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| Rachel Kushner: 'I know what it feels like to crash a motorcycle at 140mph' | Rachel Kushner: 'I know what it feels like to crash a motorcycle at 140mph' |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| Rachel Kushner's second novel, The Flamethrowers, has just been published to great acclaim. It's set in the New York art world of the 70s, and in Italy, where Reno, the novel's motorcycle-riding artist-narrator, stays with the family of her boyfriend, Sandro – whose father is a tyre magnate and past Futurist and fascist. Before she became a full-time novelist Kushner worked as a writer and editor on various New York art magazines. She currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband and young son. | Rachel Kushner's second novel, The Flamethrowers, has just been published to great acclaim. It's set in the New York art world of the 70s, and in Italy, where Reno, the novel's motorcycle-riding artist-narrator, stays with the family of her boyfriend, Sandro – whose father is a tyre magnate and past Futurist and fascist. Before she became a full-time novelist Kushner worked as a writer and editor on various New York art magazines. She currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband and young son. |
| The Flamethrowers is such a capacious book, spanning two continents and half a century. How did you get the idea for it? | The Flamethrowers is such a capacious book, spanning two continents and half a century. How did you get the idea for it? |
| It began around the time I was selling my first novel. My editor asked my agent: does she have another novel in the works? I didn't but, impulsively, I said I wanted to write a novel about the art world in the 70s. I was thinking about that era. New York was decimated at the time. It was bankrupt, crime was rampant, there were blackouts and looting. But it was also this incredibly vibrant place. You could live on very little money and find a space to work, and you had the freedom to be creative. | It began around the time I was selling my first novel. My editor asked my agent: does she have another novel in the works? I didn't but, impulsively, I said I wanted to write a novel about the art world in the 70s. I was thinking about that era. New York was decimated at the time. It was bankrupt, crime was rampant, there were blackouts and looting. But it was also this incredibly vibrant place. You could live on very little money and find a space to work, and you had the freedom to be creative. |
| Your descriptions of speed in the book – Reno racing across the Utah salt flats – are amazing. Are you a speed freak yourself? | Your descriptions of speed in the book – Reno racing across the Utah salt flats – are amazing. Are you a speed freak yourself? |
| It's opaque to me why I wanted to write about it, but I did spend quite a few years riding motorcycles, and I was a ski racer when I was young. I have crashed on a motorcycle that was going at 140mph, so I know what it feels like. But I don't like to emphasise the autobiographical echoes in the book: there is something about speed that would interest me even if I hadn't known it. | It's opaque to me why I wanted to write about it, but I did spend quite a few years riding motorcycles, and I was a ski racer when I was young. I have crashed on a motorcycle that was going at 140mph, so I know what it feels like. But I don't like to emphasise the autobiographical echoes in the book: there is something about speed that would interest me even if I hadn't known it. |
| How seriously do you take the art world? In the novel, you seem to be sending up your artist characters. One of them carries a barber's pole wherever he goes. | How seriously do you take the art world? In the novel, you seem to be sending up your artist characters. One of them carries a barber's pole wherever he goes. |
| I take it very seriously, and that's my intention in the book. A lot of people know very little about the art world. They don't understand it because it has its own discourse; it's a bit exclusive in that way. But [that discourse] isn't nonsense, and it can't be faked. The social dimension of the art world is fascinating to me, but I also want to entertain the reader, so I will let a character say something funny. | I take it very seriously, and that's my intention in the book. A lot of people know very little about the art world. They don't understand it because it has its own discourse; it's a bit exclusive in that way. But [that discourse] isn't nonsense, and it can't be faked. The social dimension of the art world is fascinating to me, but I also want to entertain the reader, so I will let a character say something funny. |
| Writing is a solitary pursuit. Do you envy artists, who often work together and have studio assistants for company? | Writing is a solitary pursuit. Do you envy artists, who often work together and have studio assistants for company? |
| I don't quite envy them. I'm a very interior person. I love silence. I revel in it. I'm happy that way. I'm scrupulous about preserving that alone-time. I'm not the kind of person who would want to go into a studio, and manage other people, and listen to the phone ringing. That's alien to me. But I do enjoy being an onlooker to the scene. The other thing is that artists tend to stay up late, and that's not a big deal for them. When they're tired, they just prime canvases. I have to arrange my life very carefully. I need eight hours' sleep to work. | I don't quite envy them. I'm a very interior person. I love silence. I revel in it. I'm happy that way. I'm scrupulous about preserving that alone-time. I'm not the kind of person who would want to go into a studio, and manage other people, and listen to the phone ringing. That's alien to me. But I do enjoy being an onlooker to the scene. The other thing is that artists tend to stay up late, and that's not a big deal for them. When they're tired, they just prime canvases. I have to arrange my life very carefully. I need eight hours' sleep to work. |
| The Flamethrowers has had wonderful reviews. In the New Yorker, James Wood likened it to Flaubert's Sentimental Education. How did you feel about that? | The Flamethrowers has had wonderful reviews. In the New Yorker, James Wood likened it to Flaubert's Sentimental Education. How did you feel about that? |
| I'm lucky to have had that level of attention: so many good books come out every year. I'm a huge admirer of Flaubert, but it's only after you sit back and take a look at what you've done that you notice these things. He wasn't necessarily in my mind as I was writing. | I'm lucky to have had that level of attention: so many good books come out every year. I'm a huge admirer of Flaubert, but it's only after you sit back and take a look at what you've done that you notice these things. He wasn't necessarily in my mind as I was writing. |
| You live in Los Angeles, which most of us think of as a city of screenwriters rather than novelists. Is it a good place to work? | You live in Los Angeles, which most of us think of as a city of screenwriters rather than novelists. Is it a good place to work? |
| There aren't that many of us here, that's true. I find it an incredibly productive place. I grew up in Oregon, and then I lived in San Francisco and New York. I moved here in 2003, when I quit my editing job to commit myself to writing my novel. I lived very cheaply and anonymously. I don't encounter the world of Hollywood, though I know it's out there. It's in the west, and I live in the east, which is more bohemian and diverse. It's a huge city: worlds within worlds. It never becomes too small and familiar. For me that makes it a good place to work. | There aren't that many of us here, that's true. I find it an incredibly productive place. I grew up in Oregon, and then I lived in San Francisco and New York. I moved here in 2003, when I quit my editing job to commit myself to writing my novel. I lived very cheaply and anonymously. I don't encounter the world of Hollywood, though I know it's out there. It's in the west, and I live in the east, which is more bohemian and diverse. It's a huge city: worlds within worlds. It never becomes too small and familiar. For me that makes it a good place to work. |
| Novelists are expected to get started young. But you didn't publish your first book until you were 37. Do you have a sense of being a latecomer? | Novelists are expected to get started young. But you didn't publish your first book until you were 37. Do you have a sense of being a latecomer? |
| I was very precocious when I was young. I went to college at 16, and I graduated at 20. I wanted to be a writer, but I was more interested in experience than in applying myself intellectually. I didn't do a masters in creative writing until I was 26, which is quite old, and then I found myself in New York and I needed money, so I started working full time as an editor. I wasn't in a hurry. I was busy and I had to earn a living – and then it took me six years to write my first novel! Maybe I'm a slow learner. But perhaps I can help to create a different sort of mystique about the writer. After all, writers come to writing in all sorts of ways. Don DeLillo worked in advertising before he was a writer, and then he wrote seven novels in a decade. I love that: the fierce intensity of writing late. | I was very precocious when I was young. I went to college at 16, and I graduated at 20. I wanted to be a writer, but I was more interested in experience than in applying myself intellectually. I didn't do a masters in creative writing until I was 26, which is quite old, and then I found myself in New York and I needed money, so I started working full time as an editor. I wasn't in a hurry. I was busy and I had to earn a living – and then it took me six years to write my first novel! Maybe I'm a slow learner. But perhaps I can help to create a different sort of mystique about the writer. After all, writers come to writing in all sorts of ways. Don DeLillo worked in advertising before he was a writer, and then he wrote seven novels in a decade. I love that: the fierce intensity of writing late. |
| Who are the writers who are most important to you, and to whose work you always return? | Who are the writers who are most important to you, and to whose work you always return? |
| That's an easy question. Proust. In his sentences lie all the things I want from literature. I feel so companioned by him, and so challenged. The way he describes the pain and the pleasures of social moments; he is so alive to beauty, and to cruelty. His use of language is incredible without ever being flashy. | That's an easy question. Proust. In his sentences lie all the things I want from literature. I feel so companioned by him, and so challenged. The way he describes the pain and the pleasures of social moments; he is so alive to beauty, and to cruelty. His use of language is incredible without ever being flashy. |
| Have you started a new novel? | Have you started a new novel? |
| At the moment, I'm still in the long shadow that follows publication. But I have started, yes. It's set in the present or the near future and it's about women in prison. | At the moment, I'm still in the long shadow that follows publication. But I have started, yes. It's set in the present or the near future and it's about women in prison. |
| Will the success of The Flamethrowers help or hinder the writing of it? | Will the success of The Flamethrowers help or hinder the writing of it? |
| Every book is difficult to write. It should be. But I think it will help. My sensibility is all over The Flamethrowers; it comes deeply from who I am. The response allows me to go ahead and use my own essence as an agent to generate fiction. I find that to be quite empowering. | Every book is difficult to write. It should be. But I think it will help. My sensibility is all over The Flamethrowers; it comes deeply from who I am. The response allows me to go ahead and use my own essence as an agent to generate fiction. I find that to be quite empowering. |
| The Flamethrowers is published by Harvill Secker | The Flamethrowers is published by Harvill Secker |
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