Ben Lerner’s new novel, “Transcription,” is less than a hundred and fifty pages long. It is slim and sly—“quieter” than his three previous novels, as he puts it—but, like all of Lerner’s books, it teems with erudition and artistic ambition, exploring the instability of memory, the mediating powers of language, and the “new-old” complexities of technological change. Lerner is an accomplished poet, ...