![\"\"](\"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/lerner-1230x692.jpg\")
Taking place over a single conversation during the COVID pandemic, Lerner’s latest novel is surprisingly spare
\n\n\n\nBen Lerner’s first three novels, Leaving the Atocha Station (2011), 10:04 (2014) and The Topeka School (2019), charted the America of the 2010s, from a neurotic irony and post-ironic sincerity fermented in the Obama years to an earnest investigation of masculinity and rhetoric only really conceivable under Trump. Those books, some of the most successful to come out of the heyday of autofiction, took the self to be an unstable fiction. Their navel-gazing portraits of Lerneresque, hyper-eloquent young men were in dialogue with systems – the internet, the family – and enlivened with the conceptual possibilities of other forms, like painting and poetry. Transcription is a comparatively spare, restrained effort that uses the pretext of the interview form to stage questions about memory and fiction itself as a form of record. The setting is the COVID pandemic, a time that blurs in most people’s minds, and which for the most part we’re not too invested in remembering.
\n\n\n\nThe novel’s three chapters each turn on a single conversation: an interview between the protagonist and his ageing former mentor, Thomas; an argument with a curator in the aftermath of a lecture the narrator gives in Thomas’s memory; and a conversation with Thomas’s son Max. The three parts work something like a sonata, with the third conversation returning to the concerns of the first from a new angle, bringing to light various synchronicities, repetitions, displacements and misunderstandings. A looping timeline steadily reveals the wires that have been crossed between the three men; in this way Lerner is able to sketch the complications of these intergenerational relationships within a highly compressed frame.
\n\n\n\nThe first chapter opens with the narrator visiting Thomas in the hope of recording what may be a final interview with him. He fails to admit that he broke his phone before he arrived and instead lets Thomas carry on his fragmentary, associative riffing unrecorded: ‘The Nature Theater of Omaha. But also the elements of your body formed in stars. And some lithium from the big bang. Like the lithium in your phone. It is the lightest of all metals.’ These musings are convincingly rendered in the voice of a semi-senile genius; the issue of them being reconstructed after the fact falls by the wayside, until the narrator is taken to task for it in the slightly tedious second chapter. Lerner is initially more concerned with how, in the absence of the phone, time becomes formless and memory apparently supercharged. Lerner’s sentences are finely attuned to the phone’s subtle rewiring of consciousness, though they are also prone to fall into the slow, rolling punchline diction of spoken poetry: ‘I was glitching, craving my cellular phone on a cellular level’.
\n\n\n\nIn the third section, the most compelling, Lerner draws out the human stakes of inheritance underpinning his more abstract questions about memory. As Max talks about his troubled relationships with Thomas and his own daughter, we get a vertiginous view of the novel’s historical sweep: from Thomas’s life, which began in 1930s Germany (his earliest sound memory being ‘Hitler’s voice, rising and rising in pitch’ over the radio); to his granddaughter’s COVID-era childhood, marked by school refusal, disordered eating and iPad addiction. It’s a neat expression of one of Lerner’s favourite subjects, the endless simultaneities contained within the present tense.
\n\n\n\nIt’s a truism that our memory atrophies faster the more means we have, in theory, to preserve it. At the same time, Lerner stresses that memory is always subject to glitches and in many ways out of our control. His prose, meanwhile, is highly determined, full of neat conceptual patterns and always supplying the means for its own interpretation. The fictional material is tightly in step with Lerner’s theoretical concerns and metafictional arguments, which can mean there is limited air for ideas to breathe. Still, there is enough strangeness and unpredictability baked into the form that it bears and rewards rereading. Each time something new makes sense and something else unravels.
\n\n\n\nTranscription by Ben Lerner. Granta Books, £14.99 (hardcover)
\n","path":"/transcription-ben-lerner-granta-review-julieta-caldas/","format":"standard","date":"09 April 2026","rawDate":"2026-04-09T10:44:58.000Z","branch":{"name":"ArtReview"},"author":{"name":"Julieta Caldas","path":"/author/julietacaldas/"},"category":{"name":"Book Reviews","path":"/category/review/book-reviews/"},"featured_media":{"source_url":"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/lerner.jpg","caption":"","alt_text":"","media_details":{"width":2486,"height":1398,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"source_url":"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/lerner-300x169.jpg","width":300,"height":169},"medium":{"source_url":"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/lerner-600x337.jpg","width":600,"height":337},"large":{"source_url":"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/lerner-1230x692.jpg","width":1230,"height":692},"wordpress_1536x1536":{"source_url":"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/lerner-1536x864.jpg","width":1536,"height":864},"wordpress_2048x2048":{"source_url":"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/lerner-2048x1152.jpg","width":2048,"height":1152}}}},"acf":{"article_artist":null,"article_video":null,"article_audio":null,"article_collaboration":"","article_custom_html_snippet":"","article_featured_title":"","article_featured_description":"","article_highlight":false,"article_custom_link_url":"","hero_image":null,"seo_title":"‘Transcription’ by Ben Lerner Review: No Phones | ArtReview","seo_description":"Taking place over a single conversation during the COVID pandemic, Lerner’s latest novel is surprisingly spare, writes Julieta Caldas in her review","article_related_articles":[{"id":114069,"title":"Review: ‘Some Monologues’ by Tyler Coburn","path":"/some-monologues-by-tyler-coburn-review-michelle-santiago-cortes/","author":{"name":"Michelle Santiago Cortés","path":"/author/michelle-santiago-cortes/"},"category":{"name":"Book Reviews","path":"/category/review/book-reviews/"},"featured_media":{"source_url":"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Coburn_Some-Monologues_Cover_Mockup-1-scaled.jpg","caption":"","alt_text":"","media_details":{"width":2560,"height":1478,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"source_url":"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Coburn_Some-Monologues_Cover_Mockup-1-300x173.jpg","width":300,"height":173},"medium":{"source_url":"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Coburn_Some-Monologues_Cover_Mockup-1-600x347.jpg","width":600,"height":347},"large":{"source_url":"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Coburn_Some-Monologues_Cover_Mockup-1-1230x710.jpg","width":1230,"height":710},"wordpress_1536x1536":{"source_url":"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Coburn_Some-Monologues_Cover_Mockup-1-1536x887.jpg","width":1536,"height":887},"wordpress_2048x2048":{"source_url":"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Coburn_Some-Monologues_Cover_Mockup-1-2048x1183.jpg","width":2048,"height":1183}}}},"acf":{"article_collaboration":""}},{"id":113805,"title":"Review: The Once and Future Riot by Joe Sacco","path":"/review-the-once-and-future-riot-by-joe-sacco/","author":{"name":"Chris Fite-Wassilak","path":"/author/chris-fite-wassilak/"},"category":{"name":"Book Reviews","path":"/category/review/book-reviews/"},"featured_media":{"source_url":"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/91t71mDvfGL._SL1500_-1.jpg","caption":"","alt_text":"","media_details":{"width":600,"height":395,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"source_url":"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/91t71mDvfGL._SL1500_-1-300x198.jpg","width":300,"height":198},"medium":null,"large":null,"wordpress_1536x1536":null,"wordpress_2048x2048":null}}},"acf":{"article_collaboration":""}},{"id":113554,"title":"Review: Envois/The Complete Correspondence by Sharon Kivland","path":"/envois-the-complete-correspondence-book-review/","author":{"name":"Frank Wasser","path":"/author/frankwasser/"},"category":{"name":"Book Reviews","path":"/category/review/book-reviews/"},"featured_media":{"source_url":"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/envois.png","caption":"","alt_text":"","media_details":{"width":1534,"height":864,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"source_url":"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/envois-300x169.png","width":300,"height":169},"medium":{"source_url":"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/envois-600x338.png","width":600,"height":338},"large":{"source_url":"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/envois-1230x693.png","width":1230,"height":693},"wordpress_1536x1536":null,"wordpress_2048x2048":null}}},"acf":{"article_collaboration":""}},{"id":113540,"title":"Review: On Censorship by Ai Weiwei","path":"/review-on-censorship-by-ai-weiwei/","author":{"name":"J.J. Charlesworth","path":"/author/j-j-charlesworth/"},"category":{"name":"Book Reviews","path":"/category/review/book-reviews/"},"featured_media":{"source_url":"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/weiwei.png","caption":"","alt_text":"","media_details":{"width":1852,"height":1042,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"source_url":"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/weiwei-300x169.png","width":300,"height":169},"medium":{"source_url":"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/weiwei-600x338.png","width":600,"height":338},"large":{"source_url":"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/weiwei-1230x692.png","width":1230,"height":692},"wordpress_1536x1536":{"source_url":"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/weiwei-1536x864.png","width":1536,"height":864},"wordpress_2048x2048":null}}},"acf":{"article_collaboration":""}},{"id":113401,"title":"Review: The Roof Beneath Their Feet by Geetanjali Shree","path":"/the-roof-beneath-their-feet-book-review/","author":{"name":"Mark Rappolt","path":"/author/mark-rappolt/"},"category":{"name":"Book Reviews","path":"/category/review/book-reviews/"},"featured_media":{"source_url":"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/9781916751392_FC-scaled-1.jpg","caption":"","alt_text":"","media_details":{"width":1668,"height":2560,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"source_url":"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/9781916751392_FC-scaled-1-300x460.jpg","width":300,"height":460},"medium":{"source_url":"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/9781916751392_FC-scaled-1-600x921.jpg","width":600,"height":921},"large":{"source_url":"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/9781916751392_FC-scaled-1-1230x1888.jpg","width":1230,"height":1888},"wordpress_1536x1536":{"source_url":"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/9781916751392_FC-scaled-1-1001x1536.jpg","width":1001,"height":1536},"wordpress_2048x2048":{"source_url":"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/9781916751392_FC-scaled-1-1334x2048.jpg","width":1334,"height":2048}}}},"acf":{"article_collaboration":""}}]}}},"pageContext":{"wordpress_id":117450}},"staticQueryHashes":["1047144546","1199547381","1199547381","1200741782","1200741782","2238591713","3764592887","4156135988","753543242","753543242","919364628"]}