Book Review of The Topeka School by Ben Lerner
UPDATED: 2/5/2023
[Disclosure: This review includes affiliate links. Purchases made through the link provide a small commission to us at no cost to you.]
(click the image above to purchase this book through Amazon)
304 pages, published in 2019
YOU MAY ENJOY THIS BOOK IF YOU LIKE:
Literary Fiction * Contemporary Fiction * Auto-Fiction * Novels with Social/Political Commentary
TRAVEL INSPIRATION:
The Topeka School is primarily set in Topeka, Kansas, circa 1997. The novel brings the formative years of character Adam Gordon as he finds his place in this midwestern state. The author, whose life is highly represented in this work of auto-fiction (more on that below), was also born and raised in Topeka.
The fictional Adam Gordon is writing the novel from the vantage point of a 2019 New Yorker, so New York also features in spots.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: ben lerner
Ben Lerner’s began his literary career as a poet, and he has several full-length books of poetry published, beginning with the first, Angle of Yaw, in 2006, which was followed in 2010 by Mean Free Path and in 2016 by No Art.
He is the author of three fictional works, all of which are categorized as auto-fiction, which is a term that dates to the 1970s but has really picked up speed as a genre in the 2010s. Auto-fiction is essentially a fictionalized account of the author's own life, which means that it takes fictional liberties that a true auto-biography would ont permit while still including many real-life aspects.
Prior to The Topeka School, which earned Lerner a place as a finalist for the Pulitizer Prize for Fiction in 2020, he published Leaving the Atocha Station in 2011 and 10:04 in 2014.
REVIEW OF the topeka school BY ben lerner
The Topeka School tells the story of midwesterner Adam Gordon growing up in the shadow of his psychiatrist parents, who work at the Foundation, an institute focused on psycholgy. His mother has gained national attention for her published book aimed at helping couples, and his father seeks to counsel "lost boys," an encroaching issue of Adam's generation that has future ramifications for the country as a whole. This theme is at the heart of this novel.
Adam’s community is fairly insular with many of his classmates’ parents working at the same institute as his parents. Confronted with being overly self-aware and self-reflective, Adam and his peers are both a mockery of and beneficiaries of America’s hyper-focus on psychology. No action or decision is merely a surface-level one; it must mean something bigger.
Lerner draws a generational line from those coming-of-age in the late 1990s, an era of creature comforts and when youth could be disaffected by meaninglessness, pre-smart phone distractions, to the present. What happened to ‘lost boys’ exemplified by the character of Darren Eberheart? Or, in reverse: What is the matter with (some) adult - predominantly white - men? Where in the recesses of their past did they take a wrong turn?
While I have read other books by writers of this generation, Lerner seemed to capture the essence of it in a way that felt uniquely real. (I graduated from high school three years after Lerner and his characters.) He is certainly contending with a complex, oft-discussed aspect of current American life: how some adults (again, mostly men) seem lost, unmoored. As Lerner has shared in interviews about the book, he recognizes that he cannot speak for the entirety of a diverse America so he is using his small view into the world to highlight an aspect of this issue. While the book pins a societal cause on the erosion of public debate that has occurred over decades, it leaves out some key elements in my opinion, namely the growing economic inequality and the related pride-of-self that makes ‘lost boys’ into ‘lost men’.
On the flip side of the gender coin, one of the important and most explored characters in the novel is Adam Gordon’s mother, Jane. She is maltreated for her gender professionally by peers, publicly by the precursors to online trolls, and personally by a family member who we learn has victimized her. She contends with all of this in a way that does not diminish her - though one could wonder what additional successes she could have had in life without these barriers. Juxtaposed with the struggling men who surround her, it almost seems like the message is that those who face adversity are more successful than those without.
Overall, I enjoyed this book and the characters, but there was a periodic self-righteousness that came through in the character of Adam Gordon. This mostly occurred towards the end in a description of protesting against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials and in standing up to a father at a playground but cropped up occasionally throughout. The Topeka School has been widely lauded for Lerner’s awareness of the broader societal issues, and he has received credit for recognizing that he is a well-off white male. I personally read some of these scenes as someone desperate to stake his claim as “not one of those men” and in doing so, the book lost some of its power. If it had ended just a tad earlier, I think The Topeka School would have been stronger for it.
DISCUSS the topeka school
I shared above my own personal criticism of this novel - what I deemed self-righteousness. Did these scenes resonate with you in the same way or how did you feel about them?
Click the image below to save this review to Pinterest for later!
Check out our posts about books set in Kansas:
Check out our review of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
A novel by Lerner’s student, Ocean Vuong