Praise for Men and Apparitions (2018) "In a novel that overflows with obsessive, encyclopedic energy, her characters luxuriate in self-conscious play, double meaning, and provocative inquiry. The result is a work that enlarges our understanding of what the novel can be--and the sense of self we take for granted. Tillman writes pictures the way Jeanette Winterson writes the body: with great and counterintuitive attention to detail, theorizing and revising as she goes. If Men and Apparitions is an image, it''s a Polaroid--maybe a haunted one--that someone hands you as it''s still developing. Tillman insists that there are formal and social conventions yet to be upended and rethought. Even if she doesn''t achieve it herself, the magic is that you can see them materializing in your hand. These layers are part of her brilliance in conveying the self-in-progress."-- The New Republic "Lynne Tillman writes with wit that makes the reader dance.
"-- KCRW''s Bookworm "Lynne Tillman''s fiction is animated by critical inquiry: her characters question everyone and everything around them, they question themselves, they question their own questions. Her texts blended art-critical acumen with literary expressions of sensation and anxiety. For Tillman, neurotic reflection is not a retreat from politics: it''s a contemporary form of sensitivity to the world and the people in it. Of course, it can also be more than a tad blinkered and narcissistic. This push and pull between curiosity and insularity is a vivifying tension in her work. Somewhat akin to John Ashbery''s liberal inclusion of clichés in his poems, Tillman''s use of familiar cultural commentary represents how individual notions of truth are often tied up in idiosyncratic or fuzzy thoughts yet can become profound in the complex context of a life, or a book. Though her writing is conceptually knotty, Tillman''s style gives her work clarity. Casual and direct, her prose is associative both in content (it skips from one digression to another) and rhythm (it is often irregular, singsongy, bouncy).
No matter what genre Tillman is working in, this style suggests an endlessly unspooling talking cure, a social body attempting to imperfectly come to terms with itself. Men and Apparitions is one of her most sustained, complicated, and astute reflections on the dialectics of sensitivity."-- Art in America "[A] smart and sleightful novel. Over the four hundred pages of Men and Apparitions , Zeke is by turns analytic, emotional, distanced from his own tale, and immersed in others'' histories. In some respects, there is an orthodox novel of late-twentieth-century American family life lurking inside Men and Apparitions, but the novel is more essay collection than cross-generational saga. Most of [Tillman''s] constellating of culture is sharp and sharply expressed. Among its many other wise and witty lines of thought, Men and Apparitions is a vexing inquiry into the recent sexual-political past."-- Bookforum ".
Tillman''s work is the perfect cure: placing plot in the background, she foregrounds critical thought and observation for a brilliant hybrid of cultural anthropology and fiction."-- Mask Magazine "As a steadfast Lynne Tillman fan, I am grateful for her authentically weird and often indescribable books. She gives me permission to continue to try to write such work myself."-- Sarah Manguso, author of 300 Arguments and The Guardians "No one anywhere writes more vibrantly and astutely into the gut of culture than Lynne Tillman. I always want to eat her books because her language is profoundly embodied. She is my secular art angel, my intellectual and creative hope, my full blown galaxy. In Men and Apparitions readers take a ride on the back of Zeke Hooper through culture, masculinity, art, being and knowing--like entering a language and experience kaleidoscope."-- Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Misfit''s Manifesto and The Chronology of Water "A powerful disquisition on memory, media and melancholia.
"-- Tom McCarthy, author of Satin Island and Remainder "Lynne Tillman is still her established sui generis self. In this creation she gives us an emblematic (but unique) protagonist''s sharp observations and drive-by meditations on the many conundrums of identity and purpose of our time. This book is compelling and bracing and you read many sentences twice to get all the juice there is in them."-- Norman Rush "Lynne Tillman lends her remarkable talents to answer questions about today''s obsession with images. Through the eyes of cultural anthropologist Ezekiel Hooper Stark, she asks: What is behind the human drive to create, remake, and keep images?"-- Bustle , 1 of 15 big fiction books for March "Spending time chez Tillman feels like that to me: disjunctive, fascinating, a little appalling. It calls things into question. The random digressions make me crazy, yet I want to imitate them. [O]ne''s differences from Tillman feel more like than aesthetic roads not taken.
As demonstrated in the adultery section of Men and Apparitions , Tillman is perfectly capable of writing an adept psychological novel. She can toss off polished sentences with the best of them, and many in the Madame Realism collection are. She can produce an incisive piece of literary criticism on a conventional subject like Edith Wharton, as in What Would Lynne Tillman Do? . Amid the non-Madame Realism essays in the new volume, the reader stumbles upon a singularly sharp piece of straightforward art criticism about the work of Cindy Sherman."-- New York Review of Books "Cult-favorite Lynn Tillman''s latest novel, Men and Apparitions , takes readers for a rollicking, frolicking, outstandingly original ride that explores the roots of feminism, the death of masculinity, and the cultural identities we''ve gleaned along the way, all while making us question everything we''ve ever known and taken for granted."-- PopSugar, 1 of 20 Books to Read This March "Cult figure and author Lynne Tillman is back with a vengeance. After 10 years, this new novel about our obsession with images -- capturing them, keeping them, showing our lives through them -- is a book perfect for our generation. [I]t''s also an incredible look into the mind of a modern man and his particular male gaze.
Tillman''s wicked imagination is worth every second."-- The Lily, 1 of 15 Titles Recommended ".[W]ill appeal to readers with a particular interest in cultural criticism. Tillman is a risk-taker with a wide-ranging mind who likes to experiment with the novel form. This extremely cerebral exercise is studded with fascinating observations and commentary. Literary collections will want to acquire it."-- Library Journal "With callouts to a mind-revving roster of photographers, writers, filmmakers, intellectuals, and media magnets, erudite, discerning, and everdaring Tillman has forged a mischievous conflation of criticism and fiction. Incantatory, maddening, brilliant, zestful, compassionate, and timely, Tillman''s portrait of a floundering academic trying to make sense of a digitized world of churning, contradictory messages reveals the perpetual interplay between past and present, the personal and the cultural, image and life.
"-- Starred Booklist "[A] timely. exploration of modern masculinity . "-- Publishers Weekly "Lynne Tillman''s much anticipated new novel after 12 years revolves around a cultural anthropologist who turns his anthropological lens on masculinity, art and memory. A profoundly wise and remarkably supple novel from an outstanding writer."-- Chicago Review of Books , Most Anticipated Fiction of 2018 Praise for Lynne Tillman "[Lynne Tillman] is my secular art angel." -- Lidia Yuknavitch "When I want to feel that my brain is alive and active, and when I want to laugh at the same time, laugh at something really intelligent and interesting, I read Lynne Tillman''s stories." -- Lydia Davis "One of America''s most challenging and adventurous writers." -- Guardian "Lynne Tillman has always been a hero of mine -- not because I ''admire'' her writing, (although I do, very, very much), but because I feel it.
Imagine driving alone at night. You turn on the radio and hear a song that seems to say it all. That''s how I feel." -- Jonathan Safran Foer "Anything I''ve read by Tillman I''ve devoured." -- Anne K. Yoder, The Millions "Lynne Tillman''s writing is bracing, absurd, argumentative, and luminous. She never fails to exhibit her unique capacities for watchfulness and astonishment." -- Jonathan Lethem "One of the most fiercely fresh idea-jockeys of our time.
" -- Brainpickings "Like an acupuncturist, Lynne Tillman knows the precise points in which to sink her delicate probes. One of the biggest problems in composing fiction is understanding what to leave out; no one is more severe, more elegant, more shocking in her reticences than Tillman." -- Edmund White "Tillman is simply a terrific prose stylist whose work should have wide appeal." -- The New York Times Book Review "One of America''s best writers . Tillman leaves nothing out of her work; everything she writes is like a neatly packed suitcase full of ideas for the reader to take with them on a short trip." -- Jason Diamond, Flavo.