From the Bookshelf of The Roundtable…

The Flamethrowers

Rachel Kushner

Start date: May 1, 2018

Finish date: May 31, 2018

Discussion: 2018 RT Tournament of Books

Why we're reading this: Contender for the 2018 RT Tournament of Books, Round D
[close] Contender for the 2018 RT Tournament of Books, Round D

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What Members Thought

Aug 06, 2013 El rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 21st-centurylit, anarchism-revolutions, wanderlust, library-borrow

I was 25 at the time, looking for something, anything, when my brother told me he was moving out of town. I couldn't think of anything more important than playing the kid sister card and tagging along wherever he decided to go. Our other brother had broken free a while ago, our parents had moved to another state, and here was the idea that my last attachment was leaving me behind in a place I probably hated more than any of them put together. I had a job, I had a relationship of about seven year I was 25 at the time, looking for something, anything, when my brother told me he was moving out of town. I couldn't think of anything more important than playing the kid sister card and tagging along wherever he decided to go. Our other brother had broken free a while ago, our parents had moved to another state, and here was the idea that my last attachment was leaving me behind in a place I probably hated more than any of them put together. I had a job, I had a relationship of about seven years, I had roots. But I no longer wanted any of those things. I can't speak for his reasons for wanting to leave, but I like to think we were in the same boat: We had outgrown the town we were brought to as teenagers and we needed to reaffirm that there was life somewhere else. Because there was no life where we were. At least not a life that worked for us.

So we moved.

Ten years ago around-this-time-like-by-a-week-or-so my oldest brother and I moved from a college town in mid-Missouri to Pittsburgh.

It's not as daring as Reno's travels to New York in the Seventies when things were different than they are now, and my new circles in Pittsburgh didn't quite involve the same sort of characters that Reno encountered in NY, or in Italy, or in Utah. I didn't make any part of the trip on the back of a motorcycle and have no intention of getting on one at this stage of my life either. But it was different. It was a radical change. It was scary. It was exciting.

Reading this book now, a decade later, in the middle of August around the time we made that move makes me think a lot about the 25-year-old me and how things would have been had I stayed in mid-Missouri. I'm terrified of the prospect. But timing is everything, and I read this book at exactly the right time. Maybe if I had read it at a younger age it would have lit a fuse under my ass that much sooner, but I'm happy to read it now, as an older reader, a slightly wiser person. I can appreciate Reno's position better? I can relate to her, even though Kushner keeps her readers this far away from Reno and all of the characters, which gives the whole read a sort of... muted tone. One could argue that Reno's a female, I'm a female, there ya go. But it's more than that, this isn't about gender, this is just about growing and expanding and breathing and becoming.

Reno isn't perfect, and this isn't a perfect novel. What Reno is is a flawed person, just like the rest of us, with flawed emotions and flawed rationalities, with flawed teeth and flawed interactions. I'm not going to point out my own flaws by indicating which parts of the story were especially (sometimes painfully) familiar to me, but they're there. I have a feeling they're there for a lot of people, and I feel that's the reason that this book is striking such a chord with its readers.

And to my brother: It's been a good decade. Thanks for letting me tag along and cramping your style. I like who we have become. ...more

21 likes · Like · see review

May 24, 2018 Wendy rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books, literary-fiction, 2018

"[T]hey referred to a discourse that artists such as Sandro wrote long essays about, and if you didn’t know the discourse, you couldn’t take them for what they were, or were meant to be. You were simply confused." -- a distillation of my Flamethrowers reading experience

Oof, this critical darling didn't land for me at all. It started off promising, with some lovely imagery as young Reno races her motorcycle across the the Nevada salt flats, then crashes in one breathless scene. But once Reno move "[T]hey referred to a discourse that artists such as Sandro wrote long essays about, and if you didn’t know the discourse, you couldn’t take them for what they were, or were meant to be. You were simply confused." -- a distillation of my Flamethrowers reading experience

Oof, this critical darling didn't land for me at all. It started off promising, with some lovely imagery as young Reno races her motorcycle across the the Nevada salt flats, then crashes in one breathless scene. But once Reno moves on to the art scene in New York City and later wanders about Italy, the imagery, Reno's budding personality and film career, even the motorcycle, all fuzzed together into a mush of talking heads and tedious discussions about... [art? I've already forgotten, it made so little impression on me]. Reno drifts aimlessly, falling in with a cycle of self-important, interchangeable men, generating in me roughly the same emotion and interest as a sterile hospital waiting room. By the half-way point I couldn't wait for it all to be over. The scenes and changing viewpoints felt jumbled and arbitrary, and I didn't have a sense of any greater pattern or plan. What should have been interesting events--protests in Rome! Blackouts in New York!--left me shrugging, because who or what am I supposed to even care about?

The big X on the mouth of the cover girl symbolizes the thematic misogyny the main character endures, but I guess I expected more to happen with it. I thought Reno was going to delve into this with her art, as referenced by her drawing Xs in the snow and salt in the beginning, but by the end she just seemed completely purposeless, and even if her ultimate "silencing" was intentional, I feel like I missed the raison d'être of this book. I'll concede that it could be too clever for me by half, and that purely aesthetic literary fiction that belies character, emotion and story, just doesn't work for me, though I know it works for many others. And thank goodness! No fewer than nine of my Goodreads friends have given this book 5 stars, but somehow the magic fizzled out on me. ...more

9 likes · Like · see review

Feb 25, 2014 Sera rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, own, kindle, literary-fiction

Kushner's The Flamethrowers reminds me of Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch in that they each provide a fresh and modern way to tell a story. Each book has also polarized readers into love it or hate it camps. Fortunately for me, I have fallen into the love it camp for both.

Kushner writes in a direct, clear and forceful style and tackles a story that readers don't often get a chance about which to read. At the center of the book is a woman nicknamed Reno. For almost the entire book the story is told f ...more

7 likes · Like · see review

May 15, 2018 Irene rated it liked it

I should have loved this book. It was well written; the characters, the story line, the use of language defied mere conventions. Yet, I just could not connect, not with the primary characters, not with the plot, not with the setting. A young motorcycle obsessed woman moves to NYC in the mid-1970s to pursue a career in film. There she gets entangled in a drug and alcohol fueled, sexually promiscuous, shallow world of violence. I never felt like I understood Reno, never cared about her or her situ ...more

4 likes · Like · see review

Apr 14, 2018 Heather(Gibby) rated it really liked it

Shelves: 1001-to-read

So thank you to the Roundtable Goodreads group, as I otherwise would probably have never read this book. It is centered around the art scene in New York, and labour unrest in Italy. It focuses on one young girls struggle to define herself as an artist wannabee in New York city. Although the portrayals are often quite raw, and frankly distasteful , they offered a unique glimpse into a part of life that is completely foreign to my own existence. There is an unsettling juxtaposition between the bad ...more

3 likes · Like · see review

Oct 26, 2016 Elise rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction, women, read-in-2016

The first part of this novel is a gripping start to a tale of landspeed records intersecting with art. However, this promise is soon abandoned in favor of protagonist Reno's romantic relationships with asshole bad boys. Seemingly narrating the story from a later perspective, she acknowledges her naivete; one doesn't blame her for such, but neither does that prevent the love story's progress (which makes up the large and meandering middle section) from being rote and predictable. She becomes invo ...more

2 likes · Like · see review