Kate MacLam<\/p>\n
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I thought about The Transcriptionist<\/i> for weeks and months after reading it, as my cat ate my hair (as ready as the lions\u2014he didn\u2019t even wait until I was asleep). When I first read it I was deep in MFA applications, pacing around the office where I worked as a combination, imitation social worker and imitation human resources employee. I longed to feel both satisfied and appreciated. As much as I wanted to help people with disabilities and their families, I hated their existential dysfunction. The book served me as a haunting manifesto against the nine-to-five and against a place I was unknowingly trespassing\u2014the other side of empathy.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Transcrptionist<\/i> follows Lena, \u201ca transcriptionist, but also a gatekeeper for background noise,\u201d at the New Record Times<\/i> as she chronicles the death of Arlene, a blind woman she met briefly and poignantly on the bus. In their brief meeting, Arlene proposes to Lena, \u201cWe can\u2019t keep up with the suffering of others. We have to close ourselves off. How else can we survive?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Early in the novel Rowland highlights Lena\u2019s pattern of locking \u201cherself up in a tower,\u201d previously with religion and academia, now with her job. The story surrounds her breaking out of the tower\u2014her voice the key. Filled with the thrill of someone doing what they shouldn\u2019t be doing and reminders we are all only a moat away from our own lions, The Transcriptionist, <\/i>creates a narrative that perfectly demonstrates the modern struggle between empathy and being consumed by sorrow.<\/span><\/p>\n Throughout the book we discover how Lena and Arlene, a court reporter, are connected. Arlene is blind and physically unable to see the people around her overlooking her. Similarly, others are blind to Lena, and she ignores the problem. Both women are employed to suppress their voices, replacing them with the voices of others, and by extension are rendered invisible. Lena (whose surname is Repass\u2014meaning both to return and pass over) allows a co-worker to mistakenly call her \u201cCarol\u201d until he attempts to correct someone calling her Lena, \u201cat first it didn\u2019t matter and then it was too late,\u201d she apologizes. Colleagues vouchsafe their dictation\u2014calling the service \u201cobsolete\u201d and \u201cquaint\u201d in spite of recent use of the service. We discover eating Arlene upset the lions, which pairs beautifully with the way it haunts Lena to eat the words of the lion-hearted reporters. <\/span><\/p>\n At the heart of the novel is the idea that we must be empathetic but not consumed by the suffering of others. While visiting in the zoo in search of information about Arlene\u2019s death, only she and a young boy are able to hear the roar of the lion at the zoo; only they are open to the suffering of others\u2014but it is to the point of dysfunction. We must have our own voices and must speak our own truth. Lena is a reformed English scholar, and Rowland deftly integrates classic literature into the heart of her character. Lena often recites to herself, much the way she reads the newspaper, as a way to replace her own words, her own life, with those of others. We must listen. And we must, like Lena does, push ourselves back from the other side of empathy.<\/span><\/p>\n Filled with delicate prose, studied observations, and clever word play (\u201cthe Record records but it doesn\u2019t remember\u201d), the novel engages and impresses the reader with its style and intelligence. The Transcriptionist<\/i> is satisfying read, which I appreciated very much.<\/span><\/p>\n \n \n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Transcriptionist<\/i> by Amy Rowland<\/p>\n Algonquin Books<\/span><\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kate MacLam I thought about The Transcriptionist for weeks and months after reading it, as my cat ate my hair (as ready as the lions\u2014he didn\u2019t even wait until I was asleep). When I first read it I was deep in MFA applications, pacing around the office where I worked as a combination, imitation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":540,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-written-by"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/540"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":485,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482\/revisions\/485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}