Novel of the week
Transcription is stuffed with such quotidian references to our troubled present: our bamboozled world of emojis and QR codes, phone chargers and Zoom calls,
SWITCH ON your iPhone, tap in your passcode, click open Utilities. Ignore the clock, the calculator, the compass and the measuring tape. Press the voice memo box and up pops “All Recordings” with that neat red RECORD button like a Japanese rising sun. That’s the cover image of Ben Lerner’s fourth novel, a slim but nifty affair about our contemporary reliance, our reflex use, of the mobile phone. His narrator’s problems start when he drops his mobile into a sink full of water, a blow because he’s about to interview his intellectual mentor – 90-year-old Thomas – a famous thinker on art and technology.
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