Review: Transcription

Opening

I heard a lot about Ben Lerner and never read any of his work, and since this just came out and was short and seemed approachable, I decided it was time I read something of his.

A false interview

The unnamed narrator of Transcription goes to visit a major literary figure, Thomas, to conduct what may be his final interview, and ends up losing his recording device. He isn’t able to bring himself to tell Thomas this, but still conducts the interview anyway. Thomas is a world-renowned literary figure, author, filmmaker, and professor at Brown University. The narrator also used to be schoolmates with Thomas’ son Max. Overall, I love the premise because it feels a little silly, and as you read on it starts to feel relatable. All of us have made a small, silly mistake like the narrator did, and then watched it snowball into a silly circumstance.

Max’s version of Thomas

“She exchanged the medium of air for water”

Max, Thomas’s son, gives a much more discerning view of his father, one that comes filtered through his mother’s death and his own daughter’s struggle with an eating disorder. This section felt less like dialogue and more like Max pouring his heart out one way. Where the narrator, and perhaps the world, sees Thomas as a renowned author, filmmaker, and professor, Max sees a neglectful father who carried little to no emotion for his son and intellectualized away the suicide of his wife. Thomas has a habit of poeticizing everything, and it shows even here. He describes his wife’s death by drowning as, “she exchanged the medium of air for water.”

Emmie and a poor substitute for connection

I wasn’t expecting a long section about Max’s daughter, Emmie, and her struggle with an eating disorder. In sharp contrast to his own father, Max becomes the hyper-involved parent: he takes Emmie to therapists, follows their advice entirely, and stresses over every detail related to her disorder. At first the nature of the disorder didn’t quite land on me, until it became more explicitly diagnosed that Emmie was simply avoiding eating. Eventually Emmie begins to eat, but only in front of a screen, while being entertained. Technology enters as a poor substitute for connection. Max is successful in all the conventional ways, but that success has no match for YouTube and junk food.

Technology, memory, and a convenient death

I thought it was bizarre that the narrator didn’t at least use a pen and paper to take notes during the interview with Thomas. He could have even asked Thomas for a recorder. He likely had one on hand. It’s telling of how much we over-rely on technology, to the point that we don’t see a simple fallback to classical tools that are still abundant.

Beyond the oversight of not writing the notes down by hand, the narrator is criticized for writing the interview after the fact. What was meant to be a real recorded exchange becomes a fictional interview to those hoping to hear from Thomas. It can be heavily debated whether the narrator’s “version” of the interview can be read as authentic, considering he likely paraphrased, summarized, or glossed over aspects of the exchange that weren’t exact in his memory. It’s quite convenient that Thomas passed away before the interview is even published, so nobody can dispute it.

“Except I did hear in my own voice that tiny alteration, that trace of self-consciousness, that always occurs in the presence of some recording technology.”

Thomas himself believes that nobody is truly themselves in front of technology: the moment a recording device is on and we’re aware of it, our brains shift and adapt to that knowledge. You can tell someone is aware because you can see a trace of self-consciousness in them. Thomas firmly believes technology rewires us, and this whole situation is an example of that. It makes losing the recorder almost fitting.

Dreams, memories, their extensions

“But waking does not end a dream”

This came up early on, and it says a lot about the way Thomas thinks. He pokes at you with these ideas, an endless stream of intellect and provocation. It made me wonder: when I wake up from a dream, does it pause? Does it continue, and when I fall back asleep do I re-enter it later, the way I’d walk out the door to go to work and then come back home?

“Were there dreams before Cinema? … Were there dreams before color film?”

He asks more questions that made me think: what were dreams like before cinema and color film existed? The color blue, for instance, is a fairly modern one. In The Odyssey, water is described as “wine-dark,” not blue. Do the symbols that lay on top of our perception shape the way we perceive further?

Final thoughts

I felt this book was clever and something I’ll keep thinking about, but ultimately not something I will re-read, its somewhere around a 3.5 for me because of that. I’m a big fan of the form and structure, the autofiction, and the sparseness of the novel, and I think the thought-provoking nature of the book is its strongest point. The final act was harder to relate to, I believe I understand its purpose but think it could have been handled in a different way. I did think quite a bit of The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt during that part, although flipped to the parents and not the kids. I don’t think I would just readily recommend it, but if someone expresses interest, I would encourage since its short enough and not hard to get into.

Words I picked up while reading

• Saccadic: the rapid, jerky movements the eye makes jumping between fixation points, rather than tracking smoothly.
• Chiaroscuro: the interplay of light and shadow, originally a painting term, used more broadly for strong visual or emotional contrast.
• Verisimilitude: the quality of seeming true or real, even when it isn’t.
• Encomium: a formal, often effusive piece of writing in praise of someone, eulogy-like in tone even when the subject is alive.