By: Margot Dragos
Attendees flooded the Brooklyn College (BC) Art Gallery on Oct. 14 for a discussion with esteemed author and distinguished BC Professor of English Ben Lerner about his newest novel, “Transcription.” The event was hosted by the Department of English and the Ethyle R. Wolfe Institute for the Humanities and featured a conversation with Lerner and Poetry and Poetics Professor Jeff Dolven of Princeton University.
Ben Lerner is the author of four novels, most notably “The Topeka School,” a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His fourth novel “Transcription” won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and was named a Best Book of the Year (So Far) by The New York Times.
The latter novel begins with the narrator interviewing a 90-year-old named Thomas, who is a famous artist and the narrator’s mentor. When the narrator’s phone falls in a hotel sink, rendering him without a recording device, he is forced to transcribe what will be the man’s final interview from memory. He places his unusable phone in front of Thomas anyway, refusing to confess to others that he did not cite from a recording. The 144-page novel is a commentary on digital media and memory as well as how “technology can sustain as well as stultify life,” according to The New York Times.
The discussion began with Lerner reading an excerpt from the beginning of the novel and telling the audience it’s “kind of a hard book to summarize.” He and Dolven discussed the concept of the phone containing a disembodied voice, or hearing a voice without a physical presence attached to it, and how this plays into the novel’s themes.
“What I love about novels is how they can describe what it feels like when a change in the technological landscape changes our relationship to one another,” Lerner told the audience. “And I also think that the disembodied voice, which shows up in this book in a lot of ways, […] is both very new, you know, relative to human history, and very ancient. It’s the voice of a god or the voice of a ghost or the voice that’s contained by the genie in the bottle of the phone.”
Many attendees were members of BC’s Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing program, where Lerner is a professor.
“When I write a book, which takes many, many years, it doesn’t really feel like a book unless I do an event at my home institution, [Brooklyn College],” Lerner told The Vanguard.
MFA students spoke highly of Lerner’s writing and were very familiar with his previous work.
“On a craft level, I think he’s a beautiful writer,” BC Creative Writing MFA student Angela Qian told The Vanguard. “I think he’s interested in topics that I’m interested in too, like with the phone mediating our experiences. […] What he chooses to write about is really amazing and interesting.”
“Sometimes the [writing] style is more minimal in [“Transcription”],” Rob Aldana, BC Creative Writing MFA alumnus, told The Vanguard. “It has a lot of restraint, but it feels very dense with meaning in a way that is just different from [Lerner’s] earlier work.”
“I’m just really excited about his progression as an artist,” Aldana said. “And [“Transcription”] feels to me like a very mature work.”
All BC students were given a raffle ticket upon entering the event, and three lucky students won a free copy of the novel. The event brought together undergraduate and graduate students of many disciplines to hear about Lerner’s writing process.
“Sometimes in conversations [among writers], if you’re talking about a novel you’re only talking with fiction writers. If you’re talking about poetry, only with poets,” Lerner told The Vanguard. “So, one thing I love about the Wolfe Institute is it kind of convenes an interdisciplinary community.”
BC’s writing community came out in droves for Lerner’s talk, showcasing the excitement and prevalence of writers and book enthusiasts throughout the college.
“Brooklyn College students should know what an exciting place this college has been for decades for writers and writing, and how many important writers have been here as undergraduates or graduate students or as faculty,” Lerner told The Vanguard. “So gatherings like this, part of why I want to do them, is just because it’s my small part in celebrating the literary culture of Brooklyn College.”
To stay informed about The Wolfe Institute’s upcoming events, follow their Instagram @bcwolfeinstitute.
“Transcription” by Ben Lerner is available for purchase at major retailers and independent bookstores throughout the city.