This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2006 by Lynne Tillman
Introduction copyright © 2019 by Lucy Ives
All rights reserved
First Soft Skull edition: 2006
All quotations on pages 276–284 are from Franz Kafka: Letters to Felice, eds. Erich Heller and Jurgen Born, translated by James Stern and Elizabeth Duckworth, New York: Schocken Books, 1973
Excerpts from American Genius, A Comedy appeared in Gregg Bordowitz: Drive, BOMB, The Literary Review, The Mississippi Review, Blindspot: Tribute to Kim Zorn Caputo, and John Baldessari: Food for Thought.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Tillman, Lynne, author. | Ives, Lucy, 1980– writer of introduction.
Title: American genius : a comedy / Lynne Tillman.
Description: New York : Soft Skull, [2019]
Identifiers: LCCN 2018040348| ISBN 9781593763114 (paperback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781593763176 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Humorous stories, American.
Classification: LCC PS3570.I42 A84 2019 | DDC 812/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018040348
Cover design by Michael Salu
Cover photograph: Ron Amstutz, courtesy of Robert Gober and Matthew Marks Gallery
Book design by Wah-Ming Chang
Published by Soft Skull Press
1140 Broadway, Suite 704
New York, NY 10001
Soft Skull titles are distributed to the trade
by Publishers Group West
Phone: 866-400-5351
Printed in the United States of America
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2