I am a huge fan of Ben Lerner and have a copy of “Transcription” at home, waiting to be read. Autofiction is in many ways _the_ dominant mode of contemporary American literature, particularly among the literati of NYC/London (cf. Ocean Vuong, Tao Lin, Patricia Lockwood, etc., etc.). It can, for this reason, feel overdone and out of touch. But Lerner comes to the topic with such skill and intelligence, he really defines the genre for me, in a positive light.
Agreed. Lerner has an unique way of digging into solipsism that's truly genuine and comical (whereas I feel Knausgård and most of the autofiction crowd's stuff comes across as glorified navel-gazing). It's no wonder he's been compared to Foster Wallace in that regard, who also wrote about deeply human struggles yet still is dismissed as a lit-bro pseudointellectual.
Yeah, good comparison. To Lerner's credit, he is always a poet at heart, which leads to concise, lyrical prose. DFW is voluminous in comparison; when it lands, its great, but it can feel overinflated/overdone when it doesn't.
" But before the interview, the narrator drops his phone in water. Unable to explain to Thomas he has no way to record their conversation, the narrator pretends his broken phone is working — and the interview commences."
Phone companies really need to start advertising the fact that their phones are water resistant and can survive a quick dunk in the water.
It had never been opened.
It fell in a pool.
It stayed there about 30 seconds (1m deep).
When I fished it out, screen was off and it never turned back on.
> , and Lerner ordered, for the both of us, a glass of “something dry and cold.” For lunch, he requested the chicken: a roasted baby chicken from a farm upstate, to be exact, an order that, in its comically artisanal specificity,
Stuff like this is so upper-middle class (or aspirational upper-middle class, which is the same thing) coded that it hurts, somehow I thought we left all that behind in the pre-Covid era, looks like I was wrong. Imo it all started with the Lunch with the FT (again, see the upper-middle class larp-ing) gonzos, and it went downhill from there.
Lunch with the FT is probably my favorite section of the paper, if only because it adds a little more context and physicality to the interview. I am doubtful that people are reading it purely for aspirational restaurant name-dropping, but that’s just me.
The tone, for one thing. Normal people don't care about "il Buco" nor about what some nobody has eaten while recounting things, articles like this one should solely focus on the "recounting things" part, not on the eating and name-dropping part.
Now, I get it that for the Anglos normal food might as well have been a thing given to us by the Gods up there in the sky, but, as I was saying, this should have been a thing of the past now, cooked fish is just cooked fish, cooked pasta is just cooked pasta, we don't care about that shit, get to the point of the article.
This is part of a certain type of journalism. You're free to dislike it but it's doing something very specific that most readers of this type of journalism and literature in general do enjoy. You may be coming to this with the (not unusual for the HN crowd) overly stemmy attitude that scans for nuggets of relevant data (and only relevant data!) that can be processed in the most efficient way possible. This is not it, and if it was forced to be we would lose something precious.
You're not wrong, but these people are not going away. This is New York magazine, Vulture section, they just talk about what people eat at the interview, that's what the same people like to read.
Ben Lerner is from that world. Very New York, very arty, very socialite. If I remember correctly one of his books sets place in Marfa, the Art center.
Ben Lerner is not what "normal people" read, nor is New York magazine.
I find the books pretty good, but I think I qualify as one of "them".
Coincidentally, I just this morning read another review of this in the new yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/06/transcription-...
I am a huge fan of Ben Lerner and have a copy of “Transcription” at home, waiting to be read. Autofiction is in many ways _the_ dominant mode of contemporary American literature, particularly among the literati of NYC/London (cf. Ocean Vuong, Tao Lin, Patricia Lockwood, etc., etc.). It can, for this reason, feel overdone and out of touch. But Lerner comes to the topic with such skill and intelligence, he really defines the genre for me, in a positive light.
Agreed. Lerner has an unique way of digging into solipsism that's truly genuine and comical (whereas I feel Knausgård and most of the autofiction crowd's stuff comes across as glorified navel-gazing). It's no wonder he's been compared to Foster Wallace in that regard, who also wrote about deeply human struggles yet still is dismissed as a lit-bro pseudointellectual.
Yeah, good comparison. To Lerner's credit, he is always a poet at heart, which leads to concise, lyrical prose. DFW is voluminous in comparison; when it lands, its great, but it can feel overinflated/overdone when it doesn't.
Can we conceive the possibility of a Ben Lerner novel-reader who isn’t a member of his social milieu? Or aspiring to be.
" But before the interview, the narrator drops his phone in water. Unable to explain to Thomas he has no way to record their conversation, the narrator pretends his broken phone is working — and the interview commences."
Phone companies really need to start advertising the fact that their phones are water resistant and can survive a quick dunk in the water.
My iPhone 12 begs to differ.
An iPhone 12 is water resistant. What happened to yours? Had it been opened? Replacing a battery/screen can break the seal if done incorrectly.
It had never been opened. It fell in a pool. It stayed there about 30 seconds (1m deep). When I fished it out, screen was off and it never turned back on.
The ghost of my 3-day-old Zinwa Q25 has entered the chat.
https://archive.is/PHIPi
Writers keep rediscovering that editing shapes truth. Journalism figured this out a century ago.
> , and Lerner ordered, for the both of us, a glass of “something dry and cold.” For lunch, he requested the chicken: a roasted baby chicken from a farm upstate, to be exact, an order that, in its comically artisanal specificity,
Stuff like this is so upper-middle class (or aspirational upper-middle class, which is the same thing) coded that it hurts, somehow I thought we left all that behind in the pre-Covid era, looks like I was wrong. Imo it all started with the Lunch with the FT (again, see the upper-middle class larp-ing) gonzos, and it went downhill from there.
Lunch with the FT is probably my favorite section of the paper, if only because it adds a little more context and physicality to the interview. I am doubtful that people are reading it purely for aspirational restaurant name-dropping, but that’s just me.
What's wrong with it?
It's weird enough to feel performative but not weird enough to be interesting.
Probably they feel this is performative
The tone, for one thing. Normal people don't care about "il Buco" nor about what some nobody has eaten while recounting things, articles like this one should solely focus on the "recounting things" part, not on the eating and name-dropping part.
Now, I get it that for the Anglos normal food might as well have been a thing given to us by the Gods up there in the sky, but, as I was saying, this should have been a thing of the past now, cooked fish is just cooked fish, cooked pasta is just cooked pasta, we don't care about that shit, get to the point of the article.
This is part of a certain type of journalism. You're free to dislike it but it's doing something very specific that most readers of this type of journalism and literature in general do enjoy. You may be coming to this with the (not unusual for the HN crowd) overly stemmy attitude that scans for nuggets of relevant data (and only relevant data!) that can be processed in the most efficient way possible. This is not it, and if it was forced to be we would lose something precious.
You're not wrong, but these people are not going away. This is New York magazine, Vulture section, they just talk about what people eat at the interview, that's what the same people like to read.
Ben Lerner is from that world. Very New York, very arty, very socialite. If I remember correctly one of his books sets place in Marfa, the Art center.
Ben Lerner is not what "normal people" read, nor is New York magazine.
I find the books pretty good, but I think I qualify as one of "them".