Men and Apparitions
A Novel
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Today we live in a “glut of images.” What does that mean? Men and Apparitions takes on a central question of our era through the wild musings and eventful life of Ezekiel Hooper Stark, cultural anthropologist, ethnographer, specialist in family photographs.
We are the Picture People. I name us Picture People because most special and obvious about the species is, our kind lives on and for pictures, lives as and for images, our species takes pictures, makes pix, thinks in pix.
What is behind the human drive to create, remake, and keep images from and of everything? What does it mean that we now live in a “glut of images?” Men and Apparitions takes on a central question of our era through the wild musings and eventful life of Ezekiel Hooper Stark, cultural anthropologist, ethnographer, specialist in family photographs. As Ezekiel progresses from a child obsessed with his family’s photo albums to a young and passionate researcher to a man devastated by betrayal in love, his academic fascinations determine and 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, this book that showcases Lynne Tillman not only as a brilliant original novelist but also as one of our most prominent thinkers on culture and visual culture today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The latest from Tillman (American Genius, A Comedy) is a timely, if messy, exploration of modern masculinity, told from the perspective of Ezekiel Hooper Stark, a 30-something ethnographer and assistant professor who sifts through photographs to construct the narratives of family and strangers. Told in fragmented mini chapters, Zeke chronicles his own early life absent, alcoholic father; rude older brother; semimute little sister before pivoting to his turbulent, brief marriage to Maggie, a college sweetheart. While on a trip to London together, Zeke learns of Maggie's love affair with his friend Curtis. The revelation sends him into a fugue state, and Zeke bounces around Europe, only to return to the United States a divorc , pretending to be a number of different people under false names. He finds kinship in the story of his ancestor, socialite and photographer Clover Hooper Adams, and turns his attention to the study of what he calls the "New Man." As always, Tillman is inventive in her approach to storytelling, inserting photos and allowing Zeke's mind to wander. While there is much to admire, occasionally Zeke's digressions impede narrative flow. The result is a novel full of fits and starts, equally charming and frustrating.
