Ben Lerner: Transcription
Book Launch
Join Pioneer Works for the official launch of Ben Lerner's Transcription, a lightning flash of a novel that is at once a gripping emotional drama and a brilliant examination of the devices, digital and literary, we use to store—or to erase—our memories.
The narrator of Ben Lerner’s new book has traveled to Providence, Rhode Island, where he is to conduct what will be the final published interview with Thomas, his 90-year-old mentor and the father of his college friend Max. Thomas is a giant in the arts who seems to hail “from the future and the past simultaneously” and who “reenchants the air” when he speaks. But the narrator drops his smartphone in the hotel sink. He arrives at Thomas’s house with no recording device, a fact he is mysteriously unable to confess.
What unfolds from this dreamlike circumstance is the unforgettable story of the triangle formed by Thomas, Max, and the narrator—an exploration of fathers and sons, male friendship and rivalry, and the challenges of parenting in a burning world. One of the first great novels about the early days of COVID, it is also a brilliant meditation on those technologies that enrich or impoverish our connections to one another. Full of startling insight, but written with the intensity of a séance, Lerner's book shows us how the air is full of messages and ghosts. Ultimately, Transcription demonstrates what only a work of fiction can record.
This special launch event will feature a conversation between Ben Lerner and Alexandra Schwartz. You can preorder a signed copy of Transcription when purchasing tickets, to be picked up when checking in at Pioneer Works. Just add onto your ticket in Eventbrite. Books will also be for sale at the event.
Ben Lerner is the acclaimed author of several books of poetry and prose. The recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Foundations, Lerner has been a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, among many other honors. He serves as an advisor to Pioneer Works and Pioneer Works Broadcast, and is a Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College.
Alexandra Schwartz is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she co-hosts the Critics at Large podcast. In 2014, she was awarded the National Book Critics Circle's Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing.