The Book Review – Details, episodes & analysis

Ben Lerner’s slender new novel, “Transcription,” is just 130 pages long, yet it cracks open some of our most colossal and enduring philosophical questions.
The novel is told in three parts. We open with an unnamed narrator going to interview his mentor, Thomas — an acclaimed artist in his 90s who also happens to be the father of one of the narrator’s friends, Max — for a magazine. Before the interview, however, the narrator’s phone breaks and he has no way to record their conversation. Rather than reschedule, he proceeds with the interview and only pretends to record Thomas as they talk.
The second section flashes to the future. Thomas has died, and the article that our narrator wrote has become enshrined as the final interview with the iconic artist. At a symposium in Madrid, the narrator confesses that his interview was reconstructed rather than transcribed — a revelation that dismays the other guests and infuriates Max. Then we flash again. In the final section, the narrator talks to Max, who discusses his own complicated relationship with Thomas and technology, including how the internet and other digital tools impacted his family during several crises.
Through these scenes, “Transcription” asks a series of questions: How does technology mediate our lives? How does it bring us together or pull us apart? Is there a difference between what’s real and what’s true? It also becomes a potent and poignant study of fatherhood and what it means.
On this episode, MJ Franklin discusses “Transcription” with fellow Book Review editors Gregory Cowles and Alexandra Jacobs.

Other books mentioned in this episode:

• “Leaving the Atocha Station,” “10:04” and “The Topeka School,” by Ben Lerner
• “The Dance of Anger,” by Harriet Lerner
• “Reporting,” by Lillian Ross
• “Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art,” by Virginia Heffernan
• “In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss,” by Amy Bloom
• “No One Is Talking About This,” by Patricia Lockwood
• “The Shallows” by Nicholas Carr
• “Universality,” by Natasha Brown
• “White Noise” and “The Body Artist,” by Don DeLillo
• “A Hunger Artist,” by Franz Kafka
• “A Visit From the Goon Squad,” by Jennifer Egan
• “Asymmetry,” by Lisa Halliday
• “Trust,” by Hernan Diaz
• “The Mezzanine” and “Vox,” by Nicholson Baker
• “Outline,” by Rachel Cusk
• The books of Virginia Woolf

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June is here and the long summer days are stretching out ahead, which means it’s time to settle in front of the air-conditioner with a pile of books. (Just us?) But which ones should you read this summer? The “Book Review” podcast’s Gilbert Cruz talks with the Book Review editors Joumana Khatib and MJ Franklin about the titles they’re most excited about.

Books discussed in this episode:

“Red Sheet,” by James Ellroy

“Villa Coco,” by Andrew Sean Greer

“They All Fall in Love at the End,” by Haili Blassingame

“Whistler,” by Ann Patchett

“As If,” by Isabel Waidner

“The Housewives Underground,” by Kaitlyn Tiffany

“Nebraska,” by Monica Datta

“Cool Machine,” by Colson Whitehead

“The Mortons,” by Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld

“Country People,” by Daniel Mason

“Fixer Chao,” by Han Ong

“Biological War,” by Annie Jacobsen

“We Were Forbidden,” by Jacqueline Harpman

“The Amateur,” by Chris Bohjalian

“A Tender Age,” by Chang-rae Lee

“The Jackal,” by Joby Warrick

“A Moment in the Sun,” by Shane White

“A Sudden Flicker of Light,” by David Thomson

“Rabbit, Fox, Tar” by P.C. Verrone

“The Au Pair,” by Teddy Wayne

“Land,” by Maggie O’Farrell

“Sublimation,” by Isabel J. Kim

“Cloudthief,” by Nathaniel Rich

“Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep,” by Paul Tremblay

“You Won’t Get Free of It,” by Rachel Aviv

“Awake Awake,” by Fiona Mozley

“Triage,” by Claudia Rankine

“Catch the Devil,” by Pamela Colloff

“Helpless,” by Jessica Knoll

“Life of M,” by Rachel Cusk

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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