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Book Club: Read ‘Transcription,’ by Ben Lerner, With the Book Review
In May, the Book Review Book Club will read and discuss Lerner’s new novel, a cerebral exploration of technology, family, truth and existence.
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MJ Franklin
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MJ Franklin
MJ Franklin is an editor at the Book Review and the host of the Book Review Book Club.
April 24, 2026,
5:02 a.m. ET
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Welcome to the Book Review Book Club! Every month, we select a book to discuss with our readers. Last month, we read
“The Renovation,” by Kenan Orhan
. (You can also go back and listen to our episodes on
“Kin,”
“
Wuthering Heights”
and “
The Hounding
.”)
There is a funny visual irony to our smartphones — they’re tiny objects and yet, for many of us, they contain a seemingly endless well of tools, information and communications that dictate our lives. It’s impressive how something so small can hold so much.
The same can be said of Ben Lerner’s new novel, “Transcription.” It’s a slim book — 130 pages — and yet it cracks open some of the most colossal and enduring philosophical questions facing us today.
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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, which he was planning to use to record the conversation, falls in the sink and breaks. Rather than reschedule, he goes to Thomas’s home and proceeds with the interview anyway, taking no notes and only pretending to record him.
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 with Thomas as it appeared was reconstructed, a revelation that dismays the other guests and infuriates Max. Then we flash again. In the final section, Thomas 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.
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