You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
partypete 's review for:
The Topeka School
by Ben Lerner
I read this book a month or so ago, and I’ve been sitting on making a review while I’ve digested this book. I am a big fan of Ben Lerner. I liked 10:04, loved Leaving the Atocha Station, and adore his poetry. Needless to say, this has been one of my most anticipated reads of 2019. It was a bit of a letdown.
Lerner has created a new book in the vein of child genius literature, with inevitable comparison to Infinite Jest, Jakob van Gunten, and The Last Samurai (DeWitt’s Version, not the movie.) It really isn’t much like any of these aside from the general themes though, so don’t expect another Hal Incandenza. Adam Gordon (a younger iteration of the one in Atocha Station) is a Cool 90s Kid who listens to rap music and watches pornography on the family computer. He lacks the depth of his later incarnation and kind of sucks, less a developed character and more of a vehicle for academic achievement and other themes Lerner views pertinent for the novel. His father and mother are the more fleshed out characters, and recall various episodes of his childhood while developing their careers. If there is anything new and special that came out of this book, it is from their perspective, and it is probably this family dynamic that has everyone comparing it to IJ.
Having read virtually everything he has produced, I suspect Lerner is a bit of a one trick pony, or maybe he’s just continuing to write the same novel over and over again. Maybe this is his best iteration yet - it is certainly his most complete, and has a lot to offer. It is his first novel to be (mostly) removed from a city, offers more perspectives than simply a brooding narrator who may or may not be the author, and has many genuinely interesting parts to read.
In my review of 10:04, I wrote down that it seemed to imitate the same formula as Leaving the Atocha Station. Reminded of the Murakami Haruki bingo card I saw once, I’ve been trying to compile one for Lerner as well: alienation (free space), doing drugs in a museum, “unseasonably warm weather”, John Ashbery, The Challenger Explosion, the blurted line between fiction and autobiography, the failure of language, Brooklyn - I’m sure there is more, add your own
I’m happy to see Lerner pulling off more adventurous fiction - it just isn’t enough of a change for me, and he seems to be recycling ideas rather than surprising us with new ones. I wasn’t wholly convinced that the book successfully pulled off its objective, which most press coverage seems to suggest is “uncovering the roots of our white masculinity” or something. This becomes most apparent at the very end of the story. Without spoiling anything, he seems to tack on an extremely political thesis to footnote his book, and I just don’t think it makes any sense in the context of the rest of the story. Is it a brag? An apology? #Resist? I truly don’t understand what he was trying to prove - I’ve always felt that Adam was the masculine fantasy that Ben is projecting as an avatar into his fictional world - I’m skeptical that any debate champion/poet is getting laid in high school, and I would have been far more interested if he located himself in both the bully /and/ the bullied, but go off I guess.
3.5/5, rounded to 4 because I still really enjoy his work. Recommended to anyone who hasn’t read Lerner before - it’s a good entry point, but left me unsatisfied
Lerner has created a new book in the vein of child genius literature, with inevitable comparison to Infinite Jest, Jakob van Gunten, and The Last Samurai (DeWitt’s Version, not the movie.) It really isn’t much like any of these aside from the general themes though, so don’t expect another Hal Incandenza. Adam Gordon (a younger iteration of the one in Atocha Station) is a Cool 90s Kid who listens to rap music and watches pornography on the family computer. He lacks the depth of his later incarnation and kind of sucks, less a developed character and more of a vehicle for academic achievement and other themes Lerner views pertinent for the novel. His father and mother are the more fleshed out characters, and recall various episodes of his childhood while developing their careers. If there is anything new and special that came out of this book, it is from their perspective, and it is probably this family dynamic that has everyone comparing it to IJ.
Having read virtually everything he has produced, I suspect Lerner is a bit of a one trick pony, or maybe he’s just continuing to write the same novel over and over again. Maybe this is his best iteration yet - it is certainly his most complete, and has a lot to offer. It is his first novel to be (mostly) removed from a city, offers more perspectives than simply a brooding narrator who may or may not be the author, and has many genuinely interesting parts to read.
In my review of 10:04, I wrote down that it seemed to imitate the same formula as Leaving the Atocha Station. Reminded of the Murakami Haruki bingo card I saw once, I’ve been trying to compile one for Lerner as well: alienation (free space), doing drugs in a museum, “unseasonably warm weather”, John Ashbery, The Challenger Explosion, the blurted line between fiction and autobiography, the failure of language, Brooklyn - I’m sure there is more, add your own
I’m happy to see Lerner pulling off more adventurous fiction - it just isn’t enough of a change for me, and he seems to be recycling ideas rather than surprising us with new ones. I wasn’t wholly convinced that the book successfully pulled off its objective, which most press coverage seems to suggest is “uncovering the roots of our white masculinity” or something. This becomes most apparent at the very end of the story. Without spoiling anything, he seems to tack on an extremely political thesis to footnote his book, and I just don’t think it makes any sense in the context of the rest of the story. Is it a brag? An apology? #Resist? I truly don’t understand what he was trying to prove - I’ve always felt that Adam was the masculine fantasy that Ben is projecting as an avatar into his fictional world - I’m skeptical that any debate champion/poet is getting laid in high school, and I would have been far more interested if he located himself in both the bully /and/ the bullied, but go off I guess.
3.5/5, rounded to 4 because I still really enjoy his work. Recommended to anyone who hasn’t read Lerner before - it’s a good entry point, but left me unsatisfied