Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station and 10:04 find their synthesis in The Topeka School, the third in his Hegelian trilogy. Lerner speaks about language that isn’t just a technology of posturing or combat, but a mode of meaningful social connection, and about building a character who unlearns what had formed and deformed him. The conclusion to a thoroughly comprehended, intuitively understood, and deeply felt trilogy about a writer-to-be’s relationship with language itself.