✍ Scribed by Ben Lerner
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Named one of the most anticipated fall books by:
The New York Times Book Review , Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, Vogue, Vulture , The Observer, Kirkus, Lit Hub, The Millions, The Week, Oprah Magazine, The Paris Review Daily, Nylon, Pacific Standard, Publishers Weekly, Slate, The Philadelphia Inquirer , USA Today , the New York Post, and The Guardian
From the award-winning author of 10:04 and Leaving the Atocha Station , a tender and expansive family drama set in the American Midwest at the turn of the century: a tale of adolescence, transgression, and the conditions that have given rise to the trolls and tyrants of the New Right
Adam Gordon is a senior at Topeka High School, class of ’97. His mother, Jane, is a famous feminist author; his father, Jonathan, is an expert at getting “lost boys” to open up. They both work at a psychiatric clinic that has attracted staff and patients from around the world. Adam is a renowned debater, expected to win a national championship before he heads to college. He is one of the cool kids, ready to fight or, better, freestyle about fighting if it keeps his peers from thinking of him as weak. Adam is also one of the seniors who bring the loner Darren Eberheart—who is, unbeknownst to Adam, his father’s patient—into the social scene, to disastrous effect. Deftly shifting perspectives and time periods, The Topeka School is the story of a family, its struggles and its strengths: Jane’s reckoning with the legacy of an abusive father, Jonathan’s marital transgressions, the challenge of raising a good son in a culture of toxic masculinity. It is also a riveting prehistory of the present: the collapse of public speech, the trolls and tyrants of the New Right, and the ongoing crisis of identity among white men. **
An Amazon Best Book of October 2019: A high school debate champion growing up in Topeka, Kansas sounds like a fairly conventional character for a novel. But this is not a conventional novel—it builds through shifting points of view, and it is a book concerned with language and cultural expectation, and how one conveys the other. By the end, you begin to realize that it is a story about how we reached the national state of consciousness we inhabit today. The Topeka School is also autofiction: Lerner’s book tells the story of teenager Adam, the debate champion (as Ben Lerner was himself), and Adam’s parents, both psychologists (as were Lerner’s parents) living in Topeka (where Lerner lived). The entire family struggles at one point or another with success and privilege, something that opens up contradictions within each one of them, and the book itself is a bit of a contradiction—mixing the warmth of 90s nostalgia with the existential anxiousness we recognize so well today. There is a lot going on here, but the read is often mysteriously calming—due to Lerner’s deep relationship with language and subject matter—at the same time that he gives us a great deal to think about. Readers looking for a literary romp should probably search elsewhere. But if you’re looking to go deep, this is your guy. --Chris Schluep, Amazon Book Review
“Ben Lerner is a masterful writer who destabilizes the very notion of what a novel can achieve by making it new at every turn. The Topeka School is not only a fiction for our times, but for the ages: insightful, humane, politically astute, and true.”
―Hilton Als, author of White Girls "In Ben Lerner’s riveting third novel, Midwestern America in the late nineties becomes a powerful allegory of our troubled present. The Topeka School deftly explores how language not only reflects but is at the very center of our country’s most insidious crises. In prose both richly textured and many-voiced, we track the inner lives of one white family’s interconnected strengths and silences. What’s revealed is part tableau of our collective lust for belonging, part diagnosis of our ongoing national violence. This is Lerner’s most essential and provocative creation yet." ―Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen: An American Lyric " The Topeka School is what happens when one of the most discerning, ambitious, innovative, and timely writers of our day writes his most discerning, ambitious, innovative and timely novel to date. It’s a complete pleasure to read Lerner experimenting with other minds and times, to watch his already profound talent blooming into new subjects, landscapes, and capacities. This book is a prehistory of a deeply disturbing national moment, but it’s written with the kind of intelligence, insight, and searching that makes one feel well-accompanied and, in the final hour, deeply inspired." ― Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts " The Topeka School is a novel of exhilarating intellectual inquiry, penetrating social insight, and deep psychological sensitivity. Its beautifully realized characters are shaped, even in the privacy of their inner lives, by the pressures of history and culture―this is a book not only about how things really feel, but what things really mean. To the extent that we can speak of a future at present, I think the future of the novel is here." ―Sally Rooney, author of Normal People
__
"Ben Lerner is a brilliant novelist, and one unafraid to make of the novel something truly new . . . He is one of my favorite living writers." ―Rachel Kushner, author of_ The Flamethrowers_ "Ben Lerner has redefined what it means for a writer to inhabit an American present by showing how a family reckons with its past. Here the personal and political are masterfully interwoven. The Topeka School is brave, furious, and, finally, a work of love." ―Ocean Vuong, author of Night Sky with Exit Wounds and the forthcoming On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
Praise for 10:04 "Reading Ben Lerner gives me the tingle at the base of my spine that happens whenever I encounter a writer of true originality. He is a courageous, immensely intelligent artist who panders to no one and yet is a delight to read." ―Jeffrey Eugenides, author of The Marriage Plot "Just how many singular reading experiences can one novelist serve up? . . . 10:04 is a mind–blowing book … Strange and spectacular." ―Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air “This is a book that belongs to the future.” ―Giles Harvey, The New York Review of Books “[Lerner’s] concerns wrap around the modern moment with terrifying rightness . . . 10:04 describes what it feels like to be alive.” ―John Freeman, The Boston Globe “Mr. Lerner is among the most interesting young American novelists at present . . . We come to relish seeing the world through [the narrator’s] eyes.” ―Dwight Garner, The New York Times “Ingenious . . . This brain-tickling book imbues real experiences with a feeling of artistic possibility, leaving the observable world ‘a little changed, a little charged.’” ―Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
Kansas -- Topeka
📜 SIMILAR VOLUMES
**Named one of the most anticipated fall books by:** _Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, Vulture_ , _The Observer, Kirkus, Lit Hub,__The Millions, The Week, Oprah Magazine, The Paris Review Daily, Nylon, Pacific Standard, Publishers Weekly, Slate, The Philadelphia Inquirer_ , and _The Guardian_ ****
Named one of the most anticipated fall books by:The New York Times Book Review, Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, Vogue, Vulture, The Observer, Kirkus, Lit Hub, The Millions, The Week, Oprah Magazine, The Paris Review Daily, Nylon, Pacific Standard, Publishers Weekly, Slate, The Philadelphia Inquirer,
Darren Eberheart arremessa a bola branca no meio da festinha de sua turma na Topeka High School. A bola, girando no ar como a lua, parece que esteve lá a vida toda. O ano é 1997, e o gesto de violência, aparentemente gratuito, desdobra – em diferentes esferas, da família, da ideologia e da linguagem
Adam Gordon è uno studente dell'ultimo anno di liceo alla Topeka High School. La madre è una celebre autrice femminista, il padre ha il talento di convincere i ragazzi difficili a parlare e ad aprirsi. Entrambi lavorano in una prestigiosa clinica psichiatrica che ha attratto medici e pazienti da ogn
Adam Gordon è uno studente dell'ultimo anno di liceo alla Topeka High School. La madre è una celebre autrice femminista, il padre ha il talento di convincere i ragazzi difficili a parlare e ad aprirsi. Entrambi lavorano in una prestigiosa clinica psichiatrica che ha attratto medici e pazienti da ogn
**Smart and juicy, a compulsively readable novel about a previously happy group of friends and parents that is nearly destroyed by their own competitiveness when an exclusive school for gifted children opens in the community.** This deliciously sharp novel captures the relentless ambitions and fea