{"id":923,"date":"2014-08-14T22:33:49","date_gmt":"2014-08-15T02:33:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/pschmid1\/?p=923"},"modified":"2024-05-28T08:14:39","modified_gmt":"2024-05-28T12:14:39","slug":"on-rachel-kushners-novel-the-flamethrowers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/pschmid1\/?p=923","title":{"rendered":"on Rachel Kushner&#8217;s novel The Flamethrowers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/15803141-the-flamethrowers\" style=\"float: left; padding-right: 20px\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"The Flamethrowers\" border=\"0\" src=\"https:\/\/d.gr-assets.com\/books\/1387146199m\/15803141.jpg\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/15803141-the-flamethrowers\">The Flamethrowers<\/a> by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/author\/show\/164139.Rachel_Kushner\">Rachel Kushner<\/a><br \/>\nMy rating: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/show\/1026986319\">5 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Flamethrowers is burning-hot good.  It works on so many levels: a coming of age story; a feminist analysis\/satire\/tragedy re entrapping gender roles; an anatomy of &#8220;revolutionary&#8221; cultures of violence and dissimulation (esp in NYC and Italy in the 1970s); film history and criticism&#8211;you&#8217;ll never think about &#8220;china girls&#8221; or &#8220;stock footage&#8221; or Italian neo-realist cinema the same way after reading this.  Plus we get a reflection on modernism&#8217;s dream machines and their connections to colonialist violence (hip Valera motorcycles and rubber plantations in Brazil)\u2026.  <\/p>\n<p>Wickedly well-turned sentences, paragraphs, entire episodes.  Its ambition and its moves also at different times reminded me of reading Hemingway, or Plath, or even Henry James (<em>Portrait of a Lady<\/em>&#8216;s scene when Isabel first encounters Italy: guess who takes Osmond&#8217;s part!).  <\/p>\n<p>An excerpt, from the interior thoughts of Reno, the book&#8217;s heroine:  &#8220;You have time.  Meaning don&#8217;t use it, but pass through time in patience, waiting for something to come.  Prepare for its arrival.  Don&#8217;t rush to meet it.  Be a conduit.  \u2026 Some people might consider that passivity but I did not.  I considered it living&#8221; (30).  Remember those lines when you get to the book&#8217;s brilliant ending.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/list\/20453937-peter-schmidt\">View all my Goodreads reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner My rating: 5 of 5 stars The Flamethrowers is burning-hot good. It works on so many levels: a coming of age story; a feminist analysis\/satire\/tragedy re entrapping gender roles; an anatomy of &#8220;revolutionary&#8221; cultures of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/pschmid1\/?p=923\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8],"tags":[111,113,112],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/pschmid1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/pschmid1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/pschmid1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/pschmid1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/pschmid1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=923"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/pschmid1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":925,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/pschmid1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923\/revisions\/925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/pschmid1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/pschmid1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/pschmid1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}