Lynne Tillman writes books–novels, short stories, essays, criticism–that continuously provoke thought. Since the late 80s and the formation of the New Narrative movement in American literature, Tillman has created a body of work deeply engaged with art, culture, history, ourselves, and our relationships with one another. 

The first book of hers I read was her 2018 novel Men and Apparitions about an ethnographer named Zeke who studied family photographs. Tillman’s seamless blend of found images, commentary and aphorisms on pop culture, and a narrator naturally inquisitive about others so hooked me that I spent my summer after college reading it so slowly, wishing that both the book and the sunny freedom of being on my own in upstate New York would never end. Drawn to documenting things myself, I related to Zeke, as I had just finished school and made a short diary film about my family and my grief. Not only that, but halfway through Men and Apparitions, the main character experiences a personal betrayal that closely, painfully mirrored something I myself had gone through in the last weeks of my graduating year. 

Later, I began working as a writer and critic, and I found The Complete Madame Realism, put out by my favorite publisher, Semiotext(e). This introduced me to a whole other side of Lynne Tillman’s work, one engaged with criticism. As she describes the character through whom she wrote, Madame Realism “allows me to write seemingly subjectively about art and culture, society. She’s an open door.” The concept of lensing one’s criticism–or what she preferred to call that part of her writing, “commentary,” through a character was fascinating to me. Tillman’s creation of Madame Realism speaks to the many ways in which her writing has succeeded brilliantly against conventions in different genres. 

After becoming acquainted with Madame Realism and Tillman’s contributions to numerous monographs and art books, I returned to her fiction with her short stories, two of which delighted my imagination so instantly and instinctively that I am currently adapting them into a short narrative film. Those stories, and many other fantastic, dynamic, sad, funny stories can be found in the newly published Thrilled to Death: Selected Stories, from Soft Skull Press. To celebrate this release, I spoke to the author over the phone one morning about her start as a writer, living and working against norms, her connections to cinema, and her work as a writing teacher.

 

 

 

 

 

I rather think what I do is commentary [although] my work can be seen as criticism. But what I don’t like is this sense of authority you're supposed to have if you’re a critic. And I feel that I’m writing commentaries about art or films or whatever I’m looking at. Everywhere I am receiving information of all kinds, and I’m trying to sort it out or respond to it–not necessarily to interpret it, be objective but to allow for more subjectivity.

 

 

 

 

 

So, I’ll just get right into it. When did you realize that writing was something that you could do as work? 

You know, I never thought of it as doing work, because I never expected to make money from it. I don’t know, I was not realistic–though I always thought I would have to have a day job, I didn’t expect my writing to support me. And I’ve just been fortunate that I’ve been able to get jobs that have allowed me to write, or that I was so driven. I think you have to be very driven to make writing your life. You know? Make writing your life. It really is life, I think. 

Your first published story was Living with Contradictions, and I remember talking to you about it when Anne Turyn’s Top Stories was republished by Primary Info. Can you tell me about the Top Stories project and how Living with Contradictions came together for you? 

It came to be because of Jane Dickson, who was living with Charlie Ahearn, the filmmaker. She asked if I would like to write something about living in a couple. She was making drawings that were about that kind of domestic life. And I said yes, I had never been asked by an artist to do this… Though actually, it’s not my first published story, it’s the first published chapbook. The first published story would be, I think, Myself as a Menu, which is in… 

The new collection. 

And what I wrote, Living with Contradictions, was not a traditional story. When I showed it to Jane, I don’t think she liked it particularly. I think she was looking for something different, nonetheless there it was. Then Anne Turyn, who had started Top Stories some years before, I don’t know exactly how many years, got wind of it. We showed it to her, and she loved it and published it. The title Living with Contradictions, I believe it was made up by me, although years later someone stole the title and said it was from, not Karl Marx, but Engels, which is, apparently, as Marxist scholars have told me, not true. So, living with contradictions struck me as what I, a young feminist, very fervent, was confronting by living in a couple, yet trying to live a different way in a heterosexual relationship. Not that I think other kinds of relationships don’t have similar problems, frankly. 

Right. Well, what does that different way look like? 

That different way is… not to live as a couple. Not to socialize as a couple, not to be with each other every night, not to have dinner together every night, to have different friends, and to have different lives–David [Hofstra] is a musician, he’s a great bass player and tuba player, and he plays acoustic bass, stand up bass, standard bass, you know, he’s just an amazing musician, and I’m a writer very interested in visual art also. We had very different interests. And we coincided in a lot of ways. But I don’t like to socialize as a couple. You have different experiences on your own. I think neither of us had expectations of a traditional heterosexual or, frankly, any kind of couple. And I was not going to live as a, quote unquote, “typical woman,” which as you know, is a construction anyway. 

I first became aware of your work the summer I graduated college; I picked up Men and Apparitions, because I saw Eileen Myles was reading it, and I was instantly drawn into the way that book was constructed, with the cultural references and the photographs. The book is about an ethnographer who mainly studies family photographs. Where did that idea come from, and where did the photographs come from? 

The idea came from something that had been circulating for many years, a sentence: we live in the glut of images. So a question came to me: how would I narrate the story of “we live in the glut of images?” I decided to try to do that–write a novel that described living in the glut of images. And without making it didactic. I needed a narrator who would be involved in images. I’d already written a very short piece that had a male character who could fit. Also at the same time, I was seeing how younger men were behaving or being or thinking after the second women’s movement, and how they were living in feminism, aware of feminist ideas, how younger men were thinking about themselves as “men,” in quotes, and about “women,” in quotes. What were these relationships? I wanted Zeke, my narrator, to be one of those men, and to show his confusion. I like being able to be in a situation where I’m learning, or trying to learn. I had all these different ideas. The other thing is, doing theoretical work is also connected to your personal life, your psychology–whatever you choose to be interested in is not separate from your psychology. Whether it’s physics or literature, something in your early life is drawing you to a discipline or a goal. So I wanted to throw all of that together, and that’s why Men and Apparitions took me such a long time, and the question of family depression–I could do that through Clover Hooper Adams, and have her as an ancestor to this family. You know, it was insane, Conor, that I tried…

Well it worked, I think! 

Well, thank you, thank you. It was extremely hard to do. To figure it all out–and I did a lot of research, you know. I had to read about Clover Hooper Adams, I read Henry Adams novels, and many other things. 

You often reference films in your stories. What does your relationship to cinema look like, and who are some filmmakers that you admire? 

I grew up watching movies on television, and going to movie theaters as a little kid. My older sisters or my mother or my father taking me–movies were part of my life. And of course, I was besotted by movie stars. I wrote a letter, a fan letter to Marilyn Monroe when I was about 8 years old. 

Really? 

Yeah, yeah…. A great favourite is Ozu, his films are entrancing, and so brilliant, and it’s the subtlety of his work that just knocks me over. And the way he gets so much into a picture, I mean into the image.

Yeah, there’s a visual consistency to his films. 

In his films, the visuals really do tell the story. I mean, not that I don’t need to know some of the dialogue, because he’s working with that. So he’s one, and Fellini, I loved a lot of Fellini’s films, Antonioni, very different. So, you know, I think Italian–not new Italian, but post-war Italian cinema really hit me hard–and Hitchcock. Buñuel, early Buñuel, these were all early on. I can’t watch really terrifying horror films, although I must say Psycho is one of the scariest films I ever watched. 

I mean there are just many...and of course, along with Ozu, Chantal Akerman, she’s right up there as one of the most brilliant filmmakers ever. And Fassbinder had just so much impact on me. 

Have you seen Fassbinder’s series, Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day? 

I don't think so. 

Oh, it’s great! It’s honestly one of his most upbeat works, it’s very wholesome, and it’s about class consciousness and stuff. It’s kind of a melodrama, it’s fantastic. Included in Thrilled to Death, your new collection, are some of your Madame Realism essays, and for those who haven’t met Madame Realism, how would you describe who she is? 

Well, first of all, I think they’re stories. But I believe when you have a character like her telling things, it’s not an essay, but it does blur those lines, which was part of my decision to write not as an art historian or critic, but as a fiction writer. It allowed me to do things that I think art historians or art critics don’t usually do, it gave me license. How would I describe her? I would describe her as–she doesn’t exist. [Laughs] 

She’s a non-existing, very fluid vehicle, she’s a vehicle for me. She allows me to write seemingly subjectively about art and culture, society. She’s an open door. 

Do you necessarily have the same tastes or opinions as her? Or are there things that Madame Realism thinks that maybe you don’t think? 

Yes–I let her have her own way. 

Why is criticism important to you, personally? 

I rather think what I do is commentary, because I think criticism, I mean obviously, my work can be seen, Madame Realism and other things, as criticism. But what I don’t like is this sense of authority you're supposed to have if you’re a critic. And I feel that I’m writing commentaries about art or films or whatever I’m looking at. Everywhere I am receiving information of all kinds, and I’m trying to sort it out or respond to it–not necessarily to interpret it, be objective but to allow for more subjectivity. I want to describe it and in that way see it better. I don't really like to call myself a critic, although people do. They’ll say I’m a cultural critic, it’s not a terrible thing, it’s not a dirty word, but the word always seems to be in opposition to something. 

Right, I often have to explain, when I talk about my film criticism and things like that, that I wouldn’t do what I do if I hated watching movies. You do it because you love it. 

Right, and because you’re very interested, you’re very engaged, you’re curious. You think about it, you know. I recently saw a play called Grangeville, written by Sam Hunter. I went especially because Paul Sparks was one of the two characters, and I think he’s one of the most brilliant actors alive today. I was thinking about his work and the play afterward, and I still am. 

It’s not that I want to, in quotes, “criticize” it, but I would love to write about it because it would be a way to articulate what fascinates me about it. It’s a very interesting play. Overall, a very good play. I was totally with it, in it. 

And so writing about it would be a way for you to kind of process your own reception to it. 

Continue thinking about it, and understanding it, you know, like analysis, you know, you’re in psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic psychotherapy, to understand why you think as you do, react as you do, and why you’re affected by certain things and not others, all of that. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yeah. With Thrilled to Death, what was the process of picking what stories would be included in this? 

That was very hard. Richard Nash, my former Editor at Soft Skull, when he owned the company, before it became part of Catapult and Counterpoint, he’s the one who published American Genius, A Comedy, the four other editors my agent showed it to were not interested. My life changed when he became involved with my writing, and he did some other books with me that no one else would do, like What Would Lynne Tillman Do, or Some Day This Will Be Funny, books my agent didn't try to show to anybody else, because he was the right person, the right publisher to do it. So he knows my work very well. When there’s a need to select stories written over these 35 years, I turned to him, and so, he put a list together. I added to it. It was a process. My editors then, and Cecilia Flores, the assistant editor, were great, and Cecilia read everything, and I remember she called me up, and she said, “You’re so funny!” And that was a good reminder of what some of my work produces in people. Often, it’s not a gut-belly laugh, although some things I’ve written create that, I think. Often it’s a subtle strangeness that’s funny. Odd.  

And are some of the stories new? I noticed one that seemed to be written at the beginning of COVID. 

Yes, but that was published, I think in Lit Hub, and just online. But you know, these stories are all over the place in style and content. And appeared in odd places. Some of the stories have been anthologized, some were in Someday This Will Be Funny, but, you know, Thrilled is a kind of reader, right, of the work. It’s not really until a writer puts their work together in such a way that a more general public gets to find them–people who don’t read literary journals or art catalogues or museum catalogues or Aperture Magazine. 

This stuff gets thrown all over the place, appears all over the place, in small mags or somewhat bigger vehicles. I think you know that I’m a writer who doesn’t want to publish only with big publishers. Also, I won’t make enough money for them, but I’ve always tried to keep both things going, and I like that. It’s striking to me when people decide that they just want a big press and that’s it, and maybe distribution is better, although I must say Soft Skull does a great, great job. But by having your writing in less well known mags you have different kinds of readers. 

What are some of your favorite bookstores? And what is the first section you go to in a bookstore? 

What are my favorite bookstores…well, there are so many fewer now, that’s really a problem. I like Karma, that’s a small one. I’ll go into Mast. There’s a bookstore on St. Mark’s Place called The Village Bookstore. It’s all used books, I think that’s a terrific resource. They really serve the community, the neighborhood, they have books that people are looking for, contemporary writing, a lot published in the last 15, 20 or 30 years. Oh yes, McNally Jackson. I’m forgetting many. There are very good bookstores in Brooklyn. I check The Strand, I don’t love The Strand ‘cause I find it very confusing.

Yeah, it’s a little too big. 

It’s a little too big, but you want, I want to know about the books that are coming up, and then you, as a writer, leave feeling just–maybe anyone feels–just overwhelmed, overwhelmed. I have far more books than I will read, because I want to read everything, and then you can’t, and then you feel utterly depressed. You can’t read everything. And books sit on your shelves on the floor, in piles, I read some sentences in each one, and then it goes on a pile…

But that’s important I think! I’m the same way, I think it’s important to have books that you haven’t yet read. Because you will read them at some point. 

Hopefully. You’ll give them to somebody, or read them. I read the other day that there’s a Japanese word that means buying books, having them, and not necessarily reading them. Isn’t it wonderful that there’s a word for that? 

Yeah, it describes our illness! 

Laughs. 

Yeah, compulsion. 

What do you make of the literacy of today? Have you noticed a change in how people read? 

Hold on, I just wanted to go back…if they have tables out in a bookstore, I’ll look at the tables, then I’ll usually go to the fiction section, if they have a fiction section. And then I’ll look at art books, and then I look at theory and history books–I look at pretty much everything. I’m not into science fiction, I’m sorry to say. And there are many more filmmakers I could have named, if I could think clearly this morning. Anyway, one of the things I thought I could also be was a filmmaker, and in making the film Committed, I thought I could also be a filmmaker and a writer, but writing always came first, and I just couldn’t do both. Also, as you know, raising money to make a film is like five years of making the film, so, it’s very discouraging. You just asked another… 

Yeah, have you noticed a change in how people read today? 

Well, people read on the internet, and they learn about things on the internet. That’s a huge change from when I was growing up and reading. And it’s amazing to me you can put a line from a poem into a search engine and get the whole poem and who wrote it. It’s amazing. Otherwise, in earlier days, you would go to a library and search and search and search, it’s extraordinary. I mean–what do people read for? That’s always a question. In my novel Cast In Doubt, one of the issues I was dealing with, through my character Horace, when he wanted to find Helen’s diary or find Helen, Horace wanted to see his name was in her diary, so I think, you know, often people read to find themselves in some ways, affirmation of what they may think, or disaffirmation. Different generations are reading different things. Certainly, I feel that the

things that I knew and that were important to me are not necessarily or at all important to younger generations. People who didn’t live through Kennedy’s assassination in ’63, came along many years after, have no response to it really–it doesn’t mean anything to them. Meanwhile, the fact that that happened has had resonance and rhythms in my life, and questions about how things would’ve been if the Vietnam War would have gone on as long…When I teach it’s surprising to me what people haven’t read. Many of us teaching writing complain that students don’t read enough. 

Yeah, it seems that way these days. 

And yeah, they want to write without having read. Though they get their information in other ways. My most famous student whom I taught at The University of Albany is Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, and he was a sophomore when I became his mentor for a year–the English department then had a mentor system. It doesn’t anymore, it was trying it out. Nana appeared at my office door one day. We were talking, and suddenly he burst out–he was very shy–“I want to be a writer.” I said to him, well what have you read? And after his first book, Friday Black came out, he told me that he realized when I asked the question, he wasn’t reading enough, or maybe needed to read other books. Our process had a lot to do with my giving him stories to read, then discussing them with him. And then he took my junior and senior fiction workshop. But he learned from reading. I mean, he also learned, he told me, from my responses to his work, my line edits, and explaining to him why something didn’t work, but reading to him was essential. And reading is how I learned to write. I became an avid reader as an 8-year-old, and, when I would read, I would read trying to understand why the author wrote it like that. 

But I think you can teach yourself how to be a better writer by reading. You know, you can’t teach talent, whatever that is–talent I think has to do with some understanding of why something works and doesn’t, you have a sense of it–that’s different from somebody who doesn’t have sense or sensibility. You can’t teach that, but you can encourage better writing. I certainly feel that someone teaching writing can help students write better, absolutely, I see it in students, but there has to be deep diving by the teacher into their word choices, and grammar, syntax, all of this, so that they understand, they get a better sense of what they need to do. 

Books have been said to be over for a long time, everything challenges them. Novels, stories, they’re over. And yet, writing and making images are some of the earliest things our species did, and there are reasons for that. There are reasons why people still want and need to articulate their thoughts, and think about their lives and their problems, all the great issues, love and death and sex, and our species will continue to have those needs. That is, if our species hasn’t destroyed the planet.