Lynne Tillman

celebrating the release of

Men and Apparitions: A Novel

from Soft Skull Press

Why do human beings feel the need to create, remake, and keep images from and of everything? How are we supposed to live amid this glut of images? Men and Apparitions takes on a central question of our time through the wild musings and eventful life of Ezekiel Hooper Stark, cultural anthropologist, ethnographer, specialist in family photographs. As Zeke goes from being a child obsessed with his family’s photo albums to a young and passionate researcher to a man broken by betrayal in love, his academic fascinations reflect his course, touching on such various subjects as discarded images, pet pictures, spirit mediums, the tragic life of his long-dead cousin the semi-famous socialite Clover Adams, and the nature of contemporary masculinity. Kaleidoscopic and encyclopedic, madcap and wry, Men and Apparitions showcases Lynne Tillman not only as a brilliantly original novelist but as one of our most prominent thinkers on visual art and culture today.

Lynne Tillman is a novelist, short story writer, and cultural critic. Her novels are Haunted Houses; Motion Sickness; Cast in Doubt; No Lease on Life, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and American Genius, A Comedy. Her nonfiction books include The Velvet Years: Warhol’s Factory 1965–1967, with photographs by Stephen Shore; Bookstore: The Life and Times of Jeannette Watson and Books & Co.; and What Would Lynne Tillman Do?, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. Her most recent short story collections are Someday This Will Be Funny and The Complete Madame Realism. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and an Andy Warhol/Creative Capital Arts Writing Fellowship. Tillman is Professor/Writer-in-Residence in the Department of English at The University of Albany and teaches at the School of Visual Arts’ Art Criticism and Writing MFA Program in New York. She lives in Manhattan with bass player David Hofstra.

Praise for Men and Apparitions by Lynne Tillman

“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, author of Mating and Subtle Bodies

“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’s first novel in a dozen years crackles with pent-up energy. Brimming with her trademark wit and vibrancy, Men and Apparitionsis a confirmation of a sadly under-acknowledged truth: Lynne Tillman is a genius.” ―Stephen Sparks, Point Reyes Books (Point Reyes Station, CA)