A defense of Ben Lerner's The Topeka School and a look at Lydia Davis's mind at work

Kind of surprising to read Jon Baskin's lengthy essay in The Point, much of which criticizes Ben Lerner as anti-literature: Baskin makes a (correct) distinction regarding the history of literary criticism in the 20th century, in which it became old-fashioned and quaint to read (or write) in order to gain access to the consciousness of another (the author) and criticism moved toward distrust of authors/authority and toward deconstruction of the novel. Fair enough - and a good distinction and not necessarily something nefarious (the social consciousness of criticism and the connection between literature ans society is all to the good). Strangely, however, he puts Lerner in the camp of those who hate literature and believe we read (and write) so as to deconstruct, to be smarter, more aware, more worldly than those whom we read. I strongly disagree re Lerner; if anything, he's too immersed in literature, especially in his early works, which are brimming with quotations and allusions and about which I felt, while reading, that he should just get on w/ it and tell his story. Lerner's current novel, The Topeka School, does just that: He tells, in a series of narratives from the perspective of several characters (his mother, father, and youthful self) the story of his family and of his own coming of age - all to the good! Baskin makes much of the conclusion of the novel, in which Lerner, now in his 30s or so, joins his wife and 2 young daughters in a protest at the ICE hq in NYC - and he sees this as Lerner's turning away from writing as personal expression toward the camp of writing as engagement. Actually, I think Lerner carried this novel one chapter too far, and I think the novel would be much better had he stripped it of the NYC protest chapter - which seems to be there only or primarily to show Lerner as a smart and brave and woke father (in one 3rd-wall break, he notes how difficult it is to write about his daughters using made-up names). I really thing the novel should have ended w/ the chapter in which her returns to Topeka for a reading, which would have been a nice echo of the opening in which he is a callow though brilliant young man. I also think he didn't adequately conclude the Darin chapters; we need to see and know more about what he did (striking someone w/ a billiard ball) and how his life course led him to the viciously right-wing Phelps family (maybe this is another novel?), and for that matter perhaps some further explanation of his mother's violent outburst against his father (obviously about infidelity, but how did this play out in the family?). In any event, I admire that Lerner in this novel is committed to plot, character, and point of view - it seems to me that Topeka is a great step forward in his career.

I've also been reading a bit of Lydia Davis's Essays One, her new collection of her 40 or so years of literary criticism. The first section centers reader's versions of two long lectures she gave as part of a fiction-writer's master class, in which she shows examples of some of her earliest work (non-Spoiler: She was always smart!) and how her style grew and matured, sometimes in surprising ways. She also demonstrates how she drew and draws on journal entries - including those by other writers (e.g., Kafka) for story ideas; and she shows all the art and thinking that goes into her composition of extremely short fiction. She bristles at the handle "experimental" - a more appropriate term might be unconventional or original - and her dissection of some of her early short works and their relationship to her reading is a window onto a writer's mind at work. Her work is too idiosyncratic to be a guidepost for other aspiring writers - it's too easy to write short fiction badly (just as it's too easy to write a bad haiku), but there's much to learn from her as well, notably: Keep a journal or notebook, write in it often, look back, review and revise and rewrite.