The Topeka School

First edition cover
Author	Ben Lerner
Audio read by	Peter Berkrot [1] Nancy Linari [1] Tristan Wright [1]
Language	English
Genre	Bildungsroman
Set in	Topeka, Kansas in the 1990s
Publisher	FSG Originals
Publication date	October 1, 2019
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print ( Hardcover)
Pages	304
ISBN	978-0-374-27778-9
OCLC	1080555801
Dewey Decimal	813/.6
LC Class	PS3612.E68 T63 2019

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]

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 give a reading of Adam's work. Back in New York City, they attend a protest of the Trump administration's family separation policy.

Reception

According to literary review aggregator Book Marks, the novel received a consensus of "Positive", based on 52 independent mainstream critic reviews: 23 "Rave", 17 "Positive", 11 neutral, and 1 "Pan". ^[7]

Writing for The Paris Review, Nikki Shaner-Bradford praised Lerner's prose. ^[8] Christine Smallwood, writing for Harper's Magazine, 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]

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]

Awards and honors

References