“The Topeka School” by Ben Lerner (post 2): Poet’s latest autofictional novel begins with puzzling symptoms of high school debating champion

The novel’s first thirty-five pages are not written as clearly as they might have been, seemingly intentionally. There are a couple of unexplained shifts from third- to first-person narration. And Adam Gordon, a high school debating champion, while debating, purposely uses, but then becomes subject to—is he taken over by a poetic alternate personality?—poetic obfuscation:

“He began to feel less like he was delivering a speech and more like a speech was delivering him…that he no longer had to organize arguments so much as let them flow through him…he was more in the realm of poetry than of prose, his speech…felt its referential meaning dissolve into pure form…he was seized…by an experience of prosody [poetic meters and versification]” (1, p. 25).

Adam’s parents, both psychotherapists themselves, insist that he resume psychological treatment with someone, because he sometimes gets enraged and argumentative at home. It is unclear if this relates to a past concussion and/or to ongoing migraine headaches.

While Adam is at an appointment with a psychologist, the narration is interrupted by the following passage in italics, which may be either a psychotic voice or the voice of an alternate personality (are Adam’s migraines messages from this voice?):

“I warned you, motherfucker; I said step off. I said affirmative plan will trigger widespread particles of anger resulting in the declaration of martial law of migraine which does permanent damage to democratic institutions leads to collapse of NATO of the sound good rules that would enable thousands to live together in Rolling Hills Nursing Home…” (1, pp. 33-34).

1. Ben Lerner. The Topeka School. New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 2019.