Members Only: The Literarians

Free

Open to Members Only

Wednesday, 12:30 pm - 2:00 pm February 19, 2020

The Center for Fiction
15 Lafayette Avenue
Brooklyn, NY, USA

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The Literarians is a free monthly discussion group open to members of The Center. The Literarians read a wide variety of contemporary fiction. The group is led by our librarian Allison Escoto. New participants are welcome throughout the year!

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Up Next:

The Topeka School by Ben Lerner

Previous Selections:

Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
The Parisian by Isabella Hammad
Normal People by Sally Rooney
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Trust Exercise by Susan Choi
Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday
The Burning Girl by Claire Messud
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

Led by

Allison Escoto

Head Librarian

Allison Escoto

Head Librarian

New Yorker by way of New Orleans, Allison Escoto received her BA in Creative Writing from SUNY New Paltz and closed out the 90s as a bookseller in Greenwich Village. After several years in publishing, she pursued and received her MLS from Queens College. Since then she has worked as a librarian for 15 years in various libraries in and around NYC and has been moonlighting as a poet and copywriter. She is the Associate Editor for Newtown Literary Journal, a publication dedicated to featuring writers from her beloved Queens.

Up Next

1 .

Buy this book

The Topeka School

By Ben Lerner

Adam Gordon is a senior at Topeka High School, class of ’97. His mother, Jane, is a famous feminist author; his father, Jonathan, is an expert at getting “lost boys” to open up. They both work at a psychiatric clinic that has attracted staff and patients from around the world. Adam is a renowned debater, expected to win a national championship before he heads to college. He is one of the cool kids, ready to fight or, better, freestyle about fighting if it keeps his peers from thinking of him as weak. Adam is also one of the seniors who bring the loner Darren Eberheart—who is, unbeknownst to Adam, his father’s patient—into the social scene, to disastrous effect.

Deftly shifting perspectives and time periods, The Topeka School is the story of a family, its struggles and its strengths: Jane’s reckoning with the legacy of an abusive father, Jonathan’s marital transgressions, the challenge of raising a good son in a culture of toxic masculinity. It is also a riveting prehistory of the present: the collapse of public speech, the trolls and tyrants of the New Right, and the ongoing crisis of identity among white men.