September 18, 2006
Lynne Tillman interviewed by Geoffrey O'Brien in Bomb
I picked up the new issue of Bomb at the Brooklyn Book Festival on Saturday, and immediately flipped to the interview with Lynne Tillman, which focuses on her new novel, American Genius, A Comedy (Soft Skull Press). The conversation is conducted by Geoffrey O'Brien, himself a superb writer and the editor of the Library of America. An excerpt:
LT: American Genius, A Comedy is purposefully more abstract. I also wanted to write about America now. I have an intense interest in American history, which pops up in a number of my books, but in this I wanted to go for it, fully write about who and where we are—or, even, how to think about being an American now.GO: How did we get to this place, to this moment?
LT: Many of us are just miserable and scared about what's happening now. There's a sense we're trapped in something out of control or out of our control.
GO: The idea of control in fact seems central to the book. To what extent can this person be said to control her life or control any aspect of her life, even though clearly she devotes a lot of energy to doing just that? The image of the frontier, when that comes up in the discussion of Frederick Jackson Turner's theory of the role of the frontier in American history, seems to fit perfectly with everything else that is going on at this residence. It's as if the people staying here have reached the end of the frontier.
LT: I wanted to, as you say, indicate boundarylessness. Things drift and flow—how do you write consciousness, get it on the page; how do you mark events, objects, merging into each other? When you're thinking, there are thoughts you're not thinking, too; you're making connections you're unaware of.
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