Review tbc but basically Kushner is just really cool isn’t she?

My first reading of Rachel Kushner. She's got a very easy reading style that can surprise you from out of nowhere with a sly offhand observation (at least she makes it feel offhand) or elegantly constructed connection.

Favorites from this collection:

"Girl on a Motorcycle"
"In the Company of Truckers"
"Picture Book Horses"
"The Hard Crowd"

Mitäs jos intoiltaisiin hetki Rachel Kushnerista?

Kushnerin romaanit (The Flamethrowers ja The Mars Room) ovat olleet hyvä kokemuksia. Tosin ensin mainitun kohdalla muistan olleeni vähän hukassa sen suhteen, missä milloinkin oltiin menossa, mutta nautintomielessä siitä ei ollut haittaa.

Kun The Hard Crow tuli kirjakaupassa vastaan oli selvää, että se lähtisi mukaani (kassan kautta toki).

The Hard Crow sisältää läjän esseitä, jotka Kushner on kirjoittanut parinkymmenen vuoden kuluessa. Niillä ei ole mitään varsinaista yhdistävää teemaa, mutta Kushnerin läsnäolo pitää pakan hyvin kasassa siitä huolimatta.

”The person who writes about her experience is not the same person who had the experience. The ability to write about it is a proof of change, of great distance.”

Muistelmiin ja yhteiskuntakritiikkiin yhdistyvät Kushnerilla tekstit kirjallisuudesta ja taiteesta. Hänen tarkastelunsa kohteena ovat esim.

motoristit, Jerusalemissa sijaitseva pakolaisleiri, Marguerite Duras, USA:n vankilajärjestelmä, Clarice Lispector, Italian poliittinen elämä 1970-luvulla, Denis Johnson, Jeff Koons ja Cormac McCarthy.

Minulle ei ole kauheasti väliä sillä, mistä Kushner kirjoittaa, sillä hänen tapansa kirjoittaa muuttaa kaiken kiinnostavaksi.

My thanks to Scribner and NetGalley for an e-ARC of this new collection.
OK, I LOVED her personal reminiscences! And I have to wonder if she handed me a drink one evening when she worked the bars at Bill Graham's clubs. And ya gotta love that she is a gearhead from an early age. The title essay brought back a lot of memories of obscure little joints and music clubs I would go to on occasion. And ah yes, Polk Gulch!
OTOH, I found myself browse reading some of her pieces on literature, film, and art. 3 pieces on the 1970's Italian radical movement becomes a bit redundant. The long piece on just "Anna" was more interesting than I thought it would be, but there was a bit of, "I saw this obscure, 4 hour long film, and you didn't....." The longest piece is on prison reform/abolition - it seemed more like a synopsis. But when I saw that it was written for the NYT Magazine, the style and depth fit.
One thing that I do love here, is that Scribner gave us complete bibliographic information on where and when each piece was first published. I wish all publishers would do that for collections of essays, and short stories. The first piece, on a motorcycle race in Mexico, was published in 2001, and then the next piece seems to jump to about 2012.
Really, from her critical pieces, I walked away with one book and a movie that I had not heard of before, and wanted to follow up on in the future. Not much, disappointingly. Although I did Google the art work of a couple of the artists she writes about here, most of whom she seems to have known as friends.
Maybe this is a book that would be most enjoyed by Kushner fans (and I am one myself, I read her books as they are published, and really have enjoyed the novels). For me, I am sure I would have enjoyed it more if there had been additional essays about her personal life and growing up in San Francisco.

Thank you to my friend Chris who gifted me this book, since the author and I are close to the same age and both grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area at the same time. And in fact, there are several people whom I also knew back in the 90's and I have not doubt that we must have been at some of the same warehouse parties in Hunter's Point. I'm sure she may have been my bartender once or twice at the Blue Lantern in the Tenderloin. We also had similar parents - Beatnik (don't you dare call them hippies!) Intellectuals who let their daughter roam to "live life," which often meant finding ourselves in dangerous situations, surrounded by drugs and sex and drama. The author and I even seem to have played a similar archetypal role of "the calm, grounded watcher" in the midst of so much chaos, and sadly, have both lost a lot of friends to suicide, drug overdoses, and other flavors of violence. Although, she's got me beat on one front - I don't think I know anyone who has been beheaded. As is true with all essay collections, the tone and topic of each chapter range all over the place and sometimes the flow felt a little challenging. But I enjoyed every single piece. Rachel Kushner's brilliant mind is a pleasure to witness and I loved having my own brain stretched and pulled into new places. A great read.

I will read anything Rachel Kushner writes. These essays are so brilliant that I savored them, and I'm looking forward to rereading soon.