Two Novellas, Two Unreliable Narrators: Ben Lerner & Dorothy Baker (Book Club)

The Book Club Review

Kate and Laura review two novellas: Ben Lerner's recent auto-fictional novel Transcription, which explores memory, authenticity, and the act of writing through a narrator who fails to record his

Key takeaways

• Ben Lerner's Transcription centers on a narrator who reconstructs a crucial interview from memory after dropping his phone in a sink, sparking debate over whether reconstructed dialogue holds the same truth as a verbatim recording.
• The hosts note that Lerner's work is deeply interconnected across novels like Leaving the Atosha Station, 10:04, and The Topeka School, forming an ongoing auto-fictional project about intellectual masculinity and authenticity.
• Dorothy Baker's Cassandra at the Wedding features a charismatic, unreliable narrator whose obsessive codependence with her twin sister unfolds in a claustrophobic, play-like setting that feels remarkably modern despite its 1962 publication date.
• Both books utilize structural shifts and perspective changes to challenge readers' assumptions about truth, memory, and the reliability of first-person narration.
• The hosts contrast Lerner's dense, idea-driven prose with Baker's restrained, atmospheric storytelling, noting how each author uses form to mirror their protagonists' psychological states.

Main topics

• Unreliable narrators and auto-fiction
• Memory versus recorded truth in journalism and literature
• Twin dynamics and codependency

Notable quotes

"Does the truth of an encounter depend on an accurate transcript?"

Conclusion

The episode offers a nuanced comparison of two structurally ambitious novellas,

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) For many of us, going further isn't a choice. It's a feeling we can't ignore because ambition has a way of outgrowing where it began. Speaker 2 (0:11) Turning dreams into direction. Speaker 2 (0:17) Every journey brings us closer to the life we imagine. Speaker 2 (0:23) So, where will your journey take you? Etihad. Beyond Borders. Speaker 3 (0:39) Hello and welcome to the Book Club Review. I'm Kate and this is the podcast about book clubs and the books that get people talking. Speaker 3 (0:52) In this episode, we're diving into two book club reads, one a recent release and the other a modern classic. Transcription by Ben Lerner was published earlier this year to much critical fanfare. Since his poetry collection was nominated for the US National Book Award back in 2006, Lerner has continued to scoop up awards and acclaim with each subsequent publication. His first novel, Leaving the Atosha Station, was described by fellow author Jeff Dyer as a work so luminously original in style and form as to seem like a premonition, a comet from the future. After two other novels and various collections of poetry, his latest book continues his auto-fictional project of clever men wandering around interrogating authenticity. But was my book club impressed? Laura's book club, meanwhile, headed back to the mid-20th century with Dorothy Baker's classic Cassandra at the Wedding. No lesser person than Carson McCullers wrote in surprise, I, whose usual bedtime is 10 o'clock, stayed up all night reading that exquisite Cassandra at the wedding, dazzled by the pyrotechnics of such an artist. But what did Laura's book club think? As ever, in addition to the book club catch-up, we're also swapping notes on recent reads and upcoming plans, including diving into the Booker Prize shortlist, the most enticing, we both agree, in years. That's all coming up here on the Book Club Review. Speaker 3 (2:15) Transcription. Now there's an interesting book club read. I read it a little while ago with my book club. You've read it quite recently, haven't you? Speaker 5 (2:24) I am listening to it. Speaker 3 (2:27) Okay. In the present. And I think I'm about three quarters of the way through. Speaker 5 (2:32) So I am aware of its complexities now in a way that you're not, maybe halfway through. Speaker 3 (2:39) Is it complex, though, or isn't it? Let's discuss. First of all, let's tell the listeners what it's about. So Transcription, the latest novel from Ben Lerner that arrived on the literary scene with some critical fanfare. And the reason for that is, I think, that over the years... Ben Lerner has steadily been building up this, you'd say, critical momentum. But actually, even from when he first started publishing, he's a poet. His 2006 collection, Angle of Yore, was a finalist for the National Book Award. And then in 2011, he published his first novel, Leaving the Atosha Station, which follows a brilliant young American poet as he wanders around Madrid searching for authenticity. He struggles with the distance between himself and the world around him. Now, we're going to come to learn that this sort of... autobiographical focus is a continuing thread throughout Lerner's work. And then in 2014, his second novel, 1004, was about a brilliant writer attempting to put together a novel based on a short story that had been excerpted in the New Yorker, and Ben Lerner had had a piece excerpted in the New Yorker. The Guardian described it as a work of fiction that never quite believes in its own fictitiousness, a novel that fails and fails again at being novelistic. In 2019, his third was The Topeka School. He was born, Lerner, in Topeka, Kansas. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, and here in the UK it was shortlisted for the Folio Prize. This one follows a high school student whose mother is a famous feminist author, as was Ben Lerner's, a kind of 21st century The Sound and the Fury, a kaleidoscopic portrait that masterfully connects one family and its traumas to wider cultural dysfunction. Lerner's novel offers a compelling exploration of how we got here. And where we might go, said the Star Tribunes reviewer. And Sally Rooney, a more familiar name, said, I think the future of the novel is here. So you're getting the sense that these novels are highly thought of, both among the critical community and also fellow writers think a lot of this author. Speaker 4 (4:40) And Speaker 3 (4:40) then we come to transcription. In transcription, a writer returns to his college town where he is to conduct what will be the final published interview with a man called Thomas. who is his 90-year-old mentor. And we learn that Thomas is a sort of cultural polymath. He's an artist. He's a philosopher. He's a writer. He's a thinker. He's an old-school cultural figure. And our narrator drops his phone in the hotel sink. And he then goes to Thomas's house. And he hasn't actually got any means of recording this conversation. And in the moment, he finds himself unable to actually admit to that. fact. So they have the conversation which Thomas believes is being recorded. But we, the reader, know that in fact, it's not being recorded. The book's structured in three parts. In the first, we have this interview where the narrator is interviewing Thomas. Ooh, spoilers. Is it going to be spoilers? How far through have you got? Presumably you got to that bit. Well, Speaker 5 (5:33) no, I'm not saying for me. But even saying it's in three parts tells a lot. Is that a spoiler? I had no idea. I had no idea. And I'm just saying I was listening to an audiobook. It took me about five minutes to figure out what had happened. Speaker 3 (5:48) Ah, well, how interesting that you think that. Because to me, the structure of it is really one of the interesting things about it. And it'd be very hard to talk about it without talking about the structure of it. Speaker 5 (6:02) Well, interesting. Agreed, agreed. So listeners, I am just flagging that for me, I had no sense that there was some big structural moves coming. So. If you don't want to know about the big structural moves, Speaker 3 (6:17) if you just want to dive in. I Speaker 5 (6:18) feel very Speaker 3 (6:18) inhibited now. I don't want to spoil Ben Lerner's transcription for anybody. Listeners, if you're thinking, I really want to read this novel. I don't want to have any full knowledge of what's going to happen. Stop listening now and come back to us when you've read it, because I guarantee you're going to want to think about it and talk about it. So the first part, we get this conversation between the narrator and Thomas that is not, in fact, being recorded. In the second part, he... is in Madrid. Well, and you Speaker 5 (6:45) really find out that the first part is a talk he's just given. Who's given? Well, the author. Listen, I am attempting to make sense Speaker 3 (6:54) of Ben Lerner's transcription for our listeners. And these interjections are not helpful. Sorry. Please be silent until I've got through my blurb and then you can pick it apart. Okay, so yeah, second part, we're in Madrid. We're at a symposium after Thomas has died. And the narrator has revealed the fact that the last... published interview with this incredibly important cultural figure was in fact written from memory and not a transcription. So it was reconstructed from the conversation that he had. And people actually are very upset about this, which takes our narrator by surprise. And Speaker 2 (7:26) then in part three, Speaker 3 (7:27) we shift to Thomas's son, Max, who is in many ways a parallel figure to the narrator. They are of an age, they have very similar backgrounds and it shifts to Max's story about his own family and in particular Max's daughter Emmy who has an eating disorder that her parents are at their wits end as to find a way to help her and in fact the solution to helping her lies with using screens and technology and digital devices in order to help her overcome this physical problem that she has with being in the world. And so we get that story in part three and Max's own relationship with his father. Speaker 2 (8:14) Any questions or interjections at this point? Oh, no, Speaker 5 (8:17) I'm going to stay in my corner. Speaker 2 (8:19) Okay. Speaker 3 (8:19) The one other thing that I would add is that a recurring, I mean, there are many, many, many sort of recurring motifs throughout this short novel, right? It's not long, is the glass flower gallery at Harvard. So The narrator refers to this experience he had visiting this gallery at Harvard, where you can go and see these glass botanical models, flowers and organic forms that were made by the Blaschka family in the 19th century. And the thing about them is that they are so lifelike that it's just an extraordinary feeling when you see them because you think they're real. And in fact, they're made out of glass. Speaker 3 (9:02) There's that rather beautiful and I found very interesting and inspiring and attractive motif that is also bubbling away underneath this book. It's full of ideas, but the prose is actually quite straightforward. It's not hard to read. It's got real simplicity to it, seemingly, I think. And it carries you along and you're happily flying through it and just... Every so often, something snags your attention and you think, well, haven't I seen that before? Or wait, didn't that happen already? So it's a novel that constantly is doubling back on itself, referring back to itself. And then, as I said, full of these ideas about technology, about our experience of the world and how it's refracted digitally and what that might mean. Our perception of reality, our... conversations with others, our relationships with others, and then how those are preserved and recorded. Writing, the act of writing and what it means to be a writer and put work into the world. Art, philosophy, some words that I had to look up. I mean... Speaker 3 (10:08) In its very nature, it's a fascinating book because it seems quite simple and straightforward. And the second you start actually trying to unpick it, you realize how much is packed in there. That if you want to, you're almost, I feel like the book is an invitation to explore with him and to follow him down these rabbit holes. Now, whether or not that's something that delights you and excites you and makes you feel. thrilled to be reading this work or whether it just irritates you. I feel like you could fall very much into two camps with this book. And it may depend, I think, on how you've got on with Lennon's previous books, how you feel about him as an author, because they do all feel so interconnected and that his project as a writer, it's an ongoing thing. And when you read his work, I feel like you're jumping into the river. to swim along with him for a bit. How are you getting on with it? Speaker 5 (11:09) Well, I want you to guess. Which camp do you think I'm in? Speaker 3 (11:13) I really don't know. I really don't know. Yeah, no, I honestly don't know. You could go either way. Give me a hint. I Speaker 5 (11:22) don't need a hint. Speaker 3 (11:23) So you're listening to it. Does he read it? Speaker 5 (11:26) I don't Speaker 3 (11:26) know, actually. Speaker 4 (11:28) I'd be slightly Speaker 5 (11:28) surprised. No, I bet you he doesn't because there's voices, right? Tomas's voice is there. Backstory. I have only ever listened to Ben Lerner. We read his second novel, 1004, for my Canadian book club. I was not there when it was chosen, and the title deeply annoyed me. And I was like, Speaker 4 (11:48) oh, Speaker 5 (11:49) New Yorker writer, number title. Oh, gosh. So I got the audiobook because his novels are quite short. And I was on holiday in Mexico, and I listened to it when I went for some short Speaker 4 (12:02) morning runs. Speaker 1 (12:03) And I loved it. Speaker 5 (12:05) Did you? I loved 1004 to the point where I would keep running to listen to it. He has a way of telling, like inviting you to walk alongside him. Speaker 3 (12:18) And so, Speaker 5 (12:19) you know, 1004 opens with him going through New York with a friend and you feel like you're there. Cinematic is a word we overuse, but you feel like you are with him and his friend walking through New York. And then he goes to New Mexico, to Marfa. And you feel like you're with him looking out the windows in Marfa or, you know, his alter ego character in these novels. And so I end up loving 1004. I did try his earlier novel, which is about a younger man in Madrid. And we know that he went to Madrid on, I think it was a Fulbright scholarship. I Speaker 3 (12:50) didn't. Leaving the Atosha station. Speaker 5 (12:52) Yes. And I didn't enjoy that one as much. I felt like he was a younger man writing about a younger man and it didn't grip me as much. It didn't feel as mature or thoughtful or provocative. He was a bit tiresome. And then I didn't read The Topeka School, but I was looking forward to Transcription. Speaker 4 (13:08) I Speaker 5 (13:08) would say my Speaker 4 (13:09) feelings Speaker 5 (13:09) about this one are hit or miss. I mean, Kate. Okay. Speaker 4 (13:13) How did you feel as a podcaster and interviewer with this whole premise that Speaker 5 (13:18) he can't tell Tomas that his phone is dead? Speaker 4 (13:21) Because I think you're meant to feel like, oh, what? Like, why Speaker 5 (13:24) are you doing this? But it just felt like physically painful for me. I Speaker 3 (13:28) mean, I once had an experience where I had gone to some trouble to set up a recording with a book club. This is when I was on holiday and I didn't know them. I hadn't met them. And I had gone out of my way to sort of inveigle my way in there and say, would you mind if I came and talk to you about your book club? This is relatively early days of doing the pod. And I went in, I was a bit shy, a bit nervous. I went round, I talked to them all and got them to talk about the book club and what it meant to them and some books that they'd really loved. And they gave some really great answers and it was really great. And I was like, oh, brilliant, this is going well. And then when I finished, I Speaker 4 (14:02) was Speaker 3 (14:02) like, thanks very much. It's so wonderful of you to give up your time. Thank you so much. And they were all like, brilliant, because what they really wanted to do was just get on with their book club, right? And then I glanced down at my digital recorder and I saw that it was not on record. It was on rec pause. Now, you know this. We have, this is not. completely new to you but the kit we use it's got this slightly annoying thing where there's a red light that flashes but that doesn't mean it's recording that means it's on pause and I had a real moment of do I tell them and confess Speaker 2 (14:32) and do it all again or do I just say great thanks very much and and Speaker 3 (14:36) and at that time I did confess they all looked quite annoyed they then really kindly did it again but of course it wasn't nearly as good because they were all so irritated like totally fair enough I could not blame them at all but I got my interview and it was all done in the end but so when I got to that bit where he doesn't feel able to tell Tom I was fine with it I was like yeah fair enough I can imagine you kind of go either way right and actually again one of the interesting ideas you could say in the novel is how much is it important to us that something has been transcribed exactly from a recording of a conversation, you know, actually, Speaker 4 (15:15) it's a sort of strange assumption to make that Speaker 3 (15:18) an interview has been completely verbatim written down. I wouldn't expect that from any journalist interview that I read. I would expect them to have the conversation. I would expect them to make notes. But I wouldn't expect, you know, when I read The Power Broker by Robert