The Topeka School

I don't mean to pick on The Topeka School, by Ben Lerner, which is a beautiful book, speaking of the language. But I find it a trend in the literary novels I've read lately that the authors have created immaculate prose, but at the expense of a coherent plot. The Topeka School almost dares us to understand it, as it employs multiple narrators and a nonchronological story. It requires careful attention, something that is not always available in my life.

As the title suggest, the story is set in Topeka, but with New York types. Indeed, two of the main characters, Jane and Jonathan Gordon, are psychologists from New York who are in the city because of the Foundation, a clinic of some renown (I guess it's like the Mayo Clinic being in Minnesota). Their son, Adam, is a prodigy of sorts, a high school debating champ, and much of the book is given over to the competitions he takes place in.

Woven though this family's story is that of Darren, a classmate of Adam's and a social outcast, who has interstitial chapters of a few pages in italics, and we know that his story is leading up to something very bad.

What are we to make of all this? I'm not quite sue. I will say that I've never read a book set in Topeka before, nor about debating. The rules and such are interesting. Lerner is from Topeka, and given the familiarity, probably a debater as well. But nothing about this hit me on a gut level. Lerner writes beautifully, given such sentences as "To an anthropologist or ghost wandering the halls of Russell High School, interscholastic debate would appear less competitive speech than glossolalic ritual." Lerner uses anthropology more than once, as if his characters were subjects of study rather than real people, Of Darren he writes: "Then there was their anthropological fascination: he was their Victor of Aveyron, their Kaspar Hauser. Could he learn their speech and customs? Only almost, and by failing, Darren performed a critical social function: he naturalized their own appropriated talk and ritual; Darren helped them keep it real."

As set in Topeka, Lerner also makes use of the very real Westboro Baptish Church. An encounter between the protesters and the Gordon family goes very bad, when Adam engages them and they are delighted. They and Fred Phelps are portrayed as something of a blight on the town, a reminder that it is not a city of enlightenment.

The nonlinear structure is at times off-putting, as stories don't reach a conclusion. We read about Jonathan on a flight to New York, where Adam is living and has just had a bad break-up with his girlfriend, who has gone home to Spain. But we never find out what happened when he landed, and later we learn that Adam has married that girl and has a couple of kids. What happened in the mean time?

The Topeka School has some virtuosic passages but is letdown by an obfuscating style. I will end on one my favorite parts, which incorporates both the high art and the popular reference: “The opposite of a truth,” Klaus quoted, “is a falsehood; but the opposite of a profound truth”—pause for emphasis, sound of sprinklers, insects, push mowers, felt absence of city noise, Kenny Rogers from a passing car—“may be another profound truth.”