Ben Lerner is a very interesting writer whose books — through no fault of his own — come with a lot of external baggage that may be brought to the reading experience.
He is often included as one of the leading figures of “autofiction,” a style of novel where real life is lightly fictionalized, resulting in a usually plotless flow of continuous experiences. Lerner’s critical reputation is also through the roof, each new book carrying the weight of potentially being a moment of great artistic import.
His novels are thick with allusions to other artists and texts, things that most readers may not be familiar with, and that some say signal a kind of unspoken dividing line between the elect who “get it” and everyone else.
Because of this baggage, I approached Lerner’s new novel, “Transcription,” with a bit of trepidation, but as a reader of all of his previous novels (my favorite is 2014’s “10:04”), I was also eager for the experience.
I was eager for the experience because I have trained myself to ignore the baggage and my nagging sense that maybe parts of the story are flying over my head, because each time Lerner has delivered moments on the page that made the hairs stand up on my arms.
I understand that “hair standing up on arms” is not a precision book criticism instrument, but it’s not nothing.
Clocking in at a slim 130 pages structured across three sections, “Transcription” indeed triggered several hairs standing up on arms moments, and then in the third section, something even better than that, which I’ll get to.
The novel opens with the narrator, Thomas, traveling to Providence, Rhode Island, just after the most acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, where he will be interviewing his 90-year-old mentor, a scholar and filmmaker of German ancestry who has agreed to a rare sit-down. In the hotel before the meeting at his mentor’s house, Thomas drops the phone he’s planning on using to record the exchange in the sink, rendering it useless.
Arriving at the house, some things seem the same as always, but there are also unsettling signs: a disordered kitchen, and the mentor offering coffee as though the meal that awaits on the dining room table has already been experienced. (This is one of the hair-raising moments.)
The section, a ranging conversation about art and light and film and life, is transcribed on the page, but we know there was no recording. What is happening here?
The middle section complicates the first section in ways I will not give away, but it is the third section, primarily told in the voice of the mentor’s son and Thomas’s friend Max, that for me, not only raised the hair on my arms, but triggered a buzzing sensation around the inside of my skull.
Structured essentially as a monologue where Max describes the ordeal, he and his wife, Adelle, have gone through to get their daughter, Emmie, to eat.
Emmie is diagnosed with “FTR” (failure to thrive”), which becomes a kind of metaphor for the entire world as Max pours out the story to Thomas. The telling is harrowing, but also humorous at times, and achieves an emotional register that had me, essentially, transfixed. It could stand alone, but the previous sections provide additional depth to the telling.
Whatever baggage attaches to Ben Lerner and his novels disappears, and what is left is the experience, for me, a powerful, even indelible experience.
These experiences are never universal, but the only way to know if you are going to connect is to put the chatter aside and read for yourself.
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
1. “The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter” by Peter Orner
2. “A Long and Happy Life” by Reynolds Price
3. “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This” by Omar El Akkad
4. “Division Street: America” by Studs Terkel
5. “Exit Wounds: A Story of Love, Loss, and Occasional Wars” by Peter Godwin
— Sean G., Highwood
For Sean, I’m recommending a Chicago novel that’s a bit odd, but a rather interesting reading experience, “Gertrude of Stony Island Avenue” by James Purdy.
1. “Raising Hare” by Chloe Dalton
2. “Spitfires: The American Women Who Flew in the Face of Danger During World War II” by Becky Aikman
3. “Overgrowth” by Mira Grant
4. ” The Girl with the Louding Voice” by Abi Dare
5. “My Friends” by Fredrik Backman
— Sandy W., Downers Grove
You have to connect with a particularly dark kind of humor for this book to work, but I think Sandy is a good fit: “Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance” by Alison Espach.
1. “A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor Towles
2. “Dead Lions” by Mick Herron
3. “The List” by Mick Herron
4. “The Gales of November” by John Bacon
5. “Roughing It” by Mark Twain
— Joe H., Chicago
For Joe, I’m recommending a novel with a bit of grit and some humor too that has a prequel/sequel coming out later this year, so it might pave the way for another good reading experience: “The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne” by Ron Currie.
Get a reading from the Biblioracle
Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.
John Warner is the author of books including “More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI.” You can find him at biblioracle.com.
