Jessa Crispin on Ben Lerner

BONE TO PICK, number 1,017:

Jessa Crispin, formerly of Topeka, took issue with Ben Lerner's The Topeka School in Baffler 50, writing, "The Topeka School's Topeka is not a Topeka I recognize, at least culturally." Oddly, the specifics she cites to illustrate the non-Topeka-ness of Lerner's Topeka are drawn from Lawrence and Kansas City, not Topeka, but let's leave that aside for now and simply consider the proposition, "This author's X is not an X I recognize." What does it mean?

Does it mean "This book would be a better book if it better reflected my own experience of X"? But that's silly, isn't it? Do two people ever have quite the same impression of any place? If you want a book that better reflects your own sense of X, why don't you write it?

Does it mean "This book is not fair to X and will give readers the wrong idea of X." This might be a fair objection if the book were non-fiction. But are novels supposed to be fair? Joyce's Buck Mulligan, we could say, is hardly fair to Oliver St. John Gogarty, from whom Joyce appropriated several characteristics in creating Mulligan. Does that matter? Plenty of people would say (have said) Joyce was not fair to Dublin, either. Sinclair Lewis was not fair to Sauk Centre. Jane Austen was not fair to Bath. Novelists are under no obligation to be fair.

And assuredly no novelist writing about Topeka is obliged to be fair to Lawrence or Kansas City.

Crispin's piece is a Baffler "Outburst," and hence supposed to be grouchy and intemperate, so it's a success in that respect, but "This author's X is not an X I recognize" is a formula overdue for retirement.