Early on in Transcription, Ben Lerner’s new novel, the narrator finds himself without a cell phone. (Or more precisely, without a working cell phone: He knocked his into a sink full of water just before leaving his hotel.) As he walks through the streets of Providence, Rhode Island, phonelessness becomes a state of extreme presence. He’s “more aware of silicates glittering in the asphalt, the little plumes of vapor that were my breath, the articulation of branches and their shadows on the