Ben Lerner on the Writer in Therapy
Key takeaways
- Or maybe this story only became possible for him because he does trust that she’ll never look?
- I think the fiction is designed to make us wonder: Did the narrator tell the therapist that he’d written this, that he was going to publish it?
- And then: yes, it’s a one-sided conversation—but a conversation meant to be overheard by readers, by anyone who wants to listen in, anyone except the addressee.
Illustration by The New Yorker; Source photograph by Momo Takahashi Save this story Save this story Save this story Save this story. This interview was featured in the Books & Fiction newsletter, which delivers the stories behind the stories, along with our latest fiction. Sign up to receive it in your inbox.This week’s story, “The Readers,” takes the form of a one-sided conversation between a male writer and a female therapist. He’s addressing her as he analyzes his feelings about a decision she’s made not to read his writing. How painful is it for writers when they believe they’re going unread?
One thing he seems to be doing (consciously or not) is running a “stress test” (to use a cardiac term) on their relationship—testing whether she’ll be able to keep to their agreement not to read his writing once the writing is about the therapy, once it’s addressed to her. Or maybe this story only became possible for him because he does trust that she’ll never look? If that’s true, going unread by her is helping him make new work for other readers, new life on the other side of his medical and mental crises.
I think the fiction is designed to make us wonder: Did the narrator tell the therapist that he’d written this, that he was going to publish it? Did they discuss what it all might mean for them—how it might be thought of as an homage or as a kind of hostility, as an ode to holding boundaries or a violation of one? Will it move his therapy forward or ruin it?