What Would Lynne Tillman Do? - (Paperback)

About the Book

This is a showcase for Tillman's acuity, charm, vision, and intellectual breadth, What Would Lynne Tillman Do? offers an American mind interrogating our society's complacencies with grace and compassion.
Just as many of Tillman's short fictions have an essayistic quality about them, Tillman's essays often surge with narrative power, as she upends expectations, shifts tone, introduces characters, breaches limits of genre and category, reconfigures the world with the turn of a sentence. A long-time resident of New York, that city's sharp humor pervades these pages; Tillman's generosity and humanity are always there to soothe the wince of an acknowledged truth.
There are distinct streams of concern coursing through the seeming eclecticism of topics (Whitney Houston, interior design, Hilary Clinton, Jane Bowles, O.J. Simpson, Harry Mathews, the state of fiction, the state of her mind, the State of the Nation, but those consistent concerns, to which she returns like fingers to worry stones, are around what happens when men behave badly and when women behave too well.
What does Lynne Tillman do? She makes us better people for having read her.

Book Synopsis

Here is an American mind contemplating contemporary society and culture with wit, imagination, and a brave intelligence. Tillman upends expectations, shifts tone, introduces characters, breaches limits of genre and category, reconfiguring the world with the turn of a sentence. Like other unique thinkers, Tillman sees the world differently--she is not a malcontent, but she is discontented. Her responses to art and literature, to social and political questions change the reader's mind, startling it with new angles. Which is why so many of us who know her work often wonder: what would Lynne Tillman do? A long-time resident of New York, Tillman's sharp humor is like her city's, tough and hilarious. There are distinct streams of concern coursing through the seeming eclecticism of topics--Hillary Clinton, Jane Bowles, O.J. Simpson, art and artists, Harry Mathews, the state of fiction, film, the state of her mind, the State of the Nation. There is a great variety, but what remains consistent is how differently she writes about them, how well she understands, how passionate and bold her writing is.

What does Lynne Tillman do? Everything. Anything. You name it. She has a conversation with you, and you're a better, smarter person for it.

Review Quotes

Praise for What Would Lynne Tillman Do

"I've long admired Lynne Tillman's criticism. Her writing is founded on curiosity and deep feeling. It's precise and imaginative, devoid of jargon or clichéeacute;. It's the opposite of what I dislike in criticism, and I know I'm not alone in my appreciation of what she does."--Joanna Fateman, BOOKFORUM

"But like Renata Adler, who experienced a belated renaissance last year, Tillman's work is ready to be embraced by a new generation of readers. After so many years of waiting for her writing to find its way to more readers, the answer to the question posed on the posters stuck up on buildings in Manhattan and on the cover of her new book couldn't be more clear: What would Lynne Tillman do? Lynne Tillman would just keep writing."--Jason Diamond, Flavorpill

"[A] singular mastery of rhetoric...palpably excellent...demonstrates a good ear and a knack for skipping to the good part of the story (sex, poison)."--Full Stop

Praise for Lynne Tillman

"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

"Lynne Tillman's writing is bracing, absurd, argumentative, and luminous. She never fails to exhibit her unique capacities for watchfulness and astonishment." -- Jonathan Lethem

"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

"Anything I've read by Tillman I've devoured." -- Anne K. Yoder, The Millions

Praise for American Genius, A Comedy

"Tillman's prose builds to poetic brilliance." -- Entertainment Weekly

"What emerges here is a bold showcase of a novel, a cabinet of curiosity, a proposal for what fiction could be." -- New York Times Book Review

"To read Tillman's tightly woven novel, which meshes inner and outer realms as well as past and present, is to enter into an intense relationship, a communion with another spirit, perhaps with some sort of genius. An involvement that, like all forms of heightened attention, be it friendship, love, hate, or pursuits intellectual or creative, is demanding and bewitching, harrowing and bemusing, revelatory and transforming." -- Donna Seaman, Bookforum

"Reading the novel is like entering a room crowded with peculiar portraits, all brilliantly drawn. The book is a consummate work, one that levels Western history with family dynamics, pet deaths, Manson family references, the Zulu alphabet, skin disorders, and the loss of memory that afflicts us both personally and as a nation. Tillman once again proves herself a rare master of both elegant and associative writing, urging us to enter the moment, which is all we have and simultaneously cannot keep." -- San Francisco Bay Guardian

"If I needed to name a book that is maybe the most overlooked important piece of fiction in not only the 00s, but in the last 50 years, [American Genius, A Comedy] might be the one. I could read this back to back to back for years." -- Blake Butler, HTML Giant

Praise for No Lease on Life

"Confirms and enhances her reputation as one of America's most challenging and adventurous writers." -- Guardian

" ... should be awarded a special Pulitzer for the most perfect use of the word "moron" in the history of the American novel."

About the Author

Lynne Tillman is the author of five novels, four collections of short stories, one collection of essays and two other nonfiction books. She has collaborated often with artists and writes regularly on culture. Her novels include American Genius, A Comedy (2006), No Lease on Life (1997), a New York Times Notable Book of 1998 and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Cast in Doubt (1992); Motion Sickness (1991); and Haunted Houses (1987). Someday This Will Be Funny (2012) is her most recent short story collection. Her nonfiction books include The Velvet Years: Warhol's Factory 1965-1967, with photographs by Stephen Shore (1995); Bookstore: The Life and Times of Jeannette Watson and Books & Co. (1999), a cultural history of a literary landmark, and The Broad Picture, an essay collection. Colm Toibin lives in New York City.