An Embarrassment of Exactness in Ben Lerner’s Transcription
In forging an interview, Lerner’s narrator must reckon with what an actual recording would have let him avoid
Anyone who has transcribed a conversation knows the strangeness of the result: Speech, once written down, often looks less intelligent than it sounded. Repetitions that carried rhythm become clutter; vulnerable hesitations become defects; interruptions that were the life of the exchange become punctuation problems. To transcribe is not to preserve ...
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