The Topeka School

The Topeka School is a 2019 novel by the American novelist and poet Ben Lerner about a high school debate champion from Topeka, Kansas in the 1990s. The book is considered both a bildungsroman and a work of autofiction, as the narrative incorporates many details from Lerner's own life.[2] The novel was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.[3]

The Topeka School
First edition cover
AuthorBen Lerner
Audio read byPeter Berkrot[1]
Nancy Linari[1]
Tristan Wright[1]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
GenreBildungsroman
Set inTopeka, Kansas in the 1990s
PublisherFSG Originals
Publication date
October 1, 2019
Media typePrint (Hardcover)
Pages304
ISBN978-0-374-27778-9
813/.6
LC ClassPS3612.E68 T63 2019

Background

As in Lerner's previous novels, the narrative contains autobiographical elements. Like the protagonist, Adam Gordon, Lerner grew up in Topeka and won a national debate championship in high school, and like Adam's mother Jane in the novel, Lerner's mother, Harriet Lerner, is a psychologist who has published best-selling books aimed at a non-academic audience.[4] Critics Rumaan Alam and Christine Smallwood have referred to the book as an example of autofiction.[5][4]

Plot summary

The novel is set primarily in Topeka, Kansas, in the late 1990s,[6] and is told mainly from the perspective of three characters: Adam Gordon, a high school debate champion, and his parents Jane and Jonathan, who are psychologists at a local institution known as the Foundation. In a nonlinear narrative, the novel explores Adam's preparation for a national debate championship (which he wins), his relationship with his girlfriend Amber, and his parents' lives. One of Adam's classmates, Darren Eberheart, a social misfit and patient of Adam's father, also features in a sequence of shorter chapters that culminates in him seriously injuring a girl at a party who rejected his romantic advances after years of bullying by his peers. The final chapter takes place in 2019 and follows Adam, now a father of two young girls, as he and his wife take their family to Topeka from their home in New York City to protest the Trump administration's family separation policy.

Reception

According to literary review aggregator Book Marks, the novel received mostly positive reviews.[7] Writing for The Paris Review, Nikki Shaner-Bradford praised Lerner's prose.[8] Christine Smallwood, writing for Harper's, referred to Lerner as a "supremely gifted prose stylist, at once theoretical and conversational".[4] Garth Risk Hallberg in The New York Times Book Review acclaimed the novel as “a high-water mark in recent American fiction.”[9]

The book was named one of the top ten books of 2019 by both the New York Times Book Review[10] and the Washington Post.[11] It was a finalist for the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction,[12] as well as the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.[13]

Themes

Lerner describes The Topeka School as about, among other things, "a violent identity crisis among white men" in the 1990s that prefigured the election of Donald Trump in 2016.[2] One of the primary conflicts of the novel is between the prevailing political centrism and "end of history" rhetoric of the time, accepted largely unthinkingly by Adam and his cosmopolitan parents, and an undercurrent of right-wing anger voiced in its most extreme form by the protests of the Topeka-based Westboro Baptist Church.[6] Critics have also noted the themes of toxic masculinity (especially in the Darren subplot) and the breakdown of language as a medium of communication, epitomized by the debating technique of "the spread," wherein a debater tries to overwhelm their opponent with as many arguments as possible regardless of their merit.[4]

References
  1. "The Topeka School - Digital Audio". Macmillan. Retrieved October 3, 2019.
  2. Leyshon, Cressida (20 May 2019). "Ben Lerner on Adolescence and His Forthcoming Novel". The New Yorker. Retrieved 1 October 2019.
  3. Maher, John (May 4, 2020). "Moser, Whitehead, McDaniel, Grandin, Boyer, Brown Win 2020 Pulitzers". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved May 4, 2020.
  4. Smallwood, Christine (1 October 2019). "Novel, Essay, Poem". Harper's. Retrieved 1 October 2019.
  5. Alam, Rumaan (20 September 2019). "The MAGA Plot". The New Republic. Retrieved 1 October 2019.
  6. Brady, Amy (October 2, 2019). "The Topeka of The Topeka School". Slate. Retrieved October 3, 2019.
  7. "The Topeka School". Book Marks. Retrieved 1 October 2019.
  8. Shaner-Bradford, Nikki (28 June 2019). "Staff Picks: Peonies, Poetry, and Passing Things". The Paris Review. Retrieved 1 October 2019.
  9. Hallberg, Garth Risk (2019-10-03). "Ben Lerner's 'The Topeka School' Revisits the Debates of the '90s". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-10-05.
  10. "The 10 Best Books of 2019". The New York Times. November 22, 2019. Retrieved November 26, 2019.
  11. "Best Books of 2019". The Washington Post. November 21, 2019. Retrieved November 26, 2019.
  12. "Announcing the finalists for the 2019 NBCC Awards – National Book Critics Circle". www.bookcritics.org. Retrieved May 5, 2020.
  13. https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year/2020
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