The Flame Throwers

This month we read the The Flame Throwers at Kate's suggestion.  Chrysanne reported that Kate, who is a writer, found Rachel Kushner's work to be brilliant.  We were hoping to get a review by Kate for the blog, but a week or so has passed and I felt the need to take a clumsy stab at it.  But the minute we receive something from Kate, I will add in her words.

The Flame Throwers received a big mixed review with Tim and Chrysanne on one hand loving the novel.  They noted the brilliant metaphors and descriptions:
“It was not the case that one thing morphed into another, child into woman. You remained the person you were before things happened to you. The person you were when you thought a small cut string could determine the course of a year. You also became the person to whom certain things happened. Who passed into the realm where you no longer questioned the notion of being trapped in one form. You took on that form, that identity, hoped for its recognition from others, hoped someone would love it and you.” 
 They admired the amount of research Ms. Kushner must have done in order to capture the art, motorcycles and New York culture.

Mindy, Lexi, and Terry were on the other end of the spectrum, not understanding the role of the main character was who was never even referred to by her real name, but by her home city, Reno.  They were unable to warm up to the characters and found the writing artistic-but to pondered, to what end-sure the writing was great, but what was the purpose of the work?

Ed and I were in the middle, admiring the writing, yet not loving the novel itself.  There was some thought that it felt like a series of essays or short stories threaded together with the same characters and setting.  Both Ed and I, who lived a much straighter and  more traditional life during the 70's, were a bit fascinated by the edgyArt-as-Life-New York world that we were aware of, but had missed. 

So I close with Rachel Kushner's lines:

“The answer is not coming. I have to find an arbitrary point inside the spell of waiting, the open absence, and tear myself away. Leave, with no answer. Move on to the next question.” 

Next month we are reading Stoner by John Williams and we are meeting at Terry's on Wednesday, November 13th.  See you there!

Fathers and Sons

We enjoyed a fine Summer evening meal and book club discussion at Tim's tonight.  Against a backdrop of the sounds of the County Fair, we talked about Turgenev's Fathers and Sons.  I love 19th Century Russian novels.  Give me the strife of the peasants against the opulence of the aristocracy and the looming revolution any day of the week.  I love old Russian novels.  Some of us loved it, some of us did not love it, but there was a general consensus that this was a great work.  Turgenev popularized the term nihilism in this novel and sets the stage for the oncoming social revolution in Russia.  He wrote:

A nihilist is a man who does not bow to any authorities, who does not take any principle on trust, no matter with what respect that principle is surrounded.

We agreed that Bazarov was a great character-his youthful arrogance, his wavering commitment to his cause when he felt love, and his dramatic death.  The novel was important because it was set during the six years between Russia's defeat in the Crimean war and the emancipation of the serfs.  Turgenev's novel was not well received in his country prompted him to leave the country after Fathers and Sons was published.  He had a tense relationship with Tolstoy in 1862.  So it is really something when in 2013 Chrysanne says, "I think Fathers and Sons was way better than War and Peace!"

Next Book is the Flame Throwers by Rachel Kushner and we are back at Mindy's on September 30th.