American poet and author Ben Lerner’s new novel Transcription is a small gem. It is short, practically novella length, but packed full of ideas and resonances and commentary on the world.
The book is divided into three parts, all narrated by the unnamed author of the work. In the first part the narrator goes to Providence to interview his ageing mentor Thomas. His plan is to go the night before the interview for a drink and then record the interview the next day. While in the hotel he drops his phone into a sink and so loses his ability to record. This first section is full of physical and observational comedy. When he finally gets to Thomas’s house he finds that Thomas is keen to talk and so he pretends to record the conversation. During that conversation Thomas confuses the narrator with his similarly aged son Max. The second part concerns the narrator’s disastrous admission to fellow academics, much later, that this final interview with Thomas was not reported verbatim but was based on his recollection. And the third section is practically a monologue from Max.
Transcription is partially based on Lerner’s own life and relationships, hence the suggestion that it is autofiction. But he has broader concerns than just reflecting incidents in his own life. Transcription ranges across many themes including our relationship with technology, academic integrity and most particularly the relationship between parents and children. Both the narrator and Max have young children with whom they have complex relationships. But both also have a relationship with Thomas, in which the narrator’s mentorship relationship is almost at the same level as Max’s actual parental one. Along the way Lerner also deals with issues such as eating disorders and the pandemic.
Transcription is a short novel (porbably more of a novella) but Lerner manages to pack a lot in without the text feeling overburdened or in any way preachy or didactic. Instead he presents a novel of ideas and issues that resonates and is likely to make readers pause and think.
Transcription by Ben Lerner
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