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Lynne Tillman on American History, Human Absurdity, and why Trump should have become a Comedian

Lynne Tillman on American History, Human Absurdity, and why Trump should have become a Comedian

Released Wednesday, 23rd October 2024
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Lynne Tillman on American History, Human Absurdity, and why Trump should have become a Comedian

Lynne Tillman on American History, Human Absurdity, and why Trump should have become a Comedian

Lynne Tillman on American History, Human Absurdity, and why Trump should have become a Comedian

Lynne Tillman on American History, Human Absurdity, and why Trump should have become a Comedian

Wednesday, 23rd October 2024
Good episode? Give it some love!
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A woman speaks to us from her room in a residential home, of some description. She reflects on her life, her family, her pets, on time—the past, present and the future—on Manson Family Alumnus Leslie Van Houyten, on History, on Death, on the Occult, on what it means to be “sensitive”…and so much more besides. All the while she is distracted, bothered, grounded, and charmed by her fellow residents, a rag-tag slice of American life if ever a novel saw oner. As you can imagine from a Lynne Tillman book—indeed, as you would hope—things get discursive, things get disrupted, things get WEIRD, very quickly. First published in 2006, AMERICAN GENIUS, A COMEDY achieves the eerie feat of growing more pertinent as time goes on. Deeply aware of the tradition of the novel—perhaps the American novel in particular—Tillman is also confident enough in the newness of her project, and mischievous enough in her approach, to subvert that tradition almost to breaking point. To echo the words of George Saunders, AMERICAN GENIUS, A COMEDY is “beautiful, sacred, insane.”


Buy American Genius, A Comedy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/american-genius


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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; American Genius, A Comedy; and Men and Apparitions. 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.


Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. His latest novel, Beasts of England, a sequel of sorts to Animal Farm, is available now. Buy a signed copy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/beasts-of-england


Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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The Shakespeare and Company Interview

Discover your next favourite book, or take a deep dive into the mind of an author you love, with The Shakespeare and Company Interview podcast.Long-form interviews with internationally acclaimed authors, recorded from our bookshop in the heart of Paris. Hosted by S&Co Literary Director, Adam Biles.Discover all our upcoming events here.If you enjoy these conversations, you can order The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews here.Past guests include: Ottessa Moshfegh, Ian McEwan, Ali Smith, Har Kunzru, Rachel Kushner, Katie Kitamura, Elif Shafak, Claire-Louiose Bennett, Leïla Simoni, Ian Dunt, David Runciman, Richard Powers, Eimear McBride, Armando Iannucci, Lauren Grodd, Lauren Elkin, Recebcca Solnit, John Berger, Hollie McNish, Michael Pedersen, Rob Doyle, Philippe Sands, George Saunders, Edouard Louis, Rachel Cusk, Preti Taneja, Alejandro Zambra, DBC Pierre, Meg Mason, Sandra Newman, David Simon, Joshua Cohen, Geoff Dyer, David Wallce-Wells, Emul Saint-John Mandel, Mohsin Hamid, Tess Gunty, A.M. Homes, John Higgs, Miriam Toews, Kamila Shamsie, Annie Ernaux, William Boyd, David Keenan, Jonathan Coe, Coco Mellors, Tom Mustill, Jeanette Winterson, Sarah Churchwell, Katy Hessel, Don Paterson, Elizabeth McCracken, Meena Kandasamy, Aleksandar Hemon, Catherine Lacey, Xiaolu Guo, M. John Harrison, Dolly Adderton, Hernan Diaz, Kathryn Scanlan, Ben Lerner, Isabel Waidner, Nick Laird, Adam Thirlwell, Mark O'Connell, Marie Darrieussecq, Jo Ann Beard, C Pam Zhang, Naomi Klein...and many, many more. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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