The Mystery of Perception: A Conversation with Lynne Tillman

Author: Taylor Lewandowski

Publisher: Archway Editions (2025)

Candid and instantly engaging, this will be the go-to introduction to Lynne Tillman for readers everywhere and is a must have for any fan. A breakthrough for the legendary underground icon, who speaks about her life as a writer and her work in a stunning and candid conversation with writer and critic Taylor Lewandowski.

A book length interview with Lynne Tillman, beloved icon of underground American literature, that spans memoir, scrapbook, cultural criticism, and history in a lively, compact package. Critic Taylor Lewandowski strings together her many lives and worlds, from a Long Island childhood, to her colorful Downtown NYC life in the 1970’s and 80’s, to her psychoanalytical fiction, to her historicizing New York City with Stephen Shore’s Factory photographs and Jeannette Watson’s Books & Co., to her “Madame Realism” art criticism.

Lynne Tillman has devoted her life to using language as a tool to synthesize the chaos of our world into intricate, fragmented pieces about perception, gender, photography, family, American history, and much more, and this pocket-size primer is a fascinating narrative unto itself that will be the jumping off point to her vast oeuvre from now on.