What Lasch Knew

Ben Lerner has written an intense new novel that will mark our cultural moment for some time, even in these strange days, but in ways that, at times, skirt reality and perpetuate hoary stereotypes. It’s all here: the crisis of young men, the extended consequences of a therapeutic culture, political strife, regional frictions, the workplace complexities faced by female professionals, abuse, the red/blue binary, the health of public discourse, and, fittingly, a bit of overwrought social criticism. While miscues mar the book, it remains a necessary read if not simply for its spotlighting of our present dilemmas, but for its partial but revealing misapprehension of our time.