Men and Apparitions

January 1, 2018
The first novel in more than a decade from the cult-figure author of American Genius (2006), etc."When artists incorporate or appropriate unsophisticated or naive work in their work, a double consciousness plays that game. Or, to say it another way, the artists are presenting visual meta-fictions." How a reader reacts to this passage will likely predict how a reader will react to this novel as a whole. Indeed, to call Tillman's latest a novel at all is provocative. There is scant dialogue, little in the way of action, and, to the extent that there's a narrative, it's spread so thin over the course of nearly 400 pages that it essentially disappears. There is a narrator, but to call him a main character would be an overstatement, as he never quite materializes as anything more than a collection of erudite observations. He does have a name--Ezekial Stark--and an age--38. Both are largely irrelevant. What matters about Zeke is his vocation as an ethnographer. Once Zeke explains that his "focus on images in, by, and of the family includes sexual and gendered behavior and relationships as understood in those pictures," we have learned pretty much everything we're going to learn about Zeke. Tillman is more of a cultural critic than a storyteller, and her latest is essentially a collection of essays on photography, identity, and masculinity. This isn't scholarly writing, exactly. Rather than presenting a thesis and supporting it with evidence, Tillman makes an assertion, drops a few signifiers--Virginia Woolf, John Cage, the Unabomber, Jeff Bridges as The Dude--and moves on. Readers interested in and knowledgeable about Clifford Geertz, Gerhard Richter, and Jean Baudrillard might find that Tillman has some interesting things to say about their work. It must be said, however, that she has nothing to say about the Kardashians that hasn't been said a thousand times before.For Tillman superfans only.

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January 8, 2018
The latest from Tillman (American Genius, A Comedy) is a timely, if messy, exploration of modern masculinity, told from the perspective of Ezekiel Hooper Stark, a 30-something ethnographer and assistant professor who sifts through photographs to construct the narratives of family and strangers. Told in fragmented mini chapters, Zeke chronicles his own early life—absent, alcoholic father; rude older brother; semimute little sister—before pivoting to his turbulent, brief marriage to Maggie, a college sweetheart. While on a trip to London together, Zeke learns of Maggie’s love affair with his friend Curtis. The revelation sends him into a fugue state, and Zeke bounces around Europe, only to return to the United States a divorcé, pretending to be a number of different people under false names. He finds kinship in the story of his ancestor, socialite and photographer Clover Hooper Adams, and turns his attention to the study of what he calls the “New Man.” As always, Tillman is inventive in her approach to storytelling, inserting photos and allowing Zeke’s mind to wander. While there is much to admire, occasionally Zeke’s digressions impede narrative flow. The result is a novel full of fits and starts, equally charming and frustrating.

February 15, 2018

Tillman's first novel in 12 years (after American Genius, A Comedy and some nonfiction titles) comes in the form of an extended interior monolog. The protagonist, Ezekiel Hooper Stark, is a cultural anthropologist/ethnographer with a special expertise in family photographs. Zeke is accustomed to viewing and analyzing his world from a distance, almost as an alien observer, much like the praying mantis he identifies with as a child in his backyard. As such, it is true to his character that a story ostensibly about him becomes largely a meditation on many other things--philosophy, photography, art, television, popular culture, and feminism, to name a few. These meanderings will appeal to readers with a particular interest in cultural criticism, though others will be impatient for the passages in which he shares details about his fascinating family background (he's a descendant of the historical figures Henry and Clover Adams) as well as his own life story, spousal betrayal, and subsequent breakdown. VERDICT 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.--Lauren Gilbert, Sachem P.L., Holbrook, NY

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Starred review from February 1, 2018
After her previous novel, American Genius (2006), Tillman published collections of short stories and essays, including What Would Lynne Tillman Do? (2014), which showcases her fluency in the subjects that preoccupy her latest brainy, brooding, riffing, and infuriating narrator, Ezekiel Hooper Stark, a 38-year-old cultural anthropologist studying old family photo albums. Anxiously inquisitive, funny, and philosophical, Zeke analyzes our enthrallment to photographic images, and declares, We are the Picture People. His idiosyncratic and witty interpretations of the snapshots of strangers summon memories of his Massachusetts boyhood, including an epiphany triggered by a praying mantis; the painful demise of his marriage; and his fervid sense of connection to a suicidal ancestor, photographer Clover Hooper Adams. Zeke ponders the mystery of perception and the ever-encroaching role of pictures in our lives, ultimately focusing on evolving gender roles and the befuddled New Man. With callouts to a mind-revving roster of photographers, writers, filmmakers, intellectuals, and media magnets, erudite, discerning, and ever-daring 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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)