Men and Apparitions

Why do human beings feel the need to create, remake, and keep images from and of everything? How are we supposed to live amid this glut of images? Men and Apparitions takes on a central question of our time through the wild musings and eventful life of Ezekiel Hooper Stark, cultural anthropologist, ethnographer, specialist in family photographs. As Zeke goes from being a child obsessed with his family's photo albums to a young and passionate researcher to a man broken by betrayal in love, his academic fascinations 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, Men and Apparitions showcases Lynne Tillman not only as a brilliantly original novelist but as one of our most prominent thinkers on visual art and culture today.