Ben Lerner on Transcription

About this episode

Ben Lerner discusses his novel Transcription, exploring themes of technology, memory, and human connection.

Recorded live at Shakespeare and Company, Adam Biles speaks with Ben Lerner about his novel Transcription , a formally inventive meditation on technology, memory, and human connection. Beginning with the novel’s deceptively simple premise (a writer loses his recording device and reconstructs an interview from memory) the conversation expands into questions of mediation, voice, and authenticity. Lerner explores how devices reshape attention and relationships, suggesting that humans themselves function as “media,” transmitting voices across time and between generations. The discussion moves between the philosophical and the intimate: from the limits of digital communication to the emotional power of disembodied voices, from intergenerational care to the fragile transmission of experience. Ultimately, Transcription emerges as a reflection on how stories, memories, and voices persist—less as fixed recordings than as living, shifting acts of interpretation. Buy Transcription: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/transcription-4 Ben Lerner was born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1979. He has received fellowships from the Fulbright, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Foundations, and is the author…

People in this episode

Host: Adam Biles

Guest: Ben Lerner

Topics covered

• technology
• memory
• human connection
• mediation
• voice
• authenticity
• intergenerational care

Keywords

• Ben Lerner
• Transcription
• technology
• memory
• human connection
• mediation
• voice
• authenticity

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Shakespeare and Company, Fulbright Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, MacArthur Foundation

Books & works: Transcription, Leaving the Atocha Station, 10:04, The Topeka School, The Lichtenberg Figures, Angle of Yaw, Mean Free Path, No Art, The Hatred of Poetry

Places: Topeka, Kansas

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