Ben Lerner's new novel 'Transcription' arrives as a powerful defense of fiction's enduring vitality in an age of autofiction and literary skepticism. The acclaimed author, winner of a MacArthur 'genius' grant and hailed as a savior of contemporary fiction, explores how the novel can accommodate difficult feelings about its own artifice and artificiality.

Lerner's work has always been fascinated by the novel's perceived failures - its solipsism, puerility, and naïveté. His previous trilogy followed a Lerner stand-in through maturation, from loafing in Spain to becoming a father, using a classic Gen X voice marked by irony and terror of fraudulence. 'Transcription' marks a departure, featuring more silence and air, as the narrator travels back in time to confront people from his past.

The novel's three sections are built around conversations, with the first featuring an interview with a 90-year-old mentor after the narrator drops his phone in water. Lerner has always been attentive to how technology mediates communication, and 'Transcription' chronicles the confusion and misunderstanding that new technologies introduce. Through his exploration of fiction's fakery and artificiality, Lerner suggests that we construct ourselves moment by moment, just as characters are constructed on the page.