American Genius, A Comedy
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Author: Lynne Tillman
A former historian is spending time in a residential home – but is it an artist’s retreat, a spa, or a psychiatric hospital? In this masterful novel, Tillman fashions nothing less than a microcosm of troubled American democracy. 'American Genius, A Comedy' reinvents the modernist novel for our distracted and hypermediated era – it is the tale of a consciousness that is expansive and exacting and utterly compelling. In hypnotic and digressive prose, Tillman’s narrator spins tales of her life while ruminating on her many and varied preoccupations: chair design, the Manson family, the Zulu alphabet, the death of a pet, family trauma, loneliness – and skin and the meaning of ‘sensitivity’ in contemporary society. Meanwhile, these reveries and reminiscences are constantly interrupted by the presence of her fellow residents, each with their own obsessions and neuroses.‘The narrative voice is manic, neurotic, self-generative, very smart, loopy, deeply vulnerable, closely (obsessively) observant, narcissistic, and eminently contemporary. It is also very funny. Flawed, beautiful, sacred, insane.’ – George Saunders
ISBN 9781913512521. Peninsula Press. pb. 368 pages. 19.8 x 13 x 2.8 cm.
available
A former historian is spending time in a residential home – but is it an artist’s retreat, a spa, or a psychiatric hospital? In this masterful novel, Tillman fashions nothing less than a microcosm of troubled American democracy. 'American Genius, A Comedy' reinvents the modernist novel for our distracted and hypermediated era – it is the tale of a consciousness that is expansive and exacting and utterly compelling. In hypnotic and digressive prose, Tillman’s narrator spins tales of her life while ruminating on her many and varied preoccupations: chair design, the Manson family, the Zulu alphabet, the death of a pet, family trauma, loneliness – and skin and the meaning of ‘sensitivity’ in contemporary society. Meanwhile, these reveries and reminiscences are constantly interrupted by the presence of her fellow residents, each with their own obsessions and neuroses.‘The narrative voice is manic, neurotic, self-generative, very smart, loopy, deeply vulnerable, closely (obsessively) observant, narcissistic, and eminently contemporary. It is also very funny. Flawed, beautiful, sacred, insane.’ – George Saunders
ISBN 9781913512521. Peninsula Press. pb. 368 pages. 19.8 x 13 x 2.8 cm.
available