'A man who lived in New York City couldn’t stand it any more. So he moved to Montana. His closest neighbor was ten miles away. The first month was great — he didn’t see anyone. It was quiet. After three months he started to get restless. After six months he was so bored, he thought about moving back to the city. A neighbor called. He invited him to a party. The neighbor said, get ready for a lot of drinking, fighting, and fucking. Great, the man said. Who’ll be there? You and me, the neighbor said.' -- Lynne Tillman
'There may be imperceptible conflicts, actions, events - I think, thinking is an activity. An emotion may produce an action, be an action, or be a re-action. In some form the writer addresses some kind of event. In some way there is a problem, an event, an action, a thought, an issue, an emotion, to be resolved or left unresolved; there's a problem to be solved, or incapable of solution, a problem engaged or contemplated. There's a kind of adjudicating, whatever the writer does.' -- Lynne Tillman
'“I cannot make love to Jews anymore,” or so said Nico, breaking off her brief engagement with insouciant wanna-be androgyne Lou Reed. Endings this pithy and crude come never to the protagonists of Lynne Tillman’s new book Someday This Will Be Funny. For their sakes, you might wish they did. In twenty-one concentrated vignettes—one of which features telling lyrics from the aforementioned Reed—Tillman captures lovers and soul-searchers at their intimate moments, as they battle their inner-demons. Tillman’s subjects range far and wide, from fictional to fictionalized: a young tennis star, a sociology professor, the son of a wealthy financier, the German artist Peter Dreher, Clarence Thomas, Marvin Gaye, Lynne Tillman herself and John Lennon. Despite this large and eclectic cast, Someday This Will Be Funny, feels less like an ensemble piece and more like an in-depth character study.' -- Andrew Zornoza, Bomb
'You never quite realize what Lynne Tillman’s done until it’s too late. She takes formal adventures in flavors of novels that had never before welcomed them. She carefully embeds details deep in her texts that others would dutifully (and dully) trot out up front. She crafts what feels like one distinctive, coherent fictional reality without explicitly connecting any of her long-form stories to one another. Published over two decades, her five novels so far build and explore what I call the “Tillmanverse” through the eyes and ears of worldly, culturally keen women (and one man), shapen or misshapen by their undeniable compulsions, obscure fixations, and grimly complex senses of humor.' -- Colin Marshall
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Media
Rachel Shapiro Alderman reads Lynne Tillman
'The Original Impulse' by Lynne Tillman: An Electric Literature Single Sentence Animation
Excerpt: 'Love Rose', w/ parapsychologist Hereward Carrington voiced by Lynne Tillman
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Interview
from The Millions
You said that you would like to write like Peter Dreher paints. In Dreher’s ongoing project Tag Um Tag Ist Guter Tag (Day by Day Days Are Good), which he began in 1972, Dreher has painted the same empty water glass more than three thousand times. I am wondering what draws you to his approach, considering that in many ways you take an opposite approach to writing, where your style, subject, and narrative structure change with each book.
Lynne Tillman: I try to shake myself up, and I believe I want to keep moving and changing. But I’m pretty sure I want to avoid self-exposure also. It’s the antithesis of what Dreher does with the glass, which is why I’m so drawn to it. Thinking about the same subject again and again, approaching it slightly differently each time, I see that as peaceful and directed. Still, I’m running mentally, and want to do something I haven’t done. But you’re right, there’s something in my work that stays the same – me.
In your essay “Doing Laps Without a Pool,” you argue that the terms to categorize “experimental” writing have “lost their explanatory power.” You go on to declare that “Unquestioned adherence to any dictates … to any MFA workshop credos, or their antitheses, for a novel, story, poem, essay, will generate competent, often unexciting work, whether called mainstream, conventional, progressive, or experimental; the products will have been influenced by or derived from, almost invariably and without exception, “established” or earlier work, their predecessors.” What is your take on the state of contemporary fiction?
LT: There’s always new material around – brain-directed prosthetic hands; artificially prolonged life; YouTube, etc. Are there new narratives shaped by technology, by changed wants and needs? Entirely new emotions and motives for behavior? How does our consciousness change? That’s what I’m watching for. Transgendering: I’m not sure what will come of this, except what seems obvious already. Tools affect behavior, but basic needs for power, sex, food, and the fear of others? Of extinction and death? American English is changing in part because of non-native-born English or bilingual writers. Assimilation’s not the goal anymore, and language is dramatically affected. Sadly, I’m monolingual.
Do you think that the proliferation of creative writing programs has encouraged or increased the generation of “competent, unexciting work”? If so, how should one attempt to create something new?
LT: I don’t blame MFA programs, though I’d like to. But that ignores the world outside MFA programs, and what it’s doing to our minds and ability to conceptualize. If you carry the argument forward, all education destroys young minds, which is what some think anyway. Nothing was better for me than having a few great teachers. There’s probably more writing, and more of the same, but what’s being written is not caused by writing programs. That means students have no agency whatsoever. A writer makes choices; that’s what writing is. If you carry your teacher’s water, that’s a choice.
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Further
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Book
Lynne Tillman Some Day This Will Be FunnyRed Lemonade
'The stories in Some Day This Will Be Funny marry memory to moment in a union of narrative form as immaculate and imperfect as the characters damned to act them out on page. Lynne Tillman, author of American Genius, presides over the ceremony; Clarence Thomas, Marvin Gaye, and Madame Realism mingle at the reception. Narrators—by turn infamous and nameless—shift within their own skin, struggling to unknot reminiscence from reality while scenes rush into warm focus, then cool, twist, and snap in the breeze of shifting thought. Epistle, quotation, and haiku bounce between lyrical passages of lucid beauty, echoing the scattered, cycling arpeggio of Tillman’s preferred subject: the unsettled mind. Collectively, these stories own a conscience shaped by oaths made and broken; by the skeleton silence and secrets of family; by love’s shifting chartreuse. They traffic in the quiet images of personal history, each one a flickering sacrament in danger of being swallowed up by the lust and desperation of their possessor: a fistful of parking tickets shoved in the glove compartment, a little black book hidden from a wife in a safe-deposit box, a planter stuffed with flowers to keep out the cooing mourning doves. They are stories fashioned with candor and animated by fits of wordplay and invention—stories that affirm Tillman’s unshakable talent for wedding the patterns and rituals of thought with the blushing immediacy of existence, defying genre and defining experimental short fiction.' -- Red Lemonade
'Tillman’s gorgeous and potent latest finds the innovative author embracing diverse, imaginative forms in these often brief but always intriguing tales…With subjects ranging from birds to Marvin Gaye to an ex-lover who has earned Tillman’s wrath, these missives partake in an elegant, efficient use of language to challenge concepts of love, history, memory, and language. Tillman’s compact narratives shine and stand up to multiple readings.' -- Publishers Weekly
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Excerpt
A Simple Idea
This happened a long time ago. My best friend was in Los Angeles, and she and I talked on the phone a lot. I urged her to move to New York, and finally she did. She drove cross-country, and when she arrived, she was told she didn't have to worry about the $10,000 in California parking tickets she had on her car. There was no reciprocity between the two states, she was told, so there was no way her car's outlaw status would be discovered in New York. The guy who told her said he was a cop. They met in a bar, then they had sex. Anyway, I think they did.
My friend started accumulating NYC tickets. Blithely, for a while. She shoved the tickets into the glove compartment. I suppose people kept gloves in those compartments at one time. When there was no room left, she threw them on the floor of her car. Then she decided she'd better find a parking lot. But she didn't want to pay hundreds of dollars for a space.
One day she noticed a parking lot near her house which was barred from entry by a heavy chain and lock. A week later she noticed a man walking to the lot. He used a key to unlock the gate. She got up her nerve and asked him if she could park there if she gave him some money. Would he make her a key? He said he'd think about it. The next day he telephoned her and said OK. So every month my friend handed the man $50 in a white business envelope. It was illegal, but she wasn't getting tickets from the City and throwing them on the floor of her car.
She was relatively happy parking in the lot, relieved anyway, because there was one less thing to worry about. But after a while she thought some of the other drivers-men going to work in the building attached to the lot-were looking at her weirdly, staring at her and her car. Some seemed menacing, she told me. But then she was paranoid. She knew diat, so she decided not to act on her suspicions.
Time passed. Time always passes.
One afternoon my friend received a call from a man who iden- tified himself as a cop. He said. Hello, and used her first name. Sandra, and asked her sternly:
-Are you parking illegally, Sandra, because if you are, and you don't remove your car from the lot right now-I'm giving you ten minutes-I'll have to arrest you.
My friend hung up, threw on her coat, ran out the door to the lot, and drove her car far away. Then she phoned me and told me what happened. She was terrified. She thought the cop might show up and arrest her at any moment, she thought shed be taken to jail.
-That was no cop. I said.
-How do you know? she asked.
-A cop wouldn't phone you and give you a warning, I answered. But I was worried that I might be wrong, and that she might be arrested.
-And he's not going to say he's going to give you a second chance, because you don't get second chances if you're doing something illegal and they find out, unless they're corrupt, and he wouldn't say, I'm a cop. He'd give his name and rank or something.
My friend listened, annoyed that I was calm, and she wasn't satisfied or convinced. She thought she might be under surveillance and would be busted later. She owed thousands of dollars in tickets in two states. It might be a sting operation, something convoluted. I had to convince her she was not in danger of going to jail. I told her I had an idea and hung up.
It was simple. I'd call a precinct and ask the desk cop how a cop would identify himself over the phone. I'd learn the protocol, how cops wouldn't do what that so-called cop had done, allay my friend's fears, and also show her I was taking her anxiety seriously.
I looked up precincts in the telephone book and chose one in die West Village, where I thought they'd be used to handling unusual questions.
-Tenth precinct, Sergeant Molloy, the desk cop said.
-Hi, I have a question, I said.
-Yeah.
-How do police identify themselves over the phone?
-What do you mean? Molloy asked.
-If a cop calls you, what does he say?
-What do you mean, what does he say?
-I mean, how does he say he's a policeman? What's the official way to do it? The desk cop was silent for a few seconds.
-A cop called you. What'd he say? What'd he want?
-He didn't call me, he called a friend.
-What did he say to your friend?
I couldn't hang up, because I wouldn't get the information I wanted. If I hung up, Molloy could have the call traced. I'd be in trouble for making harassing calls to precincts, which would be extremely ironic.
-He said to her . . . he said, Hello, I'm the police.
-Yeah. Then what?
-And then, then he said . . .
I didn't want to tell him the story, give my friend's real name, tell him about her tickets in two states, and her car being parked illegally, and her bribing the guy in the corporate lot. But I had to give him some sense of the situation in order to get the information I needed.
-He said to her, Hi, Diana. Hi, I'm the police. Then he said, he said, Diana . . . Diana . . . have you done anything wrong lately?
There was a very long silence.
-Have you done anything wrong lately? Molloy repeated.
It was weird coming from a cop's mouth. He gathered his thoughts, while I remained breathlessly quiet.
-A police officer wouldn't say that, Molloy answered soberly. A police officer wouldn't say that.
-He wouldn't, I repeated, just as gravely.
The cop thought again, for a longer time.
-Listen, I want you to let me know if he ever calls your friend again. Because a cop shouldn't do that . . . He trailed off.
-That guy's impersonating an officer.
-Oh, yeah. I'm sure he won't . . . he probably won't call her again. But if he does, I'll phone you immediately, I promise.
-You do that, Molloy said.
-I will. Thanks, I said.
-Yeah, he said. Maybe Molloy didn't believe any of this, but he did the whole thing straight.
I called my friend, and we stayed on the phone for hours, laughing about how crazy I was to say "Have you done anything wrong lately?" to a cop, with all its implications, and we laughed about her racing out of her house to the corporate lot, jumping into her car and driving off in search of a legal parking space as if she were being chased by the devil.
Maybe the devil was chasing her and me. Because we laughed off and on for about a year more, and then we had less to laugh about, and then nothing to laugh about. I don't know, we grew to distrust each other, and stopped being friends. Maybe Molloy laughed later.
----
*
p.s. Hey. ** Allesfliesst, Hey. You've never had your heart broken for real? That's interesting, if so. If so, do you think that's luck or your heart's unusual gift or what? Oh, the new Battles, yeah. I need to check that out. Let's see, how do I imagine you as a social dancer based on how I know you ... That's tough. Maybe suave, but not in a bad way at all, arms creasing the air around your body in a way that is subtle and yet notably angular as well as in perfect harmony with your flexing legs, which gently churn the dance floor, departing it only occasionally. How did I do? ** David Ehrenstein, Hey. I don't get the sense that the new Gus is a disaster, just something situated somewhere between meh and a little irritatingly cutesy. But, as you said, we will see. Well, I'm very pleased to hear your glowing report on the Malick. I broke down and read some reports on it yesterday, and now I'm trying not to be too excited because it really sounds like everything I could possibly hope for. Tomorrow around this time I'll be picking out my fancy movie-going clothes, and, again, we or rather I will see. ** Frank Jaffe, Hi, Frank! Wow, you have been busy, holy shit! Nice. Busyness rules when push comes to shove. Well, yeah, of course you can do that fake ad. I dare say that I beg you to even. Thanks! The zine sounds like it's going to be amazing. Tell me how I can buy one as soon as one can be bought. Don't forget. Cool you got the 'Jerk/TTT' product and that you dig it. It was quite a challenge for me to be the voice of the zine-reading audience. I probably should have thrown in some yawns to make it realistic, ha ha. Well, I hope I'll see you again today as well, pal. What a coincidence! ** Dynomoose, Hey! Yeah, the tough economic situation seems to have trickled down to the escorting profession. But there are still a bunch of escorts out there asking $1000 or more an hour. Can't see how. Yeah, understood about the strange place, my friend. How is your lovely kid? And I love the idea of you as a PTO member. Why not? ** Tosh, Yeah, I'm with you on the music blogs. Somehow their almost built-in short lives add something too, but then the whole limited edition thing can be such a Siren. I'd love to see your music blog list. Mine's pretty short, but rich enough. ** Schoolboyerrors, One sees Igs frequently in Paris, it's true. There tend to be two types of them in my experience. The Marais type, a la Ig himself, and the 'suburbs' type. The types don't mingle. Yes, Housing Works, wonderful place. I read there once before I guess it moved to wherever it is now. Brooklyn maybe? The Eurovision/FB thing was fun and parfait-like. Yeah, the website. The site's host has been refusing to answer all queries about what the fuck happened so far. It's looking like that url will have to be abandoned to the Deleuzian, and the me stuff will have to find some new available domain with that has some semblance of my name in its available address. 'Potato fascists', ha ha ha, that is good. ** Sypha, Makes sense about the health taxing aspect, yeah. It's a strange and rather difficult time to be a paid freelance writer what with print dying and sites still figuring out the free/cost issue. It's a terrific time if you want to be a freelance writer for fun and out of the goodness of your heart. Not necessarily wishful thinking, I don't think. Favorite, inspiring things can definitely hold their charge. ** Bill, Thank you, sir. I like that the crazy lady called you gentry. How weird. I like when crazy, ranting people on the street have good vocabularies. I guess the reason is obvious. Some nice stuff there in your past week. So, has Nicholas moved to SF? I haven't heard a peep -- well, I did hear literally tiny peep -- from him in yonks. ** Steevee, Hey. I'm still newly delving into 'Goblin' so my reactions are still being born. Initially at least, I think I'm liking the things you find troubling, or rather I believe in them and in the energy that produces them in his work in a way I don't believe in them in less ambitious and more gentrified work. I hear fantasy, and, as someone who works with representing fantasy and the extreme, I tend to give artists who take that route a certain amount of leniency if the art deserves it, and, so far, I'm pretty into his art. To my ears, any Eminem influence has been sufficiently assimilated, or I guess I see that trajectory as too direct and distracting for me. I don't know. My thoughts are in process, but I'm pretty taken with his stuff so far. ** Andrew, Hey. Dude, forgive me if I'm being clunkingly obvious, but I hear the makings of a pretty interesting comic in your Ft13th riffing. What do you think? ** Katalyze, Kat! Wow, how happy am I to see you? Really, really happy! I've missed you muchly, my pal! Hm, well, the thoughts in that post on the Tegan and Sara blog are completely understandable. It's a deeply emotional reading and reaction to 'Goblin', and that's as fair a reading as one that's based more on aesthetics, obviously. Again, I'm a little touchy when it comes to this kind of stuff because my work has been denounced at times for much the same reasons, and I have a tendency to see that kind of response as overly literal and based on what I think is a flawed presumption that, say, guys who listen to Tyler the Creator are going to take it as an okay or encouragement to act out his lyrics rather than as a playing out of fantasies via music. The idea that listeners are going to fall into lock step with what he's literally saying and won't pay attention to his tone and playfulness and exaggerations and so on seems bogus to me. I understand her fear, and I think her point is important, and she's not the only person saying that about 'Goblin', and the more crosscut the reaction is the better. I think you're right about the problem being people's tendency to fuse the art with the artist. For me, thus far, I think TtC/Odd Future's exploration of 'offensive' material is very interesting and legitimate. Again, so awesome to see you! If you feel like being around more, that would be so great! ** Pisycaca, I'm good. Yeah, the FB/Eurovision fest was really fun. You had a Nuit Blanche? Damn, yeah, I totally would have gone with you, rain or not. I don't have my LA dates yet, but I'm pretty sure it'll happen in June. I wish I could go to Primavera, but, no, there's stuff that'll keep me stuck here. Oh, hey, this is cool: I just yesterday got a new publisher in Spain, and they're going to put out 'The Marbled Swarm' and Ugly Man'. Very cool, no? The press is called Zut -- do you know them? -- and they seem pretty terrific. Anyway, that made me very happy, obviously. Hang in there on the Assange translation, you poor thing. Keep those lovely Euros dancing before your eyes. ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, Hey. Yeah, that was the wtf moment of the post, no? Finding tidbits like that is what makes the considerable toil of making those posts worth the arthritis to which I may yet be destined. You finally got your guitar! Yeah, rust can do magic things if you pay attention to it while you're lubing up. ** Mark Gluth, Hey, man. Sure, just send me any typo corrections you find, no problem of course. Dude, it's not going to surprise you that I both love and understand (as much as I can being on the outside) the kind of strategy/ transference/ reinvention you're talking about and working with. I worked a whole lot with music premises and constructions and the 3-dimensonality of the way music is edited, mixed, and produced in 'TMS', and so, yes, what you're working with gives me a serious, heady buzz. Man, that new novel sounds just fucking amazing, I have to tell you. Wow! More talk about that here anytime you feel the slightest urge, please. ** Alan, Hey, man. Paris has sidewalk usage laws that keep stuff from being hocked there except in designated spots. But they do have the best weekly swap meet I've ever seen in my life where people sell their stuff on blankets as well as more formally in booths. It's out at the end of one of the metro lines. If you ever get to visit Paris on a weekend, I'm taking you there. Yeah, the 'doesn't accept unsolicited mss.' thing is, as you know, always a lot more fluid than the statement indicates. ** Chris Cochrane, You liked veganeedles? So, you like guys with see-through heads? That makes sense, ha ha. Oh, right, I keep forgetting that the world is going to end this Sunday. I don't the French have heard about that yet. I think it would be good to be there for the meeting with Ben and Serge too, but I think it's up to Ben. We'll see. ** Michael Karo, Ha ha, wow, that was fun. Thanks, big M! Still, given that when the character was actually shown, he bore me the opposite of resemblance -- I mean, right? Right???? Please say, Right -- I'm hoping they were hiply referencing that little Dennis Cooper baby on youtube. Still ... Everyone, courtesy of Michael Karo, here's Dennis Cooper on the hit TV series 'Parks and Recreation' ** Inthemostpeculiarway, Hey. Well, I am glad you write things down at least. I feel better knowing you do. Oh, yeah, I guess that Eurovision thing was live blogging. Blogger should do some technical upgrade thing so we could live blog here. Maybe while the world ends on Sunday. Yes, my headache finally eased away, I think it was a pollen floating invisibly through the window kind of thing. 'Cos Yury had a headache too. The 'Last Spring, a Prequel' thing opens on Thursday. I'll let you know whatever I'm told about how that goes. I like that you spent quality time appending the life of those dead books with tape. Did it make you feel like you were living in an earlier century for a short time? That's how I pictured you. Yikes, dead bird falling from tree. I've never seen that happen, but I guess it must happen all time. That was a weird image, and, again, one that seemed to be somehow centuries old. Was that 'Desperate Housewives' finale a season or series finale? I have no idea if that show is still popular. They seem to have stopped showing it over here, but I guess that doesn't mean anything. My day: Well, after finishing the blog/p.s. earlyish yesterday, I ventured out with Yury, Kiddiepunk, and Oscar to Point Ephemere, the combo art space/rock & performance venue near where I live, to see a performance by Jonathan Schatz, who's in our pieces 'TIHYWD' and 'Kindertotenlieder'. It was a more developed version of the piece by him that I posted a video of on my Facebook page while back if anyone looking over Itmpw's shoulder saw and remembers that. It was really great. All four of us agreed about that, which is pretty unusual. Then we had a coffee with him and his other well wishers, and then K, O, and I came back here and Yury went off to meet with this seamstress who is helping him fabricate some clothing in what will be his premiere fashion line if all goes well. I worked on the zine and on the blog for a while. Gisele called me a few times to confer about the 'LS,AP' installation going on in Geneva. As I told Pisycaca, I got news that 'TMS' and 'Ugly Man' are going to be published in Spain, and I was very happy about that, obviously. I'd told myself I wasn't going to read anything about 'Tree of LIfe' before I see it, but I kept running across reports and reviews from the Cannes press screening, and I couldn't help myself, and it was okay because, other than a couple of obviously philistine critics, everyone seems to thinks it's genius. So, that was very good. All of France is very caught up in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn arrest and shocked /upset about it, and so am I, so I read a bunch of stuff about that and talked to people I know here about that, and I agree with most people that it stinks and seems like it could be a set-up by Sarkozy and his people because, until that happened, he was pretty much going to be the Socialists' candidate for President and very likely France's next President. Anyway, that's a huge scandal here, and it's hard to get away from it right now, and I haven't. I guess, otherwise, I just did the usual eating and smoking and internet dabbling and a bit of TV watching then crashed. So, there you go. Give me your Tuesday in your inimitable style please. ** Misanthrope, I agree with you about the guys yesterday and without that ;D even. Toughie, yeah, man. Just stay strong and let the thinking happen. It's important. You know that. Lots of love to you, George. ** Okay. This post about the new fantastic Lynne Tillman book was supposed to appear here last Friday when the Blogger outage happened, and I moved it to today because while you're poring over the post, I will be seeing the maestro herself since she's in Paris and this is our hanging out day. So, all of you and I will be as one in a certain sense for the next 24 hours. How nice, no? Even if not, see you tomorrow.
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