Transcription
An unnamed former student travels Providence to interview his 90ish professor, Thomas, for a magazine article. The narrator’s recording device (an iPhone) breaks just before the interview begins, but he does not reveal this to the professor. The professor (whom the narrator knows having been his student more than 40 years ago) banters on many subjects, some that diverge quickly into other subjects, only to circle back to asking if the recording device is on. At times, Thomas refers to the narrator as “Max”, who is Thomas’s son. He makes this error several times. There are other slight inconsistencies in his responses. This section takes up the first of three sections, all of which are titled after hotels, where the action of the section happens. Thomas is the worst interview subject, running on and on, going on extreme tangents, etc.
In the second section in Madrid at the Hotel Villa Real, a symposium among Thomas’s student cohort at a restaurant in Spain follows some time after Thomas’s death. During the dinner, the narrator leads off with a description of his final meeting and interview with Thomas, which has already been widely circulated in a popular, widely-read magazine. Following the dinner, where wine flowed generously, one of the people who helped organize the event, Rosa, reveals she is upset with the interviewer and his magazine piece.
The final section takes place in Los Angeles is a touching one that is Max giving a prolonged monologue to the interviewer, telling him about the trouble he’d had with his young daughter’s disinterest with eating and her wasting away. Max and his wife, Emmie, finally take young Adelle to see a specialist famous for her previously diagnosed Failure To Thrive (FTT) diagnosis and learn she actually has “ARFID—avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder.”
The cure? Let her eat what she wants, when she wants, he says. So all the candy returns to the kitchen. Adelle’s iPad is released to her. Suddenly she begins to take interest in ASMR videos of unboxing things like new computers, headphones, etc. While absorbed in the videos, she is distracted enough to begin asking for healthy food.
Ultimately, I’m not sure what this novel is about. The act of transcription, erring, purposefully or otherwise in the reproduction, the actual son of Thomas and the symbolic son of Thomas being friends, the object of the iPhone failing and distorting an interaction while an iPad is involved in likely saving Thomas’s granddaughter’s life. Was Thomas having fun with the interviewer? He seemed a bit anti tech. Who is Thomas? Can we agree he’s probably not Thomas Pynchon?
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