American Genius: A Comedy - Softcover

“Tillman’s beautifully constructed sentences create their own propulsion, able to take a reader in any direction at any moment. From the opening pages, a singular consciousness emerges, both porous and radically isolated, and by stripping out most other elements, the book confirms the ultimate primacy of literary voice, of which this is a rare triumph.” ―Lidija Haas, Vulture, 1 of the 100 Most Important Books of the 2000s . . . So Far

"If you’re looking for a book to really just get lost in, this re-release of Lynne Tillman’s dense, winding, frantically brilliant novel is a good bet. Notice I didn’t say safe bet, because there’s little that’s safe within these pages. Instead, you’ll find the profane, twisted, knife edge-sharp thoughts of a former historian who is meditating on everything from the concept of sensitivity to the Manson murders. And you’ll receive these thoughts in the inimitable literary stylings of Tillman, who goes places few other writers can even conceive of existing." ―Kristin Iversen, NYLON

"American Genius, A Comedy is a novel of digression. Refusing linear plot for the meandering structure of recollection, the book takes the form of an stream-of-thought monologue delivered by a former American historian residing in a mysterious, clinic-like setting that might be a sanatorium or an artist’s retreat but might also be something more sinister. In slippery paragraphs always on the edge of incoherence, we hear about the narrator’s interest in baths, textiles, underarm waxing, the quirks and habits of most of her co-patients, and the history of slavery. A portrait of excessive interiority." ―TANK Magazine

"If Jane Austen were pulled along a post-modern highway into the 21st century, forced to shed her fixation on marriage being the ultimate happy ending, the resulting novel might read a little like this." ––Ruby Brunton, Cleveland Review of Books"Tillman gives us a mind hilariously on fire with compensatory distractions, bristling with facts that may not help at all . . . The woman’s mind spins, and with it a voice that’s ardent and ironic, knowing and oblivious, repetitive and contradictory . . . What kind of 'comedy' is this? . . . The comedy, surely of a sort of late modernism, familiar from Samuel Beckett and Thomas Bernhard: novelists whose narrators simply can’t be quiet, but find themselves yammering away, the brain always buzzing, dry lips smacking and teeth clacking as their stories and theories and opinions come tumbling out . . . American Genius, A Comedy was timely in 2006, and still feels queasily of our moment." ––Brian Dillon, 4Columns