Book Club: Let's Talk About 'Transcription,' by Ben Lerner

Summary

The Book Review Podcast
Book Club: Let's Talk About 'Transcription,' by Ben Lerner
May 30, 2026
Host: MJ Franklin | Guests: Greg Cole, Alexandra Jacobs

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Episode Overview

In this episode, The New York Times Book Review’s book club dives into Ben Lerner’s newest novel, Transcription. Editors MJ Franklin, Greg Cole, and staff critic Alexandra Jacobs discuss Lerner’s "puzzle box" of a novel, its unconventional narrative structure, central themes (fatherhood, technology, memory, and reality), and Lerner’s literary reputation. Attendees reflect personally and intellectually on the book, while also incorporating perspectives from the Book Review’s reader community.

NOTE: Spoilers abound throughout this conversation; the hosts do not wait until the end to discuss major developments.

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Podcast Participants

• MJ Franklin: Host and NYT Book Review editor
• Greg Cole: Editor and returning book club panelist
• Alexandra Jacobs: Staff critic; reviewer of Transcription for the Book Review

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Episode Structure & Initial Thoughts

[00:30] – Why “Transcription” was Chosen

• Return of Ben Lerner: Highly acclaimed author; each book release feels like a literary event.
• Novel as Puzzle Box: At just 130 pages, “Transcription” is described as layered, enigmatic, and “demands to be discussed.”
• Book Club Approach: The team promises all have “done the reading” and are ready for a lively discussion.

[03:57] – What Is “Transcription”?

Book Structure

• Three-Part Triptych ([03:57] Greg Cole):
  1. Part One: Unnamed narrator takes a trip to interview a 90-year-old former mentor (Thomas); phone is dropped in water, bricking it and losing ability to record the interview.
  2. Part Two: In Madrid after Thomas’s death; narrator admits publicly he reconstructed the interview from memory, causing minor scandal.
  3. Part Three: Max (Thomas’s son) monologues about his own relationship with his father and daughter, while the narrator listens.

Notable: The novel’s structure, use of unreliable narration, and overlapping relationships echo each other across the three acts, mirroring Lerner’s attraction to triptychs and triangles.

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Major Discussion Points & Insights

Lerner’s Background and Literary Approach ([07:54] et seq.)

• Ben Lerner’s Style:

  • Highly acclaimed, sometimes “auto-fictional,” and deeply philosophical (Alexandra: “the most successful author that many people I know haven’t heard of” – [08:10]).
  • Writing is “intellectually about the hazards of intellectualizing everything” (Greg, [08:40]).
  • Started as a poet; all novels riff on art, mediation, and the gap between perception & reality ([09:55] Greg).

• Influence of Harriet Lerner:

  • Ben Lerner’s mother is Harriet Lerner, Jungian psychoanalyst and author of “The Dance of Anger.”
  • Alexandra connects the novel’s three-part structure to psychological “triangles” in relationships ([06:17]-[07:54]).

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What’s “Active,” “Envelope,” or “Destabilizing” About This Novel? ([10:24]–[14:31])

• One-Word Descriptions ([10:24]):
  • MJ: “Active” – both book and reader must be active participants.
  • Alexandra: “Envelope” – motif of triptychs, old tech, and boundaries.
  • Greg: “Destabilizing” – continual undermining and doubling, the reality always called into question.

“He constantly undermines his own narrative. He sets you up to believe one thing and then gives you a different view on that same thing.”
— Greg Cole ([11:29])

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Themes

A. Technology and Mediation ([14:31]-[21:35])

• The Phone as Symbol:

  • Practical and existential issues abound: Bumbling anxiety over losing “backup”; phone becomes almost an extension of the narrator’s body (“I craved my cellular phone at the cellular level” – [20:08] Greg quoting the novel).
  • Real-life allusion: Alexandra references New Yorker writer Lillian Ross, who famously never recorded her interviews, drawing parallels to anxieties in “Transcription.”
  • The phone’s centrality is not moralized — it’s “magic” but also integral.

• Technology as Lifeline and Disruptor:

  • Child’s eating disorder is alleviated by technology (unboxing videos) — raising questions about parental control and the meaning of “real” connections.

B. Fatherhood, Family, and Communication ([17:20]-[22:41], [30:15]-[33:01])

• Deep themes of fatherhood:
  • Only in the third act does the emotional intensity around family, parenthood, and crisis truly hit home.
  • Max’s monologue about his daughter’s health issues felt “pressing and urgent.”
• Communication Problems:
  • Book is “about men and their communication problems” ([31:29]); men intellectualize or avoid, leading to gaps in connection.

C. Doubt, Memory, and Reality ([30:15]-[33:51], [38:19]-[39:53])

• Memory as Unreliable:

  • Reconstructed interview calls the truth-value of all narrative into question.
  • Novel plays, sometimes surreally, with time—going “backwards into time” as on the train.

• What’s Real, What’s Artificial?

  • Real versus artificial meaning is a central motif (e.g., glass flowers, artificial interviews).
  • MJ’s Unified Theory: Lerner “is always trying to find...the vanishing point of reality, of when reality ceases to be...but also when it comes into existence, when something so deeply artificial can be real...” ([36:58]-[38:38])

D. Death, Mortality, and the Afterlife of Ideas ([34:01]-[35:45])

• Mortality’s Edge:
  • Book dances around death without depicting it directly; Thomas (mentor) dies offstage, possibly by assisted suicide (Dignitas).
  • Technology, writing, art as possible ways to “live on” beyond death.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “I think of [Lerner] as great philosophical literary man...his characters are often bumbling in humorous ways...”
  — MJ Franklin ([09:18])

• “The book is very active itself. The way the sections challenge each other…”
  — MJ Franklin ([13:16])

• “One word that comes to mind when you think of transcription?”

  • “Active” — MJ Franklin ([10:24])
  • “Envelope” — Alexandra Jacobs ([10:47])
  • “Destabilizing” — Greg Cole ([10:57])

• [On the phone] “I craved my cellular phone at the cellular level.”
  — Quoted by Greg Cole ([20:08])

• “He is writing intellectually about the hazards of intellectualizing everything...”
  — Greg Cole ([08:40])

• “It emotionally anchors the third part ... becomes very pressing and urgent in a way inconsequential.”
  — Greg Cole ([17:20])

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Reader Comments Highlight ([27:47])

• Marjorie from New York: Struck by irony—technology ameliorates the daughter’s eating disorder, questions about parental control, and how identity is shaped by myriad factors.
• Jolten from Ohio: “Length aided its power... scrolling back and forth led to another level of meaning till the novel was unlocked.”
• Andrew: Noted the infinity-mirror effect of reading on digital devices; transcription upon transcription.

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Further Discussion & Big-Picture Takeaways

• Memory and Time: The book’s structure and content repeatedly revisit the past, exploring parental and filial relations, looping back on itself.

• Men, Communication, and Overthinking: The novel could be described as “a book about men and their communication problems” ([31:29]), with over-intellectualizing a defense mechanism.

• The “Vanishing Point of Reality” ([38:19]):
  “...he is always trying to find...the vanishing point of reality...but then also when it comes into existence, when something so deeply artificial can be real...”

• The Value of Artificiality ([39:53]):
  The scene observing glass flowers encapsulates a core Lerner motif — simulated reality acquires its own profundity and meaning.

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One Takeaway (Tell Me One Thing) ([39:53]–[41:17])

• Key Line: “You call this fiction, but it is more.” ([40:37])

• Advice:
  “If you are not a reader who usually underlines or takes notes...Underline and take notes because it will help you reconstruct.”
  — Greg Cole ([41:05])

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Book Recommendations (What to Read Next?)

See [41:16]–[48:25] for full discussion.

From the Panel:

• Patricia Lockwood, No One Is Talking About This (technology/online life, parental crisis)
• Lillian Ross, Reporting (classic, “analog” celebrity profiles)
• Harriet Lerner, The Dance of Anger (relationships, therapy, the triangle motif)
• Nicholas Carr, The Shallows (how the internet changes cognition)
• Natasha Brown, Universality (fragmented, meta-fictional structure)
• Don DeLillo, White Noise and The Body Artist (consumerism, memory, grief, reality)
• Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad (unconventional structure, passage of time)
• Lisa Halliday, Asymmetry (structural undermining, power dynamics)
• Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine and Vox (micro-focus, technology)
• Hernan Diaz, Trust (layered narrative, challenging structure)
• Rachel Cusk, Outline (intellectual, understated character study)
• Virginia Woolf (esp. Mrs. Dalloway, for consciousness and mediation)
• Kafka, A Hunger Artist (obsession, performance, suffering)

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Notable Timestamps

| Topic | Timestamp | |----------------------------|---------------| | Book Structure Explainer | [03:57] | | Lerner’s Style & Reputation| [07:54] | | One-Word Descriptions | [10:24] | | Themes: Technology | [14:31] | | Themes: Fatherhood | [17:20] | | Reader Community Insights | [27:47] | | Memory, Men, Communication | [30:15] | | Mortality/Death in the Book| [34:01] | | “Unified Theory” of Lerner | [36:58] | | One Takeaway / Notable Quote| [40:37] | | Book Recommendations Round | [41:16] |

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Final Thoughts

• The group praises Lerner’s intellect, humor, and ability to pack thematic complexity and “destabilization” into a slim volume.
• Some felt the emotional resonance was stronger in the third section than the earlier parts; for others, the entire mosaic was compelling ("I really loved this book," MJ, [23:14]).
• They agree the book is best read actively, with full attention, and that it rewards re-reading and reflection.

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June Book Club Teaser

Next month’s selection: Yesteryear by Carol Clare Burke – a trad wife time-slips to 1855, exploring nostalgia, gender, and history.

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This episode is a rewarding listen for:

• Readers drawn to literary puzzles and layered autofiction
• Anyone interested in how technology, memory, family, and art interact
• Fans and critics of Ben Lerner’s “cerebral but human” style

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Key Quote to Remember:
“‘You call this fiction, but it is more.’” ([40:37])

Transcript

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[MJ Franklin]

Hello, and welcome to the Book Review. I'm MJ Franklin. I'm an editor here at the New York Times Book Review. Back with our May book club discussion. This week we're chatting about Transcription by Ben Lerner. We chose this book for book club for a few reasons. First, it's the Return of Ben Lerner. How could we not speak about it? Ben has written a series of acclaimed philosophical books, including the Topeka School, which was a New Times best book of 2019, and 1004, which was a New York Times best book of the 21st century. So far. A new Ben Lerner book is an event, period, and we wanted to dive in. So that's the first reason. The second reason is Ben Lerner's new book. Transcription is, I think, a puzzle box of a book. It's a book that seems to continually unfold with new layers, and as such, it's a book that demands to be discussed. And so we are here to dive in. And joining me on that adventure are two of my esteemed colleagues. First, we have Greg Cole as an editor here at the Book Review and a returning book clubber. Greg, welcome back.

[Greg Cole]

Thank you, M.J. glad to be here.

[MJ Franklin]

Also with us is Alexandra Jacobs, a staff critic here at the Book Review and also the person who reviewed Transcription for us. Alexandra, welcome.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

Thank you so much for having me. I was realizing this is not only the first episode of the book club I've been on, it's actually the first book club I have ever attended. Whether I know that the book club's just a name and that this is a virtual book club, however, I've never once been to a book club.

[MJ Franklin]

Listeners didn't see me gesticulating wildly in confusion. This is your first book club ever?

[Alexandra Jacobs]

This is my first book club ever. I might be philosophically opposed to them.

[MJ Franklin]

Tell me your thoughts. How are you feeling?

[Alexandra Jacobs]

No, I feel fine now. I just not philosophically. I mean, I support them, of course. Actually, my parents used to have one, as I recall. My father was a psychiatrist and he would convene fellow doctors in their living room to have one. So I would walk past it, but

[MJ Franklin]

I never joined that book club.

[Greg Cole]

Yeah, right.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

I might get some therapy. Group therapy as well, I guess. I think generally that reading is a bit of a private experience. I don't know. I don't know. Book clubs, in my observation, I perceive them as performative or. I know too many people who've not done the reading or find their book club a burden. Not this.

[MJ Franklin]

I will make a few promises. One, we have all done the reading. We have all done the.

[Greg Cole]

We have done the reading.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

We have done the reading.

[MJ Franklin]

And the second promise. Greg, can you help me with this? We will make this book club as seamless, as fun, as lively as possible.

[Greg Cole]

Otherwise, I'm not coming back.

[MJ Franklin]

Well, with that, the pressure is on. Before we dig in, I have my typical admin notes. First, there will be spoilers in this episode. As much as this book can even be spoiled, I feel like the story is just the surface and. And so much more is happening. But that said, usually we try to save spoilers to the end of the episode, but this is a book where I think you just have to talk about the three parts together. And so this time around, there will be spoilers throughout. There will be a lot of big picture theorizing. So if you don't want spoilers, if you want to go into this episode fresh, pause this episode, go read the book. It's a quick 130 pages, and then come back to us. We'll be waiting for you. That's note number one. Note number two. At the end of the episode, we will reveal our June book club book. So stay with us to the end to find out what we're reading next. And with that, let's dive in. Greg, would you set the table for us and tell us what is transcription? What is this book?

[Greg Cole]

Sure. So you've done a little bit of that work for me. You mentioned it's in three parts. You mentioned it's very short. So think of it as a triptych. Each of the three parts centers on a conversation. The first part, our unnamed narrator book, opens with him on a train going up to see a very meaningful mentor in his life from his college years to interview him. The mentor is now age 90, and this is presumably the last interview. I'm going to interview him for a magazine. And before he can conduct the interview, he drops his cell phone into a sink filled with water at his hotel and bricks it and is unable to record the interview.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

And so how convenient for the narrative.

[Greg Cole]

Part two takes place in Madrid after the mentor has died. And the unnamed narrator is speaking at an event to celebrate the mentor's life and confesses to everybody that he had no recording of that interview and wrote it based on his reconstructed memories. And it causes a little bit of ripple in the room, some scandal, people who had been quoting the interview and taking it as gospel. And one thing I didn't say when I said that Thomas the mentor was significant in the narrator's life is that the narrator was also friends in college with Thomas son. And Thomas's son. Max takes the third section of the book and really just monologues at us for the whole section to the narrator, who gets a few little interjections in there. But essentially all of the third section consists of Max talking about his. His relationship with his father, his relationship with his daughter, his young daughter. And that's the book. There's a lot more to say about it, but that's the basic structure.

[MJ Franklin]

Alexandra, is there anything that you would add to that?

[Alexandra Jacobs]

No, there isn't. I remember I had to review this quite quickly and that's why presumably I'm qualified to attend this book club. And yet I just remember being actually shocked at how short it was and still qualify as a novel.

[MJ Franklin]

The one thing I would add to the setup is what Greg just outlined is the story. And this is a book where the story is the surface. So much is happening throughout this book, throughout its slim 130 pages.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

Oh, and also I would add one thing I noticed almost immediately. He called it a. Greg, you called it a triptych. I immediately. I can never think of Ben Lerner without thinking of his mother Harriet.

[MJ Franklin]

I don't know if I know his mother Harriet. Wow.

[Greg Cole]

Yeah.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

So, I mean, so Harriet was in the 80s when you were just a glimmer in your father's eye. Harriet Lerner was. Had this bestselling book called the Dance of Anger. I think it was published in the 80s. Interesting, right? Late 80s.

[Greg Cole]

I don't know.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

In my memory it has. I can see the COVID so clearly. It was part of this wave of self help books.

[Greg Cole]

She is famously. She's a psychotherapist. So is Alexandra's father.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

Yes. And by the way, he would have scorned a pop psychology book like the Dance of Anger.

[Greg Cole]

Harriet Lerner was a Jungian psychoanalyst. And there's.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

I think she's still alive.

[Greg Cole]

It is a Jungian psychologist psychoanalyst. Thank you, Alexandra. And if you know anything about Jung, you know that the collective unconscious is the thing that runs throughout and it's there in everything Ben Lerner writes, the characters are almost interchangeable because they're all part of this giant collective. And he talks all the time about, we share our reality and it's where we don't that the slippage happens.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

But also, Harriet Lerner, specifically in the book of the Dance of Anger, writes about. And this wasn't her formulation. It was another shrink who. Whose name I can't remember. Maybe a couple shrinks. They came up with the concept of the triangle in relationships. And once I saw that, I was like, oh, my God, this book's divided in three. There are three hotels. And I thought, wow, talk about the anxiety of influence. It's like coming from mommy.

[MJ Franklin]

This actually gets at a question I was gonna ask, which is, what else do we need to know about Ben Lerner? So we just talked about his mom. But who is he as an author? I've mentioned in the setup, like, the accolades he's received. Is there a back of Ben Lerner and his work that you think we should know before we proceed?

[Alexandra Jacobs]

I think of Ben Lerner as sort of the most successful author that many people I know haven't heard of, which says more about the current landscape of literature than it does about Lerner, which is just that I think Lerner is among those who have read him. He is widely acknowledged as one of today's foremost practitioners of writing. But the kind of writing he does, I think, does not speak to every reader in that it's auto fictional, it's

[Greg Cole]

very philosophical, it's very autofictional, it's often experimental. I mean, there's a lot of this in this book. He is writing intellectually about the hazards of intellectualizing everything, that it creates a distance from the real world. I mean, Thomas, the father figure, the mentor in here, does this to a fault. And his son Max complains. He uses his intellectual. And the narrator says, defense against what? And Max says, reality.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

Yeah, it's referential, it's educated, it's intellectual. However, I don't think he's snobby or pretentious. And that's part of why I think he's beloved.

[MJ Franklin]

I completely agree. I think of him as I'm gonna say it. It's gonna sound derogatory, but it's not. I think of him as great philosophical literary man, which some people may say that's a derogatory thing, or like, it sounds like a put down, but I just mean that there's a tone and an intellect to his considerations. But I feel like his characters are often bumbling in humorous Ways there's always a disjuncture between the delusions of grandeur that his characters have versus how other people see them. That's definitely the case in Leaving the Atocha Station. And it's very funny.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

It's very funny. Yeah.

[Greg Cole]

I should note that he started as a poet and he remains a poet. He really was a poet before he was a novelist. And Leaving the Atocha Station, his debut was about a poet in Madrid and kind of mediating life through art, through again through the intellect. And so he's always got this. He's kind of teasing this through all of his work.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

And that could excuse or at least explain the compression of a so called novel like transcription.

[MJ Franklin]

Well, I'm glad you mentioned the word compression because to dive into this book, I have a silly first question. It is a question of compression. If you had to give me one word to describe this book, to set up this book, to characterize how you feel about this book, just one word that comes to mind when you think of transcription, what would that word be? I'll start. My word is active.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

What popped into my head was envelope.

[Greg Cole]

That feels like an inkblot test.

[MJ Franklin]

What about you?

[Greg Cole]

I would say destabilizing.

[MJ Franklin]

Okay.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

Does it have to be an adjective?

[MJ Franklin]

Because I could be anything.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

I wouldn't say enveloping. I just thought envelope.

[MJ Franklin]

I wouldn't know. I was gonna say, tell me more.

[Greg Cole]

Why envelope?

[Alexandra Jacobs]

I guess because an envelope is again, it's a bit of a triad or a triptych or a triangle. So it's also an old fashioned technology. It's a book about technology or technology's failures. And it's just, I don't know, I. Envelope.

[MJ Franklin]

I love that answer. Unexpected but great.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

Why not?

[MJ Franklin]

Your word was destabilizing.

[Greg Cole]

My word was destabilizing. Because he constantly undermines his own narrative. He sets you up to believe one thing and then gives you a different view on that same thing. That makes you. You wonder what really happened. It's not even clear to me, having finished the book, whether the son Max is kind of. He's kind of a double of the narrator. He had a breakdown in college, but we know that. So did the narrator.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

And you think when you say destabilized, do you mean confused? Were there moments when you just sort of thought, do I? What's going on here?

[Greg Cole]

There's a lot that happens in the gaps and only by implication in here. And he leaves the reader to do a lot of the work of trying to piece together a narrative that we can Never be sure really happened. And that's why I even realized that

[Alexandra Jacobs]

at moments, I was like Hitchcock. It's not Hitchcockian, but I was like, wow, is this like Vertigo? Are Max and the narrator the same person? Is the son, the mentor? Is the father the mentor.

[Greg Cole]

You speak of triangles. And the narrator gives us a long flashback in the first section when he has broken up with the woman who will become his wife. We know. And during that time that they're broken up, her best friend kind of worms her way into his life. And then we find in the third section that Max, the son, was obsessed with that best friend for a time. And so it's maybe a love triangle going on there, too.

[MJ Franklin]

Yeah, I love this. This is like the. It's careful novel, making careful writing careful. Like, intricate details that you have to seek out and find.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

Or maybe it's not careful. Maybe this is just his stream of consciousness after breakfast.

[MJ Franklin]

Be careful.

[Greg Cole]

Wait, when you say active, do you mean that we have to actively participate in the making of the story in

[MJ Franklin]

what I hope is a learning mode? I mean it in a variety of ways. I do mean it in that, like, we have to actively participate. It's a very demanding book. You have to notice these careful, small details. You have to parse out for yourself what's happening. This is not a book that you can just let sweep over you. I mean, I guess you could, because for me, the individual stories were interesting, but, like, you have to be in it. But also I said active because I think the book is very active itself. The book, the way the sections challenge each other, the way that they are destabilizing. You're reading the first section, and you're along for the ride. Then you get to the second section, and the moment he confesses, my interview was reconstructed. The moment there's that doubt, everything destabilizes, that changes. The first section, you're reading, the third section, you're noticing these parallels. Like, the book felt like it was doing many, many things. It was performing the type of uncertainty. It was performing the constructed reality, the way the character is thinking about technology and mediation. And the book seems to be performing that in a way. And so I thought, activ. In that way, the book is active, and it demands that the reader be active.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

And the other woman I thought of writing the review immediately was Lillian Ross, the New Yorker writer. And the reason I thought of her was because she famously or infamously did not use tape recorders for her interview. And she was considered this wonderful reporter. And I was fascinated by this because One of the things I don't miss about reporting, which I used to do much more of, is the anxiety over the tape recorder. But you gotta have a tape recorder, especially these days, because it's your backup. It's your backup. And if you're challenged, if someone says, I didn't say that, or it's like people don't believe it unless there's tape to back it up. So I was fascinated. And talk about destabilized. I mean, I was a little bit retraumatized. So, you know, in that way, I would say also the book is maybe a little bit insiderly in the sense of. I'm curious to find out how it speaks to people outside the professions of journalism and education.

[Greg Cole]

And he milks the malfunctioning iPhone for a bit of kind of slapstick comedy. He cannot bring himself to tell Thomas that it is not working. And he sets it down and Thomas believes he is being recorded, but is not. And then Ben Lerner in the third one, Max the son, is recording Thomas without telling that he has done that, using his phone to record him. So there's this.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

It's really brilliant.

[MJ Franklin]

So I've heard some descriptors, spine tinglingly brilliant. Now we've set up the book, we've talked about our words, we've talked about the themes. I just want to know your response overall. Did you like the book, feel mixed about it? How did you approach the book? What was your reading experience like? Just talk to me about your relationship to this book. How did you feel?

[Greg Cole]

I liked it without loving it. It does hold you at a bit of a distance. I loved the Topeka School and was part of the crowd at the Book review lobbying for that to be one of our 10 best books. This one I admired. I was impressed. There were times I was really deeply behind it, but I came away feeling that it was. It felt more like an exercise than a story that I could kind of fully get behind.

[MJ Franklin]

Interesting. Tell me more.

[Greg Cole]

When I say an exercise, I was very aware of all the kind of balancing and doubling and those instabilities that engaged me intellectually without necessarily engaging me emotionally. The part that engaged me the most emotionally, and I suspect probably everybody, when Max is monologuing in the third part and talking about his daughter's struggles with eating suddenly clicks in and becomes very pressing and urgent in a way inconsequential.

[MJ Franklin]

Such a despair of this father who's not sure how to help his ailing

[Alexandra Jacobs]

daughter and yet is aware of the absurdity of modern life, that this should be an issue at all. And that she would be soothed into eating by watching unboxing videos puts you as a parent into such a impossible place.

[Greg Cole]

And yet that part of the book is all told, maybe 25 pages. It emotionally anchors the third part of it and clicks in fatherhood as a theme. You know, obviously Thomas and his relationship to Max, and Thomas and his relationship to his mentee, who also has a daughter who is going through troubles again, raising the question of, is Max the unnamed narrator? All this doubling that goes on makes fatherhood a theme, but it's never. You never feel it emotionally, except for this kind of chunk that's 25 pages or so. And so it was hard for me to kind of sink into.

[MJ Franklin]

You didn't even feel it at the beginning, where he's kind of stressing about his daughter. The narrator is stressing about his daughter who he needs to call, and she's.

[Greg Cole]

I needed more there. I mean, he's stressing about it, but it was too early and we didn't get enough detail, so that I was not fully invested in that.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

Fair.

[MJ Franklin]

So this is a book you liked? Didn't love, admired, but felt it felt like an exercise.

[Greg Cole]

I will say, always happy to read Ben Lerner. I think he's brilliant, not only intellectually, but I love his sentences. I think he's a great noticer and a great thinker, and he's a great observer of language. There's a time when he. Because his phone is broken and he's worried about his family. He's trying to call and check in and he's wondering if the phrase unknown caller comes up. And he says, that always struck me as such a Victorian phrase, like gentleman caller. Yeah, Victorian. Unknown caller is great.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

I was super excited by how he centralized the phone in the novel to the point where the book is like a phone shape thing in its slimness and size and everything. Because I feel like even here at the New York Times, there's a little too much sanctimony toward the phone. Like a kind of, you know, it puts all this responsibility on us as readers. And we're supposed to put our phones in the freezer and we're supposed to get the brick. We're supposed to get the app to make us stop looking at it. And I think it's time to acknowledge that the horse has left the barn. It's not going away. And it's part of our bodies now. And we need to understand and analyze what does it mean that we now have an external hard drive or a Thumb drive to our brains. And I think Ben Lerner, in this exercise, which I completely agree with Greg, that it has that feeling. He's not looking at the phone as. Even though it breaks in part one, he's not. Look, there's something he's acknowledging it's magic. What Virginia Heffernan called magic and loss. You know, it's like the magic and loss of the Internet is fully present.

[Greg Cole]

In fact, when it breaks, there's this brilliant riff, as when he shows up at Thomas house. His anxiety at not being able to walking there. He wants to consult the map, even though he knows the way perfectly. We all know that he's looking at the pictures on the wall and he's not engaging with them because he really wants to be checking his phone. And it's kind of about the way that the phone. He says, I craved my cellular phone at the cellular level. So brilliant.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

I don't know what it was, but. No, I really like the book. I mean, I'm just rem. It was that Thomas had a memory of. One of his early memories was hearing Hitler on the radio, rising in pitch. And I thought that was such an incredible detail. And I just thought, we don't acknowledge enough the continuity of generations and how technology has shaped who we are and continues to shape who we are. And in fact, most of us, I think, have elderly relatives who are phone heads. You know, they're playing Candy Crush or they're. It's not all, like, put that thing away or whatever, which. Which Thomas does in the book. But. Yeah, no, the Europe stuff, I don't know. It just. I just. I guess I felt the illusions became a little bit runaway for me. There was a lot of. I gotta go look this up. Which is not bad. And in fact, it's. Part of centralizing the phone, perhaps, is acknowledging that we always have a gigantic library at our fingertips now, but as it took, as a reader, it took me out. Not in a good way. Not in the. Not. It took me out. Like, it actually took me out.

[MJ Franklin]

So it sounds like. Greg, you were mentioning that it was the fatherhood aspect that really clicked in the third section, but didn't in the earlier section. So when you were talking about how you thought about it, you mentioned fatherhood quite a lot. Alexandra, you mentioned technology quite a lot. How did you feel about the portrait of family? The portrait of fatherhood, that anxiety about

[Alexandra Jacobs]

children and the Internet or children and. Yeah, the unboxing the video, the not letting kids worry, not knowing. Nobody knows. We don't know. It's a huge experiment. We don't know how much. We don't know if the kids are gonna be all right. It's more than Big Brother. It's totalizing the environment. And, you know, I've had friends who want to just go back to wooden toys and not allow anything. And the schools are restricting the phones, and it's a gigantic issue. Was I emotionally moved by the father's worry? I don't think so. I think I probably knew the daughter was gonna be okay. I wasn't really surprised at how it was solved. It actually, it seemed like one of the many compromises we make all the time.

[MJ Franklin]

One of the things I was thinking as you were speaking is I separated out the fatherhood and the technology. But as you were speaking, I was realizing you can't, because the consideration is, like, how do you raise your child? How do you take care of your child? And as you were saying before, like, it's technology is totally integrated into everything in the book. You can't separate them out. And for purposes of this conversation, we can't either.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

I'm just even thinking of Mad Men and how we all laughed when, you know, Betty would say, like, the kids. The kids were just in front of that tv, you know, and we laughed at that.

[Greg Cole]

Amity, how do you feel about this book?

[MJ Franklin]

I really loved this book. I think I more than liked it. I loved it for me. I was emotionally invested in each of the three sections. I keep describing this book as cerebral. And when talking about it, especially when I was writing up the announcement article for this book, I was like, it's about existence, technology. And I was saying these very large things that at a certain point I was like, am I sounding inane? But that's because the book does get so philosophical and big in a way that I really liked. I liked that it was a cerebral book. But one of the things I admired is that as cerebral as it was, I personally felt very invested in the emotional stakes of each section. I love the slapsticky humor of the first section. Not just when he's at Thomas house and he's trying to, like, disguise that he hasn't isn't recording, but, like, when he's in that hotel and he's just bumbling and he's running into the old fling, all that stuff. There's something Ben Learner is good at, writing bumbling characters where it doesn't feel like they're obviously the butt of the joke, but you're just watching these lost men and entertaining women. So I was there for that the middle section, so brief, so slim. But for me, it was like an electric jolt. Anytime you have the presence of doubt or that becomes an explicit consideration in a book, I am. That's just me. I'm like immediately in. I wanna do the searching. So I love that middle section. And then the Heart was the third section.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

Yeah. And we haven't even talked about COVID

[MJ Franklin]

We haven't even the COVID of it all, but just this family in crisis. And you're getting this portrait of that in a variety of ways. I loved. The thing that I loved, though, overall was just the theme of how something so artificial can be meaningful, real. That comes up again and again with the idea that it's not the literal transcription of the interview, it's a reconstructed interview, but that means something that is real in its way. Or the idea that YouTube and unboxing videos helps you unlock a healthy behavior.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

Or artificial flowers.

[Greg Cole]

Artificial flowers. Yeah, the glass flowers.

[MJ Franklin]

The fact that Emmy is just mainlining sugar and they're like, that's enough, that's good. So, like, I liked that consideration. And so all of the pieces for me were working. I loved this book and it felt. I didn't feel detached. It felt very philosophical. But for me, one of the things I love about a Ben Lerner book is how he's able to make something so philosophical feel like it's coming from a human. Coming from.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

Not sanctimonious at all.

[MJ Franklin]

Not sanctimonious. So those are my thoughts on the book. I want to hear more from you. I want to hear what you're interested in. But first, you should take a quick break.

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[MJ Franklin]

And we're back. This is the Book Review. I'm MJ Franklin. I'm with Greg Coles and Alexandra Jacobs, and we're discussing Transcription by Ben Lerner. Before we jump back to our conversation, though, I wanted to read off some thoughts from our book club community. Right now we have an article up headlined Book Club Read Transcription by Ben Lerner with the Book Review. Readers from all over are sharing their thoughts there, and here are a few comments that I loved. Marjorie from New York writes, I found the section on Emmy's eating disorder especially moving. It is ironic that Max's attempt to anger his father by buying Emmy a tablet ameliorated her symptoms. Perhaps this suggests that loving parents can excessively control their children with negative consequences. I think Lerner is pointing out how identity is created by innumerable factors, including by our past, our ancestors, our environment, and chance. Marjorie continues, but then ends with I loved this novel. Jolten from Ohio writes, I finished reading yesterday and am still in a daze. What I found most amazing was how its length aided its power. I don't want to give anything away, but there is a repeated line that I was able to quickly find in an earlier passage, and that moment of quote scrolling back and forth led to more scrolling and another level of meaning till the novel was unlocked. I have to believe that the length was an intentional choice and further proof of Lerner's genius, a word I don't use lightly. And then we had a fun exchange with this reader, Andrew. Andrew pointed out, I like to think that Lerner has anticipated that many of us will be reading his book on our phones and googling unfamiliar names and acronyms. I flagged personally that I read this on a Kindle first, and that was another layer of transcription, another layer of technological remove. And Andrew responded saying, yes, and what about the audiobook? In that case, the printed or virtual text becomes a perfect transcription of what the reader listener has experienced. I just liked this comment because it pointed out the infinity mirror aspect of the novel and the book's considerations so those are just a few comments. Thank you to everyone for reading with us. And now back to our conversation in the studio. I want to ask more about themes that you were focusing on. Anything that you were. You're excited to discuss. It's a mode that I call free swim. What are you thinking about? Talk to me.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

I'm drowning. I'm drowning. I need a floaty.

[Greg Cole]

This is a book. I've talked about how fatherhood is a theme. Obviously, technology is a theme. We have not really talked about how memory and time are huge themes. The very first paragraph of the book, the narrator is facing backwards on the train, and he says that his daughter calls that going back in time or moving backwards into time, something along those lines. And later we get the same thought about a river that when you're going against the tide, it's kind of traveling backwards into time. There's a lot of traveling back into time in this book.

[MJ Franklin]

I think she phrases it as I'm facing the past.

[Greg Cole]

Yeah, there you go. This book faces the past in so many ways. It is about fatherhood, but it's also about childhood and about being a child in relation to a father. Mothers are largely absent in this book. I mean, they are vital, but it does not explore them. There was. I can't remember if it was on our book club article page or if it was MJ on your Instagram page, a commenter where you talked about this book. Somebody said, love Ben Lerner. But isn't this just a book about men and their communication problems?

[Alexandra Jacobs]

Yes, totally. And that's why Harriet Lerner and the Dance of Anger is so important.

[MJ Franklin]

What do you feel about that? What would you say?

[Greg Cole]

I feel like that reader is not entirely wrong and that Ben Lerner would say as much. That it is largely. I mean, because it's about technology and distraction and the way that we try to stop ourselves from being present in the moment and the way that we turn away from reality. That men and their communication problems is

[Alexandra Jacobs]

very prone to that which are considerable.

[MJ Franklin]

Which are considerable and so consequential. I have a communication problem and I'm gonna make it everybody's trouble.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

One could argue women not to stereotype the sexes, but that there's an over communication perhaps sometimes, or an overthinking possibly. I'm just venturing overthink.

[Greg Cole]

Men overthink too. And that is very much to the point of this part.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

I can't hide how much they overthink.

[MJ Franklin]

But yeah, I mean, literally, men would rather pretend to record an interview than to.

[Greg Cole]

Right there's an amazing moment where Thomas over intellectualizes. Max's wife Adele has had a cancer scare and Max tells his father that. And his father's reaction is to expound on the word biopsy. BIOS means life and OPSIS means light. And what a no.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

And it's like the eating disorder called arfid. Now I don't remember what the acronym is. We could look it up. But yeah, and he's thinking about that. He's thinking about what the. All the crazy acronyms and how actually

[Greg Cole]

that ARFID moment is another moment of. It's philosophical and just kind of a genius breaking down of language that Ben Lerner does where he says you go to the doctor, describe the symptoms, they give you back those exact same symptoms, but now in technical terms and you feel better about it, even though they don't know what causes it.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

And I think he's making fun of ADHD a little bit too, which I personally enjoy. Cause I think it's massively over diagnosed.

[MJ Franklin]

But that though gets at the pleasure component of it. It's such a thoughtful cerebral meditation. But it's funny and like you're poking fun. I always think of for Ben Lerner the difference between what's happening in the book and the characters and the authorial intelligence. He's not endorsing that overthinking, even as the book itself is performing that type of overthinking. Like there's a complicated relationship to learn.

[Greg Cole]

I mean, in fact, he's criticizing it, but that's what I said earlier throughout his work. He is very intellectual criticism of over intellectualization.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

He can't help himself. Again, I think that the thing I kept thinking about and couldn't really resolve in this very tightly turned around review was mortality or going back to the idea of technology as an external hard drive of our bodies or a thumb drive of our bodies. An actual thumb to our hands. What I think I felt that the book was sort of not so self seriously. But it was looking at the idea of how can we extend our lifespans with. Can we actually live on? Be it from Hitler's radio recordings or a novel or. But yeah, I mean, the book danced up to the idea. It's so interesting that Thomas doesn't die of COVID and the child does not succumb to the eating disorder, which are things that happen and they didn't.

[MJ Franklin]

But people do die of death.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

Yeah, exactly. And so I guess if the book had. It's not a drawback, but the thing. One of the things that made it feel exercise y to me, more than necessarily novelistic in the traditional sense, was that I felt like we were intellectually teased with these concepts of death without, you know, we weren't emotionally invested, perhaps in.

[MJ Franklin]

I'm gonna throw that to you, Greg. How do you feel about death as it relates to this book? But, yeah, talk to. That's an interesting point that Alexander's bringing up.

[Greg Cole]

I'm very scared of death.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

When I made some death joke in a book review, and you're like, I like my delusions or something like that.

[MJ Franklin]

But, like, how did you feel about. Like that? What Alexandra pointed out the proposition of death as it looms in this book.

[Greg Cole]

Yeah. I thought the COVID stuff was very well handled and played into the same destabilization that I felt. He sets it up from the start. The narrator is wearing a mask on the train. He's not sure whether he should wear a mask in the hotel. We know that we're in the middle of COVID and it's not until much later that we learn that Thomas gets Covid. And we're not even sure. Has he had Covid already when the narrator is getting there, or is it something he gets after? Is the narrator maybe responsible for his getting Covid? We just know that Max has gone through this terrible Covid scare with his father, Thomas. We also know from the first bit if we know what Dignitas is, we know that Thomas is considering assisted suicide. He mentions Dignitas. The narrator doesn't know what it is. He thinks it might be a small museum in Europe somewhere. But if we know, and Max and Thomas know, Dignitas is the assisted suicide center in Switzerland. And so we know that Thomas is planning his end at 90. And we don't learn how he dies, but we kind of assume that he takes himself out that way. Do you have big picture thoughts about the book?

[MJ Franklin]

I do. I have. I've been talking about it online a little bit. But I have a unified theory of Ben Lerner that I would like to float by you and see what you think. My theory about Ben Lerner is he is always trying to find throughout his books, the vanishing point of reality, of when reality ceases to be because of a variety of reasons, but then also when it comes into existence, when something so deeply artificial can be real, when a fact or a piece of information supercharges what's in front of us and changes its meaning. And for this book club, I was going back and reading some of Ben Lerner's previous books. I had read Topeka school. And then I read this. But I hadn't read Atocha Station, and I hadn't read 1004. And in Atocha Station as reading it for this podcast, he mentions the law of the excluded middle. Do you know this at all? No, I'm gonna butcher it. Cause I did not study philosophy or linguistics or logic. But the law, as I understand it, the law of the excluded middle is the idea that for any given proposition, a proposition is either true or it is not true. There's no middle. And I feel like Ben Lerner's work is mining the middle.

[Greg Cole]

He's trying to find where it's neither true or untrue. Yeah.

[MJ Franklin]

Or when something's so deeply fake, but still impactful and real. When an interview is constructed, but that is the truth. And I feel like he's doing that with language, he's doing that with technology. That's my unified theory of Ben Lerner.

[Greg Cole]

I think that's a really good theory of Ben Lerner. He makes that point very overt in this book. In regard to those glass flowers that we mentioned. It's the famous glass flower collection at the Harvard. Right, at the Harvard Museum. Harvard Natural History Museum. Or in the basement there, they've just got this giant collection of flowers and insects blown by a German father and son and shipped here very carefully. And this woman that I mentioned, the possible love triangle with Max and the narrator. And this woman, Anissa, takes the narrator during college to the basement of Harvard to see these flowers. And he has this moment of thinking that it's so close to being real and it's not real. And that's what makes it profound. And that it becomes a theory of art for him and a theory of life for him that guides him on nature hikes. He cannot appreciate the beauty of the mountains unless he then thinks of somebody painting them, you know, getting it almost right. And so that it's that slippage between reality and not reality that the middle that you're talking about. It's exactly what he's doing.

[MJ Franklin]

And this is why I love a Ben Lerner book. Because that's such a complicated idea to distill in fiction. But then also it's just an interesting story. It's just an interesting story. So those are a few ideas. We could talk about this book all day. It's kind of incredible how much conversation can come from a 130 page book. But I think that's, for me, the genius of this book. We have book recommendations, but before we pivot to that I have what? A question that I'm gonna call. Tell me one thing. Tell me one takeaway, one thing that you want readers to absolutely know about this book. Mine is a quote that I had, and it's the end of the first section, and it's just. You call this fiction, but it is more.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

Yes, I think I put that in my review, so it must have resonated with me as well.

[MJ Franklin]

Is that our one thing?

[Alexandra Jacobs]

Yeah, I think that might be our one thing.

[Greg Cole]

My one advice to readers going through this is if you are not a reader who usually underlines or takes notes. I mean, this is a book because it's so, so tricky and slippery and there's so many instances of repetition and kind of the undermining, the destabilizing that I talked about at the beginning. Underline and take notes because it will

[Alexandra Jacobs]

help you type in a Google Doc.

[Greg Cole]

It will help you reconstruct.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

Why are you so analog? Such biases.

[MJ Franklin]

Well, we've had our analog bias. We have a tip. We have a column.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

We have a chiding.

[MJ Franklin]

We have a chiding. And now we have recommendations. Because before we wrap up, I want to know what you would recommend anyone who's finished transcription to read next. That could be for whatever reason. Maybe it's another cerebral book about technology. Maybe it's another book about fathers and daughters. Maybe it's another. Who knows? I will follow your lead, but I just wanna know, what book would you recommend readers pick up next?

[Greg Cole]

How many recommendations do I get?

[MJ Franklin]

Let's start with one as we go around, and then we'll do a lightning round at the end.

[Greg Cole]

Okay? So first recommendation, if this is a book that you loved, is Patricia Lockwood's. No one here is Talking about this, which is also very much a book about technology and how we live online. And then in its second half, it shifts, as this book does, to a health crisis in a child, and that takes you immediately offline. And how we live in real life when there is a crisis upon us.

[MJ Franklin]

That is an excellent recommendation. And it was a New York Times Best book of. Was it 2020? I was here for that. So it was in 2020. Incredible.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

Well, I've already recommended both Lillian Ross Reporting and Harriet Lerner's the Dance of Anger, which might supplement the slight absence of femininity that has been acknowledged and felt in transcription. But I think I would also. The book that occurred to me was nonfiction. Also nonfiction, the Shallows by Nicholas Carr, which was a Pulitzer finalist, I think, around 2010. It's about how the Internet Is rewiring our brains.

[MJ Franklin]

Interesting. I don't know this book.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

Yeah, well, I think why I'm mentioning these three, recommending these three books is that I think they're all really worthy and maybe slightly forgotten or faded. And I love to resurrect like an artificial flower. Anyway, I love to bring up from the basement, you might say, bring up the bodies.

[Greg Cole]

So how about you, mj? What do you recommend?

[MJ Franklin]

My first one is a book that came out last year, Universality by Natasha Brown, which I'm recommending because it has that subsequent section undercuts what you thought came before. It opens with this account of a guy who is bludgeoned with a gold bar. And talk about symbolism, about how like, capitalism is getting you down, he's bludgeoned by a cold bar. And you get this account. And then the second section is the story of the journalist who wrote the first section. You find out that the first section is actually a long story, magazine story. And then you find out about the journalists. And when you're reading the first section, you're like, something about this telling feels weird. And you almost judge Natasha Brown a little bit. Cause you're like, why isn't this writing sharper? And then you realize, oh, wait, this is a trick. This is from this kind of struggling over her head journalist. And then this third section is the story of one of this conservative thinker who's on her way to a literary festival and she has a connection to the crime. And then the fourth section is the panel conversation at the literary festival.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

This sounds almost algorithmically perfectly related.

[MJ Franklin]

It's really good. And I think it was long listed for the Booker Prize last year. But if you liked the structure of transcription, I think pick up up universality. And I think universality is also challenging in a way that transcription is.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

What does it feel to be a human algorithm?

[MJ Franklin]

The robots in my brain are telling me, I joke, that it's not robots that are controlling me, it's the microplastics in my brain that are controlling me. So that's my first recommendation. But, Greg, you said your setup made it sound like you had many.

[Greg Cole]

Tell me more. I did have many. I mean, Ben Lerner often makes me think of Don DeLillo, but then a lot of people do. I'm a big DeLillo fan. But the description of all the candy and sweets that they have in the house when the daughter is going. Going through her eating disorder just put me in mind of white noise. And they're gonna say, Willy Wonka. The consumer culture and the Unboxing videos that she watched put me in mind of a lesser known Dondolo novel called the Body Artist, which is also very much about kind of grief and memory. It's this kind of weird obsession that the heroine of that novel, which early days of the Internet, but she's obsessed with a webcam that's been set up on a corner filming a street corner in Finland 24 hours, and she just goes there and it kind of brings her out of her grief in the same way that these unboxing videos.

[MJ Franklin]

Interesting.

[Greg Cole]

Bring the daughter out of her eating disorder.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

Oh, and we haven't even talked about Kafka.

[Greg Cole]

Let's bring Kafka into the Hunger Artist.

[MJ Franklin]

What about Kafka?

[Alexandra Jacobs]

Well, the Hunger Artist. But wasn't there also another. Now I can't remember. I think there was another Kafka connection that I can't remember that we might patch in later.

[Greg Cole]

I also wanted to mention Jennifer Egan and a visit from the Goon Squad, which has one of the great scenes of a celebrity interview gone completely off the rails.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

And just to be clear, Lillian Ross reporting is many celebrity interviews. Old ones.

[MJ Franklin]

Do you have any other recommendations?

[Alexandra Jacobs]

I think I'm tapped out.

[Greg Cole]

Okay, I will make one more recommendation.

[MJ Franklin]

Greg Hadassa.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

See, this is why book clubs are hard.

[Greg Cole]

They become competitive, which in the same way that you recommended Universality for the structure of it and the way that it throws the first part into question. That undermining thing.

[MJ Franklin]

We about to say the same one? Let's say on three. One, two, three.

[Greg Cole]

Asymmetry. Oh, yes. Trust is a good one.

[MJ Franklin]

Tell me about asymmetry.

[Greg Cole]

Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday is. Is the story of a woman's relationship with a very famous writer who bears a strong resemblance to Philip Roth. And then the second part kind of undermines the telling of the first part.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

Now I'm getting competitive. I might also recommend Nicholson Baker's the mezzanine, published in 1988. Also short. It's just very compact and precedes all this technology. And I think it's in his Vox also, which is about phone sex. I just think it's interesting to track the way technology has figured in novels over the past 40 years.

[MJ Franklin]

I love this competition because this is a competition where everybody wins. Everyone gets so many book recommendations. I have a few that I wanted to mention. Trust, which also subsequent sections.

[Greg Cole]

Hernande Diaz.

[MJ Franklin]

Hernand Diaz. I have a recommendation from a reader who was reading online with us. Ted from Rhode island wrote in and said, read transcription right after a reread of Rachel Cusk's outline and was struck by a similar affect. High minded people parsing small moments, written elegantly and showcasing deep intellects. It was a pleasure to read. I also just want to mention, like, let's bring Virginia Woolf into the room. Why not experiment in consciousness and how consciousness is mediated through a variety of things, including the Great War. And that is unfortunately all the time we have today. Greg Alexandra, thank you for joining us.

[Greg Cole]

Always a pleasure mj.

[Alexandra Jacobs]

Delighted to be here. I would even come back Success.

[Greg Cole]

Success.

[MJ Franklin]

And thank you to everyone who read with us this month months. And speaking of reading with us, the title of our June Book Club pick. In June, we will be reading Yesteryear by Carol Clare Burke. It's about a trad wife who one day wakes up and finds that she's been transported to 1855, the era and lifestyle that she's been emulating online. Is it time travel? Is it all a hoax or a prank? Or is something else going on? Read with us and find out. Right now there is up an article heading lined Book Club Read Yesteryear by Carol Clare Burke with the Book Review. Join the conversation there. We will also be discussing the book on the podcast that airs on June 26th. We're excited to talk about this book with you, and until then, happy reading.

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