Transcription probes memory, media, and time in Lerner’s sprawling novel

Ben Lerner’s Transcription is a densely braided meditation on technology, memory, and storytelling, following a narrator who interviews a dying mentor, reconstructs his words, and hauls family history across Providence, Madrid, and LA. Blending historiography, media theory, and emotional depth—especially a crisis around a teenage daughter’s health—the novel argues that meaning resides in cuts and splices, not transcripts, and that fiction can extend time rather than merely reflect it.