Welcome to Literary Friction. I'm Carrie Plitt, here as always with my co-host Octavia Bright. Hi, Octavia. Hi, Carrie. Last show of the year today, very exciting. I know, I can't believe it. Time has flown, as they say. I mean, yeah, it has. It has also very cold in the studio, so I'm feeling quite alert.

Yeah, we're in scarves.

But I took off my coat.

You did, so did I.

Ready to spend some time with you, coatless.

This is excellent chat.

So good, yeah.

Just going to go straight into it.

Today, we're going into therapy, or more accurately, we'll be talking about therapy's

intersection with literature.

Do you see what I did there?

I did, and I loved it.

And also, I actually do just want this to be a therapy session now.

Which side of the couch are we both on, though?

Well, I was about to say, I think, think hmm i would say you might be a better therapist

do you think yeah i'll take that yeah no seriously i think i think you you're you're good at that

thanks you're pretty good at it too to be honest i'm okay maybe we'll do like a bonus episode where we do, we swap and we, no, I'm running away with myself.

Anyway, does analysis make good fiction?

Do therapists make good characters or good authors?

And what has the language of psychology given to literature?

We're very happy that to help us answer these questions.

Today, we will be talking to the novelist Ben Lerner, whose third novel, The Topeka School, is a brilliant meditation on family, toxic masculinity, whiteness, and American life, told through the lens of one man's coming of age in Topeka, Kansas, and also some debating in the 90s. Octavia, do you want to introduce Ben Lerner? I'd love to. Ben Lerner was born in Topeka, Kansas in 1979. He has received fellowships from the Fulbright, Guggenheim and the MacArthur Foundation, and is the author of three internationally acclaimed novels, leaving the Atotcha Station 10.04 and the Topeka School. He has published the poetry collections

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