The Mystery of Perception (Paperback)

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.

Anyone with a passing interest in 20th century culture will find fascinating her run-ins with the likes of Simone de Beauvoir, Méret Oppenheim, Charles Henri Ford, Andy Warhol, Lou Reed, John Cale, Paula Fox, Barbara Kruger and Kathy Acker, just to name a few. Her enthusiasm, curiosity, and humor serve as a refreshing model, or in her words, an "image" which has created an alternative path for writers. As she says in the interview, "I know myself in relation to others." Featuring beautiful, full color photographs and contributions from Andrew Durbin, Emily LaBarge, and Claire Donato, this is the ideal introduction into the encyclopedic, obsessive mind of Lynne Tillman.

Taylor Lewandowski has written for Interview Magazine, Bookforum, Los Angeles Review of Books, Forever Magazine, and The Creative Independent, among other publications. He owns Dream Palace Books & Coffee and lives in Indianapolis, IN.

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 in Fiction; American Genius, A Comedy, and Men and Apparitions, nominated for a Republic of Consciousness Prize (UK, 2021). Her nonfiction books include The Velvet Years: Warhol’s Factory 1965–67, with photographs by Stephen Shore; What Would Lynne Tillman Do?, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, and The Broad Picture. Her essays and stories are published in various journals including Frieze, Bomb, The Whitney Review, Bookforum, Aperture, Artforum, N+1, and in artist’s monographs and gallery books such as those of Dana Schutz, Steve Locke, Stanley Whitney, Amy Sillman, and Raymond Pettibon, and in museum catalogues inculding The Whitney Museum of American Art; The ICP Boston, Hammer Museum, and MOCA. Tillman has received a Guggenheim Fellowship; a Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, and was awarded the Katherine Anne Porter Prize by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her most recent work is Mothercare, an autobiographical book-length essay. In 2025, Soft Skull Press will publish her collected stories, Thrilled to Death. In 2026, Zwirner Press will publish a collection of her essays on art and culture. She lives in Manhattan with bass player David Hofstra.

Andrew Durbin is the author of MacArthur Park (2017) and Skyland (2020). His book about Peter Hujar and Paul Thek, The Wonderful World that Almost Was, is forthcoming from FSG in the winter of 2026. He is the editor-in-chief of frieze and lives in London. 

Claire Donato is the author of three full-length books, most recently Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts (Archway Editions, 2023). Her work has been included in numerous anthologies, and recent writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Parapraxis, Forever, The Chicago Review, Fence, and The Brooklyn Rail. In addition to writing, Claire makes music, illustrates, and has a 35mm photography practice. She lives in Brooklyn with her cat Woebegone.

Emily LaBarge is a writer based in London. Her work has appeared in Artforum, Bookforum, the London Review of Books, the New York Times, and the Paris Review, among other publications. Dog Days will be published in the UK by Peninsula Press in 2025.