Review: The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner

The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Flamethrowers is an odd book -- artsy with really incredible writing but possibly pointless? I found myself quietly gathered up by understated prose, floating dreamlike across pages and pages until eventually the whole thing was finished and it felt like it had only just begun. Nominally about a young woman who moves to New York City in the 1970s to become an artist, The Flamethrowers is more about mood, social upheaval, avant-garde art, class, sex, and power. Oh, not to mention relationships and capitalism.

It’s a heady book, full of ideas at every turn, yet almost totally plotless. Never one to worry too much about plot, I really enjoyed the almost hypnotic, rhythmic prose, and sharp insights. I even felt like most of the characters were ciphers, yet in context it totally worked! The words and actions were all believable in the heightened milieu of egotistical artists and highfalutin theorists, even if we don’t ever get much specific information about any of the characters. As an example, we never even learn the name of the protagonist who narrates 3/4ths of the book -- she’s known simply as “Reno” -- as in Reno, Nevada, where she’s from. But, though it sounds weird to say, the book wasn’t really about character OR plot.

What WAS it about? I guess I don’t really know. It definitely had a whole lot of ideas, many of which felt relevant to our current time and climate, without any explicit parallels ever getting drawn. More than anything, I suppose, it simply EVOKED...moods, feelings, times (the ‘70s) and places (New York City, Rome, Italy). In this way its formless form perfectly fit the gonzo, cerebral subject matter. Mostly though, the writing was so effortless, so beautifully crafted, that it alone was worth the price of admission.

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