it with perfect veracity I'm sure the story would not sound as good, as imaginative as it is - and isn't that in a way the defining characteristic of art? Frost said memorably "poetry is what's lost in translation," and we could say about fiction that literature is what's lost in synopsis - a great story is what it is because of what it is, if that makes any sense. To give a brief sense of this story: a nebbishy Brooklyn guy, like a Woody Allen of the current generation, frets about impression he's about to make on what seems like a blind date or an e-date with a librarian - worried that she will see him scowl about coffee spillage and think scowl directed at her, etc. - then that scene abruptly ends and he frets, with someone who seems to be a long-term relationship, about whether he should have local anesthetic or one of the drugs that induces memory wipeout when having dental surgery - and he goes on a long riff about will the memory of pain really be there? and in fact if he retains the memory in some way, isn't he in a sense like two people, one who experienced the pain and the other who did not? Which leads to a series of speculations about consciousness, memory, and how we are the sum of our experiences of course but what if your recollection of those experiences is faulty or absent - then who are you? And is the memory of an experience actually tantamount to the experience, or a new experience altogether? See what I mean - it seems as if you wouldn't want to read this story, but because of Lerner's tone and mental agility, the story takes some surprising twists and really makes you think about what it is to remember, to live, and to read.