Discuss the structural and rhetorical effects of the narrative shift to Max’s first-person monologue in Part 3. Is the novel effectively replacing the narrator from Parts 1 and 2? Why or why not? What would this achieve?

How does Lerner use the technological mediation of the human voice to explore the porous boundaries between historical trauma, familial intimacy, and hallucination?

Transcription presents the narrator’s fabrication of an interview as a central plot point. Compare this act with the narrative manipulation of a classic unreliable narrator from another literary work, such as Stevens in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day. What distinguishes Lerner’s exploration of narrative unreliability in the context of autofiction and digital-age anxiety?

Analyze how digital technology functions as both a source of and a paradoxical treatment for anxiety in the novel’s younger generation, particularly Eva and Emmie.

Analyze the ethical debate at the center of the novel. Is the narrator’s fabrication an unforgivable moral failure or a complex act of artistic creation?

How does Thomas’s persistent intellectual authority, even as he experiences cognitive change, reveal the complex nature of influence and the limitations of mentorship?

Both the narrator and Max use a smartphone in relation to Thomas, but with opposite intentions and outcomes. Analyze how the novel contrasts the narrator’s use of a dead phone with Max’s use of a live phone, commenting on the competing desires for artistic freedom and factual certainty.

Discuss the novel’s attitude towards the past. Does Lerner believe it is useful to keep looking back or is the effort futile? Why or why not?