Best B—Imaginary Friend? Metaphor?

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 critique.”

Key Characteristics:

Ordinary Characters: Focuses on middle- and lower-class individuals rather than heroes, monarchs, or exceptional figures.

Mundane Settings: Explores everyday routines, local dialects, and contemporary social structures.

Plausible Plots: Deals with realistic ethical dilemmas and personal conflicts without tidy, miraculous resolutions.

Objective Tone: Uses detailed descriptions and a detached narrative perspective to reflect actual human experiences.”

Yes, I suppose the story does fit all these parameters.

Maybe a better question would be: is Transcription merely a realist novel?

What I’m thinking about here, and what I think applies to Transcription, is a different conceptualization of the novel. Transcription is not strict realism; there are references made from a different highly subjective plane of meaning about the surface level of things, and metaphor is sometimes used to show this. There are even hints of romanticism in the story’s focus on artists—both for the protagonist and Thomas—and the way they talk about and perform art (a fine example is the scene I highlighted last time about the glass flowers). But let’s stick with the original idea. The showing of another plane of subjective meaning is a hallmark of fiction—not just in the post-modernist and modernist eras but even earlier. Everyday reality grinds along, but in a story, and sometimes in “real” life, meaning is made. Our friends the ancient Greeks interpreted omens in the commonplace actions of birds and clouds; we reflect on something said by one person and apply it to another in a meaningful way. Mr. Lerner does this often. (So do most humans—that’s why fiction has such appeal). Again, let’s consider the scene where the protagonist recalls seeing the display of glass flowers and how this leads him to a theory of fiction. Yes, my friends, the flowers are metaphor. The fragility and beauty of these human-made objects is used to represent the process of creating stories.

Many of the scenes that are shown between the protagonist and Thomas (and in the other sections as well) consist of dialogue, marked by few beats that might contextualize what’s occurring. (The quoted speech must do this and does it well). However, in the scene that begins, “I retrieved my phone from the table…” we have some of what I’m talking about—a level of description in the prose, and then a level of meaning-making about what’s described.

“I retrieved my phone from the table, did some tapping and swiping, the way Eva (daughter) used to pretend to send text messages from one of her wooden blocks or magnet tiles.” Here, the protagonist is actually pretending to use his broken phone. The text presents him thinking of his daughter pretending in play by sending a text message using her toys. This play is (or could be) a metaphor for actually sending a text which the protagonist is pretending to do. His daughter pretends to text, and he thinks of this while pretending to text.

Rabbit hole stuff.

The protagonist maneuvers to Thomas’ kitchen and calls home, reaching his daughter Eva.

“’Hello.’ the voice repeated; it was Eva’s.

But the voice was also mine—my voice at the age of six, when it resembled hers in pitch, saying hello to my father…for a second, I wasn’t only in Providence but also in the kitchen on Douglas Street, wrapping the white plastic cord around my arm…

‘Hello,’ I said to her, my father said to me, speaking to the boy I was…

And now I felt that Thomas had arranged the exchange he was listening in on (but surely he wasn’t listening), that my mentor was conducting this electronic opera, orchestrating these interferences, crossing wires, worlds. Impossibly thin glass filaments, underground, underwater, in the lungs, in the cochlea, vibrating when the small waves hit them—you call this fiction, but it is more.”

‘Kay. Our friends the psychiatrists might see mental illness here. But doggone it, this is a great showing of how reality can be expanded and amplified by sensitive types. It is more. The protagonist experiences himself as a parent and a child—which is the multiple role thing we’ve been talking about. Then he goes on to imagine his mentor (father-figure) listening in on something he himself has created, listening in the way an imagined omniscient father-figure might do. The protagonist refers to the glass flower scene and idea, and winds up by speaking to himself, the reader, the child—I’m not sure who—and making a meta-comment on the text, saying it is more than fiction. If we consider the definition of realism above, this passage fits. It features an ordinary character in a mundane setting. The plot—a father calling a daughter—is presented in an objective tone.

But he has an unusual experience and then comments on what’s written as if he’s an editor or something (maybe the implied author?). A further layer is added to the realistic portrayal of telephone communication.

Fiction is weaving a real sensory level together with a level of meaning-making which is intensely personal—and it’s created. We all see, hear, taste, touch and smell the same things (well, some philosophers disagree) but we make meaning of these things in unique ways based on our memories. If fiction is supposed to capture human experience, Transcription does this well.

Let’s stop here.

Till next time.

#Transcription #BenLerner #AlanBray