Weird Fucks - Lynne Tillman

 WEIRD FUCKS - LYNNE TILLMAN

It's like, if I was a bookseller I'd put this one out on the shelves of my bookshop and wait to see who brings it up to the till to buy, just to see what kind of person they are. And it's like, when you're reading it, it should probably be done in public such as on a train and be held up at face-level so that everyone can see the title.

Well, I'm the kind of person who would buy a book like this and the bookseller didn't seem surprised in the least, giving me a look of 'I might have known it would be you who would buy this one'. And when reading it on the train, nobody commented or moved away or even seemed to bat an eyelid. It was a bit disappointing, really, as I thought it might at least strike up some kind of conversation at least, even if it was an uncomfortable one. 

Weird Fucks by Lynne Tillman is a novella from (as it says on the back cover) a 'legendary figure in American fiction' and actually it's an important point because knowing who Lynne Tillman is lends the book some gravitas. It changes the book from being merely some notes on the author's shagging career to an exploration of her sexual odyssey through America, Greece and The Netherlands during the 1970s.

So who is Lynne Tillman? According to Wikipedia she's a novelist, short story writer and cultural critic who in the 1970s squatted in London with Heathcote Williams. If you know who Heathcote Williams is (and I would hope everyone does) then it gives you a good idea of where she's coming from culturally and therefore posits a clue as to what Weird Fucks might be like.

According to Stewart Home, 'Weird Fucks is better than sex, it's a literacy mindfuck, it blew me away'. I wouldn't really go that far in praising it, however, and in fact I'd say it's actually a very light read and not half as rude as the title suggests. Lynne Tillman was obviously a liberated woman during the Seventies but not over-liberated, as they say. Her inhibitions, naivety and self doubts are on full display but more importantly than this, when it comes to the men she writes about, they're there in all their glory - and it's not a pretty sight.

For example: 'In the morning Scott tells me he's into being macho. "How do you mean?" I ask. "Well," he says "it's sort of feminism for men."

Or this: 'Tim's stupidity was dangerous. When finally we were fucking, he was given to calling out "That's some cunt. That's some cunt." His love-talk became absurd exaggeration. "I'd like to kill you with my cock." I drew back from his embrace and looked at his eyes which had narrowed. "That's horrible," I said.'

Oh, the embarrassment. I suspect some of the names in the book have been changed and that some of these men might well now be pretty famous - or cult famous, at least?  I wonder if they're still the same when it comes to women? I very much hope not. 'The past is a different country, they do things differently there', as LP Hartley once said and if this is the case then the 1970s is a whole other planet with Weird Fucks being images of it beamed back to Earth from the literary equivalent of a Voyager space probe whilst it's commander Lynne Tillman sits back at NASA Control having the last laugh.

John Serpico