An hour with Ben Lerner

ben lerner's latest novel the topeka school has been named a finalist for the prestigious national book critics circle award and j mcintyre and today on k pr presents will re visit my conversation with ben lerner this interview previously aired on k pr presents on october thirtieth two thousand nineteen topeka meant everything because it was where i spent my first years and you know learned my language such as it is bestselling author ben lerner returns to his home state of kansas to launch his new novel the topeka school and k mcentire and today on keep your prisons will talk to ben lerner about his new book which is already getting all kinds of critical acclaim ben thanks for stopping by to keep your studios today thank you for having me the typical school tells the story of adam gordon a senior at topeka high school tells about adam when it's a say yeah adam gordon is a senior in the class of nineteen ninety seven and his parents are both psychologists at this big international psychiatric clinic called the foundation and his mom

is like a famous feminist offer his dad is an expert at getting lost boys to open up and adam is on the one hand very much as parents on which is favorable he's a star debater he's an aspiring poet and on the other hand he's like desperate to pass as a kind of tough guy and the masculine a sculpture outside of his house and he's also one of the seniors who brings this loner this kind of outcasts named erin eberhard into the social scene of the graduating seniors and that has disastrous effects and erin unbeknown step adam is also his dad's is adam stands patient at the foundation this is not your first novel featuring adam gordon was the relationship between this adam gordon and that adam gordon of your novels leaving nieto said station and tell for yeah so i mean this is a

book really one of the things this book is about his pre history like the way your family pre history creates a pattern that occurs and your own life or if it wants to be to a certain extent a political pre history of the president of the trump para ser there's a way which this book is kind of adam gordon spree history like i wanted to write a novel that would be a prequel to the other two books so this is yeah this is this is in the early years of the adam gordon who will go on to be honest fellowship in spain in the first novel and to a certain degree the also the narrator of ten of four which is set in new york and my hope is that when i think of these three books really as a trilogy and my hope is that in a way this will kind of render that character more complex by showing some of the kind of early formative experiences that impart kind of determine his behavior in the later books your work has been described as audio

fiction and i didn't get enough others to know that they hate being asked him is this really about you that this is the euro right yeah i mean at a definitely this is this is a fictional version of mi yemen is a lot a lot of ways in which i don't resemble the narrator but the obvious thing is how how closely i do resemble the narrator and you know i don't i don't have like a position about audio fiction in the abstract like i'm interested only in books in which the author uses some of her own biography in the fiction or order that i'm not interested in those books i think that for me with some of the themes i wanted to think about i like the way in this book again the way that one's family and political history i'm determined his or her present like it seemed to me that working with some of the materials of my past to be a way to make a work of art that can be more compelling in the first novel leaving the atocha station i think adam gordon is very much a kind of

exaggerated version of some of my least fortunate neurotic tendencies in this book you know i'm i'm kind of remembering of version of myself from my parent's perspective now that i've become a parent myself you know one of the weird things about having kids is you kind of realize in a new way that your parents were just to people like you who didn't really know what they were doing and were doing their best you know and so i got interested in the way that my present in many ways gives me access to a version of my parents' experience of my childhood now that i'm the father of two little girls and i got interested and kind of imagining i'm imagining not so much re inhabiting my younger self but kind of thinking about what out what it would have been like to be my parent from the perspective of my parents i'm visiting with ben lerner about his new novel the topeka school adam gordon is a high school debater a really good debater as where you take us inside

the world of high school debate what was it about that world that that you wanted to explore yeah so i don't really i don't know if you've ever seen high school debate before but there's this phenomenon called this bread which is this thing where debaters try to make his many arguments as fast as they can so that the other team will be able to respond and their allotted time and this means that debaters speak at like unbelievable rates kind of like auctioneers except it's like even less intelligible to a layperson an auctioneer and they're like gasping for breath and spits flying in sweats flying and sometimes people like pass out an upset i got really fascinated by how this kind of reduces what is nominally an exchange of ideas to a kind of like athletic competition that's also almost like a gloss a lili a ritual like if you were to just walk in on this and you had no idea he wouldn't think it was a debate he would think it was

some kind of religious transporter may be nervous breakdown or something now and there's all kinds of like intelligence centers have like an interest in a certain way but i also kind of thought it was a metaphor for the empty now of political speech you know like how often we know what our politicians are talking and i really talking about the issues they're just trying to kind of score points i also thought it was a metaphor for how so many of us are spread in our daily lives like the way that corporations use language like if you've ever looked at like a bill from the health insurance provider if you're lucky enough to have health insurance and they're like there's all this language that isn't really there to inform you it's there to overwhelm you know it seems to me like a kind of equivalent of the spread and debate and even though like our current politicians like somebody like donald trump speaks very slowly very haltingly his language largely consists of like these racist dog whistles i feel like

he's learned something really important that likened to the spread which is that like if you have one scandal it's really dangerous political if you have a thousand scandals a day in capacity its people it overwhelms people so one of the things i liked about high school debate for the book and the spread for that the buck is that it was a it was a kind of a metaphor for what's happening to language and our political presence it also on a more personal level gives adam access to something really wonderful and something that's a real problem the problem is that it it kind of trains adam to be a verbal bowley and to kind of weapon eyes eloquence and that's not the only thing that they could do but that's what it does for adam and that's something that he has to kind of go on and learn but there's also something really beautiful and powerful that he has this experience in the midst of this bread even though it's all about the kind of reduction of language to one reason he has this experience of like language coursing through him a kind of experience of

poetic possibility where language and the rhythm of language takes over and he makes contact with this kind of foundational capacity for meaning making in general just taking is back in touch with the miracle of language as such so in something like high school debate that encounter sees the worst of what's happening to the language of of the country and also makes contact again with a kind of poetic possibility explore that theme about language a little bit more one of the recurring themes in the book is meaningless words gender as you just mentioned the spread in debate and there's also an experience for adam has a concussion and he starts using the wrong word slurring his speech and then just making noise there's another incident where adams bad dr jonathan gordon is speaking nonsense when he's tripping at the metropolitan museum of art and there's another experience where his mom dr jane gordan

breaks down into a litany of non sequiturs and she's telling a friend about an incident with her parents what about that the union really it's evocative korea we're totally renovated the book is really an away organized around these different theaters of extreme speech and these moments of linguistic collapse and i think woods evocative about it for me is that in those moments of the kind of linguistic terminus like language or reaching its end there is both a moment was like a dystopian and a utopian moment right like on the one hand it's it's those scary collapse of the regime of meaning and on the other hand there's the you're reaching a point where you realize the language has to be rebuilt the language has to be renovated and the characters also explore some moments of possibility so like when jane gordan sweat her speech kind of breaks down when she's dealing with the memory of her father is also a moment where she's kind of coming to consciousness about some of the events that have

taken place in her life and it's a moment where she realizes she also is gaining a kind of insight and perspective even though in the moment and her language her can of ordinary language use is cracking up under the emotional pressures of the memory so it's not only a bad moment it's also a moment of coming coming to terms with the need for new terms so to speak and i can imagine similarly in the spread where he is it's it's it's a linguistic extreme it's both a collapse of meaning and a moment of making contact with the originally powers of language so in the book in your gut the right and at the end of the book when adam gordon is kind of a protest and bridges appeared in in a chant but he finds a very kind of embarrassing in halting but he also talks about learning how to speak again you know so i think the book your jacket rehman the book is really about this kind of all these different scenes of love of language that's breaking up and that's also breaking up in a

way that clears the ground for the possibility of new modes of expression and togetherness is that a metaphor for writing in a larger sense yeah i mean i think i think it is in the sense that i think you know like one of the things that the spread that was so fascinating to me is it actually resembled a lot of awful guard poetry you know like where were part of artistic experimenters about like taking a language and overloading it with meaning a possibility until it no longer functions and it's you know the monday weigh and we see new possibilities of language so i think you're right i mean that that that may lohmann of linguistic overload that's also a moment of linguistic possibility is really caught up in what it means to write where you're kind of taking the language out of the no longer taking language for granted as some it can just perform community if and communicative functions are actually kind of like seeing what kind of charge or can barely even seen when it breaks down under a certain kind of charge but i think the danger is there a bed that kind of stream of

consciousness speaking or writing and in the spread or are the other references to jitters that that those people are not this week haters are not really communicating at all it's just december it's just just random words that that there may be a connection in here trying to get a point across but that point maybe last gray yeah i mean that's the that's and that's a thing too is that when his windows language collapse into a domain of privacy were you're no longer able to communicate or share consciousness at all and i mean you know to a certain degree what's happening politically now is that languages not discourse i mean people aren't actually engaging in debates just this kind of signal and rage you know of one sort or another kind of tribal signaling and so that kind of shutting down of the communicative capacities of languages a real problem for sure i mean i think what the book suggests is that their moods of listening that can be a counter

to the weapon is asian of eloquence are the destructive uses of language that are designed to either harm or obfuscate and not really designed to communicate you know like james listening and strategies for listening are very powerful and when you write look like this i mean you really my hope is that this book is itself a motive listen in good to be you know to the various characters and to the various currents of the kind of dominant language of the day and not just another instance of you know i love of language being marshaled in order to prove a point you know and i think the weird thing about the literary writing is that if you're once they were right in general is that you need you on the one hand you're making an argument and on the other hand what you're doing is trying to empty yourself out so that the language can speak through your youth you're trying to do a kind of listening and to the social marrow of language so

it's not just like writing what you know which is kind of one of the old cliches about writing ads writing what you don't know it's been alongside the language as it moves through but yeah you're right i mean that the problem of privacy the problem of a collapse of communication a summit the book both wants to document and also be an other two i'm visiting with ben lerner he's the author of that topeka school there are references to kansas throughout that because gold bears that sydell there is west ridge small clan lake the quote unquote world famous topeka zoo mass street here in lawrence you grew up in to be getting your parents' lives in lawrence now talk to me about invoking a sense of place and why to peak it meant to you yeah well i mean topeka meant everything to make as it was where i spent my first eighteen years in you know learned my language such as it is and also where i was

exposed all these incredible writers at my mom as a writer obviously but also like you know the friends were writers tom a role was you know always around and jeff gowdy said a writer and it but then there were all these poets who were who were my age are a little older i mean back in back then they seemed much older cars they were like three years old or it's basically my age poets like ed scooter eric mchenry who now teaches at washburn and they were like first kind of teachers an airlock years for me and then this incredible writer cyrus console who teaches at the art institute in kansas city and you know who's like a first and close reader for mayor steven davis she lives in kansas city as a great writer but also a firefighter these are a people were in the acknowledgements of the book so my first informative relationships generally but my first informative literary relationships are all i am you know from from kansas and that's actually one of the residences of the title the topeka school is that you can come home was speak of the topeka

school we speak of the new york school or just all these writers who come from topeka i don't even really have a theory that can explain it and other writers i don't know personally but ken boyer who has a book out right now or see a comrade or my know kevin young no the poet is the poetry editor of the new yorker so there's a kind of like renaissance are few candid here something that i don't fully understand that's been a great gift to me and then also you know there were all kinds of things are messed up about topeka like the way the messed up about america and you know i mean a lot of a lot of violence a lot of no possible political polarization and a lot of new racism homophobia et cetera and then the phelps been the most you know famous have a community of homophones in the country or whatever and i don't think of these as specific topeka problem the phelps obviously were you know a very specific group of people but i am i don't think of these as problem specifically to peak i think of these problems specific to america but you know so that's why i guess what i would say about

topeka for the book is that i was also really interested in these different cultural attitudes towards talk which were all present in topeka writers the monitor foundation which brought my parents and some of my friends' parents there is of course an institution that ran on talk because it you know it's a psychiatric institution and it privileges different kinds of expressive at and more generally the common kalter of kansas i'm innocent i'm overstating this but i don't think it's necessarily a place where for men in particular talk his privileged you know i think the idea of of expressing your former abilities are feelings if you're a die both in topeka and in lots of other places in the country is considered a masculine or consider compromising somehow so adam gordon is very torn between these two different regimes of talk and i thought a peak it could be a really interesting place to come to dramatize some of that tension so it's both that it's like my home and the place the economy be a writer and that i thought that some of

those experiences in a certain way could be emblematic of some other issues of you know of relevance beyond topeka given all that why did it take you so long to come home so to speak in terms of writing second question i mean topeka and i didn't even know this had to be pointed out to me that topeka appears and every one of my books and even if just kind of in passing like in each book of poems and so on and so forth i think that i you know i think that i actually think that i couldn't write about my childhood until i had kids because i think that i that some about having kids was like this threshold where like i was talking about my core i started to kind of remember it from my parent's perspective it somehow i mean not that i suddenly became mature far from it but but there's something about is that the threshold of becoming a parent for me they gave me a new emotional relation to my childhood and that i also felt

that i wanted to write a book that was in part about language now you know in the kind of trump era and i kind of started to see the way that certain elements of debate in my experience of those linguistic extremes could come and gather some of the contradictions and sharpen some of the tensions that i think are relevant to the present so that you know it's that that weird alignment of like person on political conditions that make something right a bull but but i'd tried before a little bit and couldn't couldn't do it and i think the breakthrough for me actually was also this realization that i could write about myself in the third person but right about versions of my parents from a first person perspective and that for more change kind of gave me access to being able to write about you know being an insufferable teenager in a different way you just anticipated my next question which was that adam

gordon's story is told in the third person there inst story is told in the third person but when you sip perspective to adam's parents jonathan and shane you write in a first person yeah i mean it was a really interesting kind of intense experiment i mean i you know the book is really for me part of the book is about the genealogy of the voice that's writing it in this question of delaware voices come from you know an end of course our voices what's different for everyone but the parents didn't have a lot to do with where your voice comes from is only one influence there's you know mass media there's music there's friends there's c raise all kinds of speech that courses through and this book anna wanted to interrogate the genealogy of the genealogy of my voice and it became clear to me that the way to do that was to experiment with kind of throwing my voice to kind of try to imagine writing is a version of my father a version of my mother about their own family history largely in the formation of their voices in some

form of experiments and it's full of fiction but it's also full of a lot of a lot of real stuff i mean you know but then i keep returning to about how when you become a parent you see your parents use your childhood from her parent's perspective i think i got interested in this idea that like i wanted to do this thing to take it once a radical act of identification like i'm in the right as a version of my mother and also involves an active like this identification like in order to do that i have to think of are not just as my mother but as another adult you know doing it doing her workout in her relationships reckoning with her own family past so i think you know the the book the book is very much about an atom cordon in the present trying to figure out the history of his own voice as he you know was a father to these two young girls and i think that that combination of identification and this identification that writing

as a parent but so also realizing that they're not just your mom and dad they're also you know to other adult individuals or whatever that seemed to me to be really at the at the core of the book and in it but it's a bit was a new nose intense intense to write in a version of your mother's voice about her very problematic father for example and that was kind of part of a risk i wanted to take the psychological and literary risk i wanted to take him in and writing the book as you've mentioned that includes parents are a psychologist your parents to harriet lerner is steve warner are both psychologist and how uncomfortable i read is this for you in terms of family dynamics but not very because i am because i so much written in conversation with them you know i didn't like present this final book to my to my parents or or my brother and say like hey by the way i wrote this book you know i it was really have a rich in common like mortal year conversation

it is so also my parents are just incredibly like generous and relaxed about this kind of stuff you know like they're there they're just they're not defensive they're interested in it i mean you know i i think that this book is pretty clearly overall and accountable marsh to the parents you know not are not idealized and they make mistakes but that it's very much about their desire to foster a family environment of openness and love in a way that responds to what was good and bad and their own families of origin and it's so much kind of draws on i i'm so indebted to my parents to try to think through family patterns that i think even in the very structure of the books are certain way it's a celebration of their influence but but all that said i mean it's got to be weird it's weird for me i get like walking around being like you know remember i see a reviewer summit's a cruce been told all these you know

intimate stories about about my family and got them in the newspaper and i'm like oh yeah i did that i am the guy who did the city it's a it's a funny it's a funny thing is it's like i i've done a lot of self exposure the same time i'm a pretty private person so it's i coached you know thats that's the weird thing about this audio fiction thinkers are making you know kind of be making the best work of art you can make and while you're making it can't think too much about what it will be like when it's in the world but i definitely thought about what it would be like for my parents and that at every moment i worried i kept insisting dzhokhar was wanting them to have a negative reaction or something and so i would like it i'd have to throw the book away but instead they were like really into it and but i just have to work hard and finish it so they've been given very supportive but i can even i don't even know how many drafts and made them very you know pointing or something so so they were really involved in the conversation not only do you talk aloud about your relationship with your parents that off a adam's relationship with his parents

like imagine there are a lot of references to topeka and that then laid this guy's manning you're planning on but there's also a lot of commentary about to peek at one point you refer to it as exotic lee boring how uncomfortable is it to read this but in topeka well jonathan just jittery of the father went before they moved to topeka the year or right when they moved to peek at other jonathan enjoying the parent figures who've never been to the midwest think of it as almost exotic reborn but both my parents you know fell in love with kansas them and then stayed here i mean it's weird to re it's weird to come and read anything in kansas because it's what's weird to stand up in front of like your community and have to represent a strange work that you do i mean i i think that the book you know the book is really critical all about elements an element of like the younger critical of the younger version of myself and like elements of topeka and ways that you know like the

violence and to a certain degree the way that parents could be out to lunch about it or whatever buy the book is it like i said i mean those things are really about topeka and they're about topeka cause that's where i grew up but they're really about kind of america and the nineties in the america today it's it's not the ideas not like to peek as i'm you know somehow a more messed up place than any other place you know i also think you know that this thing that isn't in the book because it wasn't part of that and in the book the book wouldn't be made without it but it's not represented in the book is that this like what were talking about earlier which are all these incredible authors from topeka and all the great friendships and models of male friendship that are other to the kind of violence and a kind of reid trash talking and posturing that characterizes a lot of what's depicted so so there's a way in which it can be kind of like negative about one aspect of the topeka social scene for this

adolescent but but the reality was that there were all kinds of really rich relationships and modes of support and creativity the co existed alongside there'd be a lot of violence and everything else but it but it is i do you know like it i do stress like in interviews are talking to friends that there's this like really wonderful side of topeka or wonderful side of america foundation of course you know it was like so great for so many people and did so much good and additional whatever complexity big institutions like that i always have and that stuff is less in the book you know because it wasn't it wasn't the focus of what it was a kind of the focus of the drama of the book but i definitely try it always emphasize that as i am a big and benevolent pardon my experience of topeka today and keep your presents ben lerner he's kicking off a book tour of his latest novel the topeka school

early on in the topeka school adam stumbles into a stranger's house by mistake and he's there for a couple minutes before he realizes he's in the wrong house and during that time he's struck by this sense of sameness that this house could be any house and in a way he could be in everyone's house that he is where he actually is but he's also everywhere and he's seeing the world from two different vantage points to extend is that what you're doing as a writer the idea it is a it is definitely a metaphor for the weird way writing especially writing about a younger version of herself divides you you know because you can have on the one hand you're in the consciousness of the younger version of yourself and on the other hand are kind of floating over at as you try to write the book that not just as a structure right in the religious is a structure of memory to you know you that were always you are always several selves it's

not like it's not like all our past selves disagree or disappear as we grow older you kind of still have a relationship to all the continuum of identities you've had at different moments and sometimes i feel like you can be brought back to one suddenly i'm in for jane for example a very different way she initiated because of we're kind of traumatic experience with her father she had certain points in the book feels like she's a little kid again stuck with him so yeah it is very much a metaphor for the way that you're both identical to yourself in different from yourself when you write it's also who you know very much about but that tendency that was the current tendency towards standardization in the landscape in the language and the way that that kind of creates this weird vertigo that adam finds both really discreet like disheartening and also really kind of beautiful this idea that like about all the tract houses are the same all the goods in the hyper marder the same you know all the the strip malls of the same and it starts to make him kind of

feel like he's yet he's everywhere and nowhere at once and that becomes a theme in any different moments in the book i'm in a way that it's not dissimilar or to the kind of breakdown of language and those other extreme moments were language just becomes sound and no longer makes sense because this is a kind of breakdown of space everything looks the same everything sounds the same so all of a sudden it's just noise or your just kind of in a million places at once and you're also nowhere so that kind of experience of disorientation and reorientation that adam has both signals some of the paradoxes of writing but also some of the paradoxes of language that are going to come up in the book in some of the paradise is perhaps a sigh ecology and therapy in general that you can be here but you can also be at different stages of your life or experiencing phenomenon which are common to everyone totally and it's also it's also actually you know in a way it becomes very much about about race and

privilege because you know adam like he says in the moment when he's like stuck in this house and he's having this kind of revelry he talks about you know how much more dangerous it would be if you were an african american person who accidentally broke into a house as opposed to this privileged white kid and that ability to kind of imagine himself and all those spaces disappearing into the easter that's a different experience based upon you know how you fear the police are your neighbors' or whatever because of your identity so in a lot of those themes of privilege race psychology line which are all kind of packed into that early scene of disorientation it's a really gripping scene it's a it's an incredible way to start out the book just in terms of there's a lot going on but it's also extremely suspenseful it's one of the few times where i've sort of skip ahead to make sure that evidence can get a great note you mean it is it is yeah we're glad you think so i think so there's this book has so many different

themes in so many different locations and so many centers of consciousness that it was it was really important to find a way that the book good without kind of just introducing the themes gather them an image that could be felt as opposed to just described today on cape year presents best selling author ben lerner his latest novel is that topeka school lerner start by kansas public radio on october fifth while he was in lawrence for reading at the lawrence public library i'm j mcintyre my conversation with ben lerner will continue right after this from the university of kansas this is kansas public radio we're hey hey ed knew laurence ninety one five and katie and the bulls for instance and thirty nine he won three support for katie are present on kansas public radio comes from the

university of kansas transforming students and society through academics discovery service and spirit information about the possibilities of a k u education is our minds like hey you got the us mostly clear skies tonight with blows around eight degrees early thirties guys for tomorrow martin luther king jr day we have a slight chance of flurries in the afternoon eyes around twenty three degrees today on k pr presents we're revisiting my conversation with bestselling author ben lerner his latest novel the topeka school has just been named a finalist for the prestigious national book critics circle award i'm j mcintyre ben lerner stop by the k pr studios in october two thousand nineteen to talk about the topeka school as part of our conversation i read an answer from the

novel and asked for his reaction to protect himself from what he wasn't sure at an imagined that he was looking back on a present from a vaguely imagined east coast city where his experiences in topeka could be recounted only with great irony yeah so you know adam's a graduating senior and he's going to go to the east coast for college and he keeps trying to tell themselves like in order to be cool in the moment he's trying to tell himself that he's like oh when i'm a new yorker providence or boston or wherever all of this is going to come to seem silly and so even though i'm kind of desperate to pass a school now like the way he can summon coolest to try to imagine this future from which he he looks back with irony as you said but the real irony is that the older adam who's writing the book takes those early experiences very seriously indeed and it's not at all condescending towards been of

topeka or for the sixteen year old out well he's he's gonna senators the sixteen year old ottoman seventeen are about a minute to know about him but not towards topeka he's really interested in tv car he's really interested in the way that the younger adam was so dominated by this desire to pass is a real man so adam the younger adam gets the irony wrong you know he thinks he thinks he's going to look back with detachment and in fact this book isn't looking back with a lot of feeling in a lot of concern some humor and self deprecation but yeah that's that's a passage in from one ironies aplenty in another the young adam is wrong about how the older adams going to fuel then evans mom packaging gordon is very successful even famous and she talks about what it's like to have a lot of professional success and the downside of that even record here if your book is being celebrated by the new york

times in an uncanny coincidence this bike is right now being celebrated by the new york times how matter is this well i did i mean i think you know my mom was was really well known and i'm like you know on oprah and everything so i don't think my literary celebrity such as it is is really comparable but i but i am i'm flattered and disoriented by like how much attention this book is getting and i do think in writing about her experiences of the way that i am you know writing a book that is a lot of attention can affect your relationship success or i was to certain degree being a little bit self reflective i mean you know my mom was my first model of a kind a person making a life as a writer and were very different writers obviously but i'm more aware now of a lot of the courage involved in my mom's work that i

was at first i'm like how complicated it was for her to be riding what she was writing out the monitor foundation where she both had great support and plenty of naysayers or whatever i mean you know i shouldn't speak for her about that but i think that's probably pretty noncontroversial statement so i mean it is it is empty and i also you know my mom or a book called the mother dance which in part was about my and it wasn't about me my brother and about about cannes of her experience as a mother's of is a way in which she already kind of told part of the story i'm telling it from a different vantage so it is it is you know i mean they are they are related i think the other thing that's kind of an interesting parallel is that you among that first was writing very academic work and then wrote a more popular book in my life was as a poet exclusively and then i kind of accidentally wrote a novel in which got a different kind of attention so i think for both of us there was

like an unexpected change in the relationship the audience and so there was something kind of interesting for me about getting in in that experiment i'd been talking about a kind of imagining your childhood from the perspective of your parents to kind of think about what the the book like what the dance of anger was like for her in there and and the repercussions of the attention so yeah they're very linked here they're not the same story certainly but they are they are related talk to me about writing in prose verses writing poetry that i mean i am i you know one thing is it's just like when i'm writing poems the materiality of the language never disappears like i never want to the language to be forgotten so that a story can be told and when i'm writing prose the language matters immensely of course i want the sentences to be as tuned as i can make them but i also sometimes need the language to take a

background of thing the language is describing so it's kind of a different outcome a different ratio of attention to the kind of this stuff of language and languages and medium but you know they're pretty similar to him like i said you know i think you make poems by lots of different kinds of pattern in sonic padding padding a motif pattern of feeney you make novels in a similar way i make novels in a similar way we're not just thinking about like plot something about patterns heavy things or people do things change over the course of the book you leave things out you know like that might like what you omit to make a narrative compelling in the same way that poetry is so much about felt silence unlike what you don't say i am and not just what you attempt to describe so that there's they're similar but the ratios are different if that makes sense but one thing's for sure is that i don't seem to be able to control when i'm in and be able to write one or the other you know like i

think it seems to be like a sure way to not write a poem for me to sit down and try to write a poem i cut back i can i can sit down and try to write and then i have to kind of see what's possible for me in that moment so i'm still writing poems and poach in so many ways or maims those center for me and i can't hold my next book will be a book of poems but also have just learned i have no i have no idea and no control over each novel is very concerned with poetry you know in their palms in one way or another and each novel so theyre there theyre inextricable practices even though they arc they are distinct it's one of a default and what and what sam slick is prose your default or his poetry or default i think poetry is a thing like our disposition to language and my reading life and my my relationships with other writers is really e more related to poetry i mean just like those you much or who my friends were first in

my heroes and that's the kind of real life i've done and i think the way even you know yesterday i was in kansas city and i was doing some kind of semi yankees casey and i was talking with fiction writers and an end and i think the way that i talk even about like the fiction when i'm working with a student or a friend tends to be more about values associated with the poetic but it tends to be a little bit more about like the process be of a sentence first than it is about like the believability of a character or something like that so i think i think that had a backdrop or orient my orientation towards language is is some this becomes more of a poetry and even a lot of my favorite novels are written by poets like i just wrote an introduction to the re issue of this terrific novel by rosemary waldrep it's a book called the hanky of pippen's daughter and i am i you know i know

rosemary first and foremost as a poet and i've learned tremendously about sentences from her prose poetry but he also wrote an incredible novel sight i think i think poetry is is is the default in that sense i'm visiting with ben lerner he's the author of the topeka school then getting back to the topeka school talk about the title and i started reading it i assume that we were talking about topeka high school where adam as a student but then i thought well no maybe this is referring to the foundation it means that what is the topeka school that i mean you know the the title once they gather all these different kinds of schools like literal and figurative like topeka high school where the foundation is the us as a kind of school but also like you know what kind of school is the family in terms of what you learned i learned or you know to what degree we're what is adam's schooling a relative to masculinity like his kind of inter pollution into an identity so it really

is kind of about all these different pressures and possibilities of education and that also resonates with that the thing i keep returning to about like all these incredible writers to come from topeka cause i kind of i don't think there's a topeka school like there are a lot of writers to share styles or whatever you know but i my candidate won a gesture towards the topeka school the way we talk about the new york school like of poets or whatever because there is such a rich literary heritage but yet it gathers it it did it is it is high school but it's also about just this idea of the older adam trying to think through all the different sights of formation and and some of those are institutions and some of those are events you know from his concussion or what happens with baronet other party you know i mean so yeah it's all about that it's all a kind of schooling information i am broadly construed also with that echo of the poetic poetic richness of the place i'm glad you brought up there and

again because i realize we didn't really get into him he's another one of the main characters is a classmate of adam's tell me a little bit about baron yet what parents can it everywhere and nowhere in the book you know it they're in their own time yasser during his duties is dropped at a high school he's jonathan's patient it's not really clear or you know what's going on with him kind of developmental leahy he can't quite hold down a job he couldn't quite make it it's cool his own father is is is dead died in a car accident which was briefly mentioned his mom is a nurse who actually ends up carrying for adam during his concussion and he went to preschool with adam and other people in the book but his kind of fallen away and become this outsider and you know dare and kind of haunts each chapter the way he haunts the periphery of all these different social worlds like the foundation can't kenneth helphand you know he couldn't afford inpatient treatment even if that was best

for him there's not a job for him the school can't have him and then the other seniors bring him into the social fall dunaway that's largely mocking you know kind of condescending like oh you know your mccall kid malcolm drink beer but maybe not only mocking maybe also a little bit about just kind of like letting him feel like one of them you know they all knew him and like elementary school before they all leave for college so yeah i mean derek is this kind of figure of the man child that's haunting all these communities and that the books and the only community who were kind of half him as the phelps so he's also a kind of you know the and the bet that they made an example of power of his increasing rage it feeling left out and the lack of a language that can give him a sense of value makes them susceptible to that kind of meaning made by homophobia right which which is a kind of meat that gives your life

a certain kind of purpose however impoverished and horrible to be able to say here is the person to blame for everything in the world so yeah darien and adam are kind of in the symmetrical relationship to because they're totally different i mean adam has all this support is all this privilege that barren doesn't but they're also really linked in a lot of ways again in part because they're both so anxious about passing as real men are being accepted as tough guys and so worried about being found out as you know lacking in one way or another so i'm and adam you know that carries a lot of the older adam i think carries a lot of guilt about you know what happened with their and what happens at the end of the book i am so he's he's a he's is another example of kind of the way a certain culture of masculinity can just figure you and he's also a figure for a kind of surplus rage that the community generally doesn't know how to handle and the thing with ben lerner has the author

the topeka school bank you read an excerpt of course this is all just read something that has to do with their own which is one of these brief passages that are somewhat from terrence perspective i mean the book doesn't really claim to have access to kind of what necessarily going on in barron's mind it's very much the older adams and projection but this is a passage where they're in this kind of incorporated first incorporated into the senior party scene there it would help his neighbor ronnie williams move things from his garage to his truck or back mainly tools and lumber baron can you help me with this filled him with pride cody williams was barons agent while they had played together in the distant past cody a quiet actually now looked right through him cody would not defend him from carter or davis' record and types that he would do him no harm never join the laughter whatever country's inclination

he would not defy his father who would wordless lee made it clear you do not mess with their own sometimes cody and aron loaded or unloaded the truck together and aaron felt a brief commonality of purpose lift on three the fraud and cody were shooting baskets in the driveway guaranteed park and watch or maybe dismount and rebound for them take a shot baron on weekend evenings there and had bypassed ronson seen the yellow light of the garage cody drinking with his friends mandy usually among them sometimes wrong would be there smoking a switch or sweet would wave to him but never call him over and it was summer and aaron stood in his yard he could hear through the insect noise on the radio to laughter until one friday in november after unloading heavy equipment until dusk ron said overcoat he's mute objections day and have a beer and the garage there and saw there was a silver kagan a rubber trash can filled with ice and he watched as romney walked on the pump and tapped it it's code his birthday and i'd just as soon they do their drinking

here he gave daring a red plastic cup primarily a phone than served himself and cody ron indicated a stack of folding chairs and aaron unfolded one and sat beside the cable wrong put away some tools on page board hooks and cody took his cook up inside i'm showering to move only to drink or wipes the foam off on his sleeve and a pull down his royals kept as far as possible over his eyes seem to bear in his best strategy for remaining welcome when ron refilled his copy refill behrens but even without the alcohol barons anxious joy would've released into his bloodstream chemical sufficient to prevent him from feeling through his sweatshirt the call a time out there as if to mark the occasion aron saw the closest streetlights flicker on and then around it first no harvard ma for ike more than foe here the car doors slamming shut down the voices of noah carter gordon davis types approaching wrong was there so daring did not move no speech but surprised

unreadable smiles were dressed in fairness the types greeted mr williams one of the cooler dad shook obese hand the latter back now and baggy jeans unlicensed sport apparel ron must've handed bear in the stack of red plastic cups because he found himself offering them to whoever approach the keg a job this one without prices working the kid dare and someone said only mostly mocking him when did the girls appear mandy among them and how that he knows she wore black jeans a red v neck sweater hair pulled up tight since he absolutely would not look at her but she said hi baron matter of factly smiling whips freshly glossed and he held the cops out to her she took one thank you he knew either from his two years at th us or his previous schools the names of almost everyone in the garage although he'd rarely had license to speak them let me feel that for your car or fourth and said and did cheers dude like when

he held a nine volt battery to his tongue the middle of the light beer and aaron's mouth stan had given him a fun of anger about rap music and all those crackers you love it now but what tissue from the stereo had like the shopping carts in the ammo latter one of his rare sentences that managed to hold sense over time that greatness of fit which made their infield his age of his age identical to his body now his body with tonight derek had not moved from his chair but the brim of the hat was raised a little and he saw that some of the girls were not dancing in the cold garage were nodding were bouncing a little lt the beat the intensity of the desire this inspired and ham was closer to its fulfillment than anything he had previously known baron and that garage and his chair last century his happiness all eyes on me the music said then davis was offering him cigarettes hey man what's going on no hard feelings about what went down last summer not from gordon daring you to be

on guard but when the girl named amber said let me see your hair removed his hat and ran her fingers to pull through be through or at least across the black mattered mass not recently washed or cut he was too overwhelmed by pure sensation to care about the laughter here and there others began soliciting speech from him where did you buy those awesome boots is that it hits your bruce do you still practice martial arts you should hang out with us more daring yet were tired of the same shirts and the senior class he just laughed whenever others laughed kept drinking from the cup they kept re filling from alcohol and sheer exhilaration a widening delay obtained between experience and it's conscious registration daring realizing the party had broken up just as they were coaxing him in the back of the jeep cherokee no act driving laura riding shotgun see the chariot from all borough light davis beside him in the back proffering a bottle of mad dog twenty twenty cocoa local wine the base of what no uk called his

system rattling barons chest all eyes on me it's as if by the time the cold air thundering through the sunroof no work left down to let out smoke makes tara know where they're on i seventy they've already arrived at great lakes and twenty miles away mainly upper classman drinking around a bonfire sparks flying off the crackling osage orange a few couples making out on blankets a music from another system only when he rolls onto his back after puking painlessly and the grass somewhere beyond the bright circle of the firelight does he really hear them chanting they're on their own barron and now he shuts is ours he sees the stores that's ben lerner reading from his latest novel the topeka school then one last question this is as you mentioned the third novel featuring adam gordon is there more ahead for him i don't know is the true answer because i've never i've never seem to be in control of what i write

next but i kind of doubt it because i think adam gordon is so much a figure kind of of my youth to a certain degree than i mean that's that he was an avatar that helps me reflect on these different passages of my past and i feel like now i've kind of written my way back to the present and so i would be surprised if i wrote another book that involved the same character but that said i've really learned from experience that i'm like among the worst at predicting what i'm going to write next or who knows for a long time and i know there's going to be another ten more adam gordon books but i like my guess is that this was kind of clothes in a circle with this trilogy and that whatever i do next will probably will probably not involve a character with that name for congratulations on the topeka school and thank you so much for coming in today having enjoyed it i'd been visiting with bestselling author ben lerner about his latest novel the

topeka school lerner grew up in topeka and now lives in new york city where he teaches at brooklyn college lerner has been a finalist for the national book award in poetry and has received numerous honors including fellowships from the fulbright good time and macarthur foundation he stuck by the akp or studio's october fifth two thousand nineteen while in lawrence i'm j mcintyre k pr presents is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas nice boy