The author of 'The Topeka School,' winner of the 2019 Times Book Prize for fiction, speaks on poetry, debate, citizenship and crisis homeschooling.
Notable as a poet, Ben Lerner has in the last decade also published a trio of witty, topical, challenging novels that redefine what we want from and can expect of contemporary fiction. The first, “Leaving the Atocha Station,” referred to by critic Geoff Dyer as a “comet from the future,” was a savvy and moving assessment of Americans abroad and adrift after 9/11. His followup, “
,” moved the action to Brooklyn and Manhattan, where the author pondered indignities large and small, from bad lunches to Hurricane Sandy.,” winner of the 2019 Los Angeles Times Book Award for best fiction, deploys an even more potent arsenal of autofiction, erudition and dry wit. Set in the ‘90s, the story concerns three generations in Kansas, including a pair of psychotherapists and their champion debater son, and culminates in an act of violence that seems to change everything.
At the heart of “Topeka School” is the bizarre art of speed debating, or “spreading.” How does it relate to what currently passes for, as your narrator Adam called it, “national political discourse?”The book wants to locate something like hope — and not just horror — in the extremity of fast debate or even in Trump’s word salad.
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