Transcription
Most interesting article I’ve read in the last few days = this NYT piece about artist Julia Weist and the diagrammatic collages she creates using data from her role as a private investigator — a role that prompted the New York Department of State to investigate one of its investigators (that is, Weist; the conundrum at hand was “how exactly her work as an artist qualified her to be a P.I.”). The best part is that Weist took the transcript of this investigation and has turned it into in a play called “Questioning,” currently being performed in Los Angeles. Oh, and there’s actually an even better part: Yes, the script is the verbatim transcript, but the actors lip sync to the actual audio recording.
I’m totally obsessed!**
Which explains why I was also obsessed with Ben Lerner’s wildly lauded newest novel (more a novella, really), Transcription. Our protagonist (seemingly a possible fill-in for Lerner himself, much like in his novel 10:04) travels from NYC to Providence to interview his mentor, drops his phone in the sink (not the toilet! as he’s quick to point out), which renders it useless. He has no way of recording this interview so tries to reconstruct it from memory.
Lerner’s work is a fascinating and “thinky” (a possibly annoying adjective that reviewers tend to conjure when describing his writing) look at how technology mediates reality, memory, and behavior (in particular, parenting behavior).
** I’m also newly obsessed with her website — both for the content (obvi), but also for the layout because she, like me, decided to go with a “you just gotta poke around to figure it out” ambiance. So obviously we’re kindred spirits? (#iwish) I’m for sure going to write more about her at some point because although her undergrad is from Cooper Union (i.e. art school), she also has a Masters in library science, and I can’t wait to learn more about how she accidentally and unintentionally got a romance novel published.
originally published on instagram