Purchase a copy for yourself here!
The Topeka School is the third novel from American poet and author Ben Lerner, the culmination of a literary trilogy of the auto fiction genre. Lerner gives his protagonist, Adam Gordon, a personal history that matches his own: a childhood in Topeka, Kansas, where Lerner was raised by two psychiatrist parents, and competed in high school debate contests and participated in freestyle rap competitions with his white peers on the weekends. Lerner’s relationship with language is a crucial through line in the novel, as many of his growing pains are most easily understood as efforts to find language for his desires and values. Everything in the novel is language adjacent, and Lerner’s masterful and cutting prose grabs at the roots of role that language plays in not only his own life, but the lives of others.
Central to the narrative is Lerner’s relationship with his parents. Lerner’s mother, Harriet, rose to fame as a prominent feminist author during Lerner’s childhood, and Gordon’s fictionalized mother does as well. His father’s work centered around the rehabilitation of “lost boys”, who are male adolescents struggling to relate to their surroundings in a positive way. Adam’s narration is interspersed with chapters authored by his mother, Jane, his father, Jonathan, and Darren Eberheart, a developmentally delayed classmate of Adam’s, and a patient of Adam’s father. Darren’s chapters illuminate the struggles of a young man attempting to find acceptance amongst his peers despite his inability to connect.
These characters interact with their landscape in a variety of ways, as Adam comes of age in a quiet midwestern community where the phenomena that have become hallmarks of Trump era conservatism were coming to light long before they became a part of the national conversation. Adam’s mother, Jane, is one of the early targets of a group that originated in Topeka, soon to become the Westboro Baptist Church, the homophobic hate group that captured the attention of masses with hate speech street signs. Boiling under the surface of the quiet midwestern community is the frustration of white males who believe that progressive efforts toward inclusivity represent an attack on their way of life. Amongst this “silent majority”, who are largely credited with the surprise victory of Donald Trump in the presidential election, are the men who call Jane on the phone to call her a variety of misogynist names in response to the publication of her feminist literature, Adam’s debate coach, and Darren, who is easily manipulate by the adults in his life. This novel is about the ways that toxic masculinity and white hegemony have wreaked havoc on the American political landscape, seeking to contextualize Trump’s America within the psyche it emerges from.
What feels most striking about this novel is its self-awareness. Adam is hyperaware of the way he is perceived by those around him, and Lerner’s relationship to his protagonist mirrors the psychiatric efforts of Adam’s parents and their colleagues. The novel is about psychiatry as much as it is about language, as Lerner occupies a variety of perspectives in an effort to understand the ethos of a nation that struggles to come to terms with its identity. The novel is at once a bildungsroman, a political tract, a family epic, and a psychiatric research effort. The exploration of these seemingly disparate forms enriches each one in their interactions, as Lerner’s concerns coalesce in both personal and universal terms very strongly. This is a truly masterful work that blends personal narrative with political insight in a way that feels like a landmark in the history of fiction writing.