{"id":706,"date":"2013-04-03T11:44:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-03T18:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2013\/04\/rachel-kushners-the-flamethrowers.html"},"modified":"2013-04-03T11:44:00","modified_gmt":"2013-04-03T18:44:00","slug":"rachel-kushners-the-flamethrowers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2013\/04\/rachel-kushners-the-flamethrowers.html","title":{"rendered":"Rachel Kushner&#8217;s &quot;The Flamethrowers&quot;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ONE of our favorite debuts in recent years is Rachel Kushner&#8217;s <i>Telex From Cuba<\/i>. I was aware of this novel only because of a tip from New York literary agent Chris Calhoun, and once I read the galleys I was a bit abashed to see what a substantial talent was here in my city, until then invisible to me.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-TjF4vYK970I\/UVyGbG5JXXI\/AAAAAAAACOg\/jPjVjg2jetY\/s1600\/flame.png\" imageanchor=\"1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" height=\"320\" src=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-TjF4vYK970I\/UVyGbG5JXXI\/AAAAAAAACOg\/jPjVjg2jetY\/s320\/flame.png\" width=\"256\"><\/a>In any case, Rachel is invisible no more. Here sophomore novel, <i><a href=\"http:\/\/pages.simonandschuster.com\/flamethrowers\/\">The Flamethrowers<\/a><\/i>, which came out this week, is drawing rave reviews in the US and UK, and enthusiastic coverage, including an NPR interview I have not yet heard. The new novel is about speed, sex, motorcycles, Italy, &#8217;70s New York\u00a0and the art world (a few of our favorite things.)<\/p>\n<p>So far, it seems to me even better than the Cuba book. (She explored some of the themes in her book in a recent review of Richard Hell&#8217;s new memoir in the New York Times Book Review.)<br \/><span><br \/><\/span><span>The New Yorker&#8217;s James Wood <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/arts\/critics\/books\/2013\/04\/08\/130408crbo_books_wood\">calls it<\/a>\u00a0&#8220;<span>scintillatingly alive, and also alive to artifice.&#8221; Dwight Garner just wrote one of his characteristically electric <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/04\/17\/books\/the-flamethrowers-a-novel-by-rachel-kushner.html?ref=arts\">reviews<\/a> of the novel.<\/span><\/span><br \/><span><span><br \/><\/span><\/span><span><a href=\"http:\/\/articles.latimes.com\/2008\/jul\/05\/entertainment\/et-kushner5\">HERE<\/a> is my interview with Rachel from a few years ago. I recently met with the Echo Park resident at a groovy nearby cafe (braving the treacherously steep Baxter to get there), and have another story on the author and her work coming soon. Until then, pick up <i>The Flamethrowers.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ONE of our favorite debuts in recent years is Rachel Kushner&#8217;s Telex From Cuba. I was aware of this novel only because of a tip from New York literary agent Chris Calhoun, and once I read the galleys I was a bit abashed to see what a substantial talent was here in my city, until [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70,93,34,30,48,49,29],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-706","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-art","7":"category-italian","8":"category-literary","9":"category-los-angeles","10":"category-new-york","11":"category-new-yorker","12":"category-west-coast","13":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}