Last time, we considered some aspects of Ben Lerner’s Transcription. Today, let’s continue, best B. Is Transcription a realist novel? “A realist novel is a work of fiction that portrays everyday life, ordinary people, and familiar social environments in an accurate, truthful way. Rising to prominence in the mid-19th century, this movement rejected romantic idealism, grandiose plots, and the supernatural in favor of psychological depth, moral ambiguity, and meticulous social c

Last time, I threatened to examine the passage in Ben Lerner’s book Transcription concerning the unnamed protagonist/narrator’s visit to his mentor Thomas, but there’s something else I’d like to address first, best B. In the section just prior to the visit, when the narrative goes into the past, showing him remembering his university days twenty years prior, he and his friend Anisa go to the Natural History Museum on the Harvard campus in Cambridge. There, they see an exhibit

Let’s pick up on our plunge into Ben Lerner’s excellent Transcription. In this first section of the story (first of three), the as yet unnamed protagonist arrives in Providence, Rhode Island where he went to school some twenty years before and where he met his wife, Mia, and studied with Thomas, his mentor. As I mentioned, he’s returning to Providence, a place redolent with memory, to interview an elderly Thomas. The night of his arrival, he intends to go to Thomas’ house and

Today, let’s examine a new book, Ben Lerner’s 2026 novel, Transcription. Mr. Lerner is the acclaimed author of three previous novels and several books of poetry. Transcription is written in first person, simple past tense although the first person narrator is a different character in the story’s third section which indicates the work of the implied author. There are three distinct sections to the book. I’ll say more about this but today I want to compare the story’s beginning