FRESH

Hacker News

Ben Lerner's Big Feelings

42 points by prismatic

by MrOrelliOReilly

1 subcomments

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.

by Popeyes

3 subcomments

" 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.

by mplanchard

0 subcomment

Coincidentally, I just this morning read another review of this in the new yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/06/transcription-...

by barishnamazov

0 subcomment

by Se_ba

0 subcomment

Writers keep rediscovering that editing shapes truth. Journalism figured this out a century ago.

by paganel

2 subcomments

> , 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.

by theopsimist

0 subcomment

Can we conceive the possibility of a Ben Lerner novel-reader who isn’t a member of his social milieu? Or aspiring to be.