Collage

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 exhibition of glass flowers—“botanical models made by glass artists—a father and son—from Dresden a century ago.”

“I was astonished by what I saw. I couldn’t quite believe that…these objects had been blown and shaped and painted, that these impossibly delicate things were the result of a thousand rapid choices and adjustments, movements of the hand…I joked with Anisa that these must be actual plants that some conceptual artist was claiming were glass…but the joke masked the flowering of a new sense: I kept seeing the things as organic one instant and as artificial the next, a kind of duck-rabbit effect, not between things the object might represent, but between nature and culture, the given and the constructed. And I carried this new way of looking, or this new hinge in my looking, outside the museum: when my sister dragged me camping, for instance, I was typically unmoved by “unspoiled” mountain views; after the glass flowers, I could see cracks in the rock face as penciled, as a history of small decisions, and then experience the view as beautiful. I could will myself to see the rose and pink of a sunset as applied in touches or stains and then revert to seeing it as natural; and so on. It was with Anisa that I first became conscious of this quiet but crucial technique, somewhere between a child’s game, a CBT exercise, and a religion. Eventually, I’d call this “fiction.”

‘Kay

This passage seems to be Mr. Lerner writing about the construction of art and, specifically, fiction. It is a process of “small decisions,” one that involves a double-sided process of being aware of technique and its effect, and of the reality a created object assumes.

Well. It’s also a comment on the fragile boundary in the novel between fiction and reality—for want of a better word. The real author of Transcription, Ben Lerner, has written a novel about an unnamed author thrown into crisis when he accidently scuttles his phone. We happy few know too that there is the mysterious implied author entity whom Mr. Lerner calls upon to construct Transcription. But this passage that culminates with the statement “Eventually, I’d call this “fiction,” seems to be Mr. Lerner himself describing an insight. Of course, it’s also the character in the novel, looking back on the events of twenty years past. And, yes, it’s also the implied author commenting on the process of creating the story. A lot of blurring of boundaries, my friends.

Transcription states clearly its purpose and theme in the very first paragraph. The narrator faces the past—even though it upsets his stomach to do so. The entire story is a series of events that involve the narrator facing the past. He travels to Providence, Rhode Island, where he attended school to interview his old professor and mentor, Thomas. Being in Providence seems to trigger a recollection of his student days, when he had a mental health crisis and when he saw the glass flowers mentioned above. Later, we will see that interviewing Thomas is very much a confrontation with his past and his life so far. And an incident in Madrid is presented when he encounters another figure from his past, Rosa. Finally, we will have a long section which seems to be Thomas’ son telling the narrator about his father’s Covid crisis and his own struggles with his daughter’s eating problems—all past events. There is throughout the book, considerable blending and mixing of the two men—the narrator and Thomas’ son. The narrator is a kind of son to Thomas.

Last time, I mentioned how the narrator exists in versions of himself—father, son, husband, mentee—and has trouble integrating them, which is a distinctly post-modern dilemma.

“The postmodern self is a decentralized, fragmented, and fluid identity that rejects the traditional notion of a fixed, inner core or universal human essence. Instead of a single unified "I," it views the person as a shifting collage of multiple, context-dependent roles and social constructs.”

We might note that Thomas has a number of art works displayed in his house that are collages.

This postmodern self portrayed in the book can be contrasted with a modern self—"an inward-focused identity defined by internal psychological feelings rather than external social roles.”

Transcription is a story where the surface events of the plot form a surface through which the protagonist occasionally falls, a present structure that has a depth of memory and other events and people that provide context. It is much like dropping one’s phone into a pool of water and discovering things there, things that support the present.

Stop it!

Here’s a definition of collage from our AI friends: A collage is an art technique where you stick different materials like paper, photos, fabric, or text onto a flat surface to make a new single image. The word comes from a French term meaning "to glue".

Transcription is a flat surface, best B.

Let’s pause here and pick up next time.

Till then.

 #Transcription #BenLerner #AlanBray