Ben Lerner's 'Transcription' Offers a Stunning Exploration of Technology and Storytelling
Ben Lerner's latest novel, Transcription, published by Granta, is a breathtaking interrogation of family, connection, and memory. Ranging from quantum mechanics to eating disorders and the nature of fiction, this work stands as a profound exploration of how technology permeates modern consciousness.
Intricate Narrative Structure and Themes
The novel begins with a middle-aged American narrator traveling to Providence, Rhode Island, home to Brown University, where Lerner himself studied. The narrator is there to interview Thomas, a polymathic German intellectual and former mentor, in what is expected to be Thomas's final will and testament. However, bathos strikes early when the narrator drops his smartphone in a sink, rendering it unusable and leaving Thomas's rich, unrecorded sentences lost to memory.
Later, in Madrid, the narrator reveals at an art conference that the interview was a reconstruction, not Thomas's literal words, prompting reflections on authenticity and crime. The final section, set in Los Angeles, features a complex exchange between the narrator and Max, Thomas's son, covering technology, the pandemic, eating disorders, and memory itself.
Technology and Digital Din
For readers seeking an antidote to the digital noise of everyday life, Lerner's approach is both challenging and innovative. His narrator reflects that being offline feels abnormal and agitative, stating, "I was glitching, craving my cellular phone on a cellular level." While this could be a comic tale in other hands, Lerner ambitiously uses it to delve deeper into familial inheritances and touch.
Philosophical Depth and Characterisation
Thomas, portrayed through dialogue and memories, is less a traditional character and more like a Hannah Höch montage—a philosopher of art and science speaking in cubist shards. He discusses topics from Freud to cinema, arguing that meaning lies in cuts and splices rather than mere transcripts. Lerner doesn't talk down to readers, weaving in quantum mechanics, psychoacoustics, and Frankfurt School philosophy with wit and intelligence.
Emotional Core and Familial Struggles
At its heart, Transcription grips readers with a seemingly simple issue: how to get a teenage girl to eat. Max's account of his daughter's Failure to Thrive (FTT) reads like a horror story, echoing themes from the Todd Haynes film Safe. This section reveals the novel as more than an anthropology of digital modernity, connecting earlier scraps about voices, suicide attempts, and historical atrocities like Josef Mengele's experiments into a tapestry of ancestral kinship.
Epilogue and Broader Implications
The novel ends with an epilogue featuring Leopold Blaschka, a 19th-century artist who, with his son Rudolf, created intricate glass models of flora and fauna. Blaschka's insistence on "the touch" increasing with each generation encapsulates the essence of Transcription—a work about touch, devices, and familial bonds that is itself intricate and uncanny. Through storytelling and connection, Lerner suggests we might escape the noose of nowness and experience an enriched sense of time.
As Thomas says, "We extend the dream when we share it. You call it fiction but it is more." Transcription is a must-read for those interested in the intersections of technology, memory, and human relationships.
