As a life long goody two shoes, who runs with the opposite of a “hard crowd,” it was fun to live a little through Kushner’s experiences. Whether it’s illegal motorcycle races, bartending with Keith Richards, prison reform, or thoughtful literary commentary, each of these essays has an edge that I enjoyed vicariously.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to review this title, but my reading interests have changed. I will not be finishing this book, but look forward to others in the future.

I’m such a fan of The Mars Room that I was thrilled to receive an e-copy of her present work. Once again, she can write!! I need to buy an actual copy of the book because I want to dog-ear pages and passages and share more easily with my partner. Gorgeous and interesting as I want to know about the author read more from her. I would read her shopping list - ya know?

This is the kind of book you can read just to enjoy the writing. Rachel Kushner can take a subject you have absolutely no interest in (motorcycles, for me) and build a fascinating, rich complex story full of incredible detail and insights. It's impressive, really. I would like to read this again, but in paper version, armed with highlighter and post-it notes. Even better if I get to discuss with a book club.

I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Having never read any of Rachel Kushner’s fiction before may have hindered my enjoyment of these essays. Many of them touch on aspects of what inspired or were the foundation of her novels. Most, but not all, of these essays are autobiographical in that they discuss Kushner’s life or people she knew. At times it was a bit tedious for me, but funny enough the last sentences in the last essay touch on this and that acuteness improved the book overall.

Certainly fans of Kushner’s work will enjoy this collection. For myself my favorites were in the beginning, essay “Girl on a Motorcycle” and “In the Company of Truckers”.

Thanks to the publisher for the review copy! I’m giving this four stars because the writing is definitely interesting and engaging, but only a few of the essays featured topics of interest to me- such as the motorcycle race and the refugee camp. The essays that spoke more on pop culture, movies, literature, etc, just weren’t in my wheelhouse even though they were very well executed.

Even though I remember reading most of Kushner's essays earlier, it was refreshing to reread some of them again. Kushner's writing is not only deeply personal, but energetic.

I just admit straight out that I am in love with this book.

I have had an imperfect relationship with Kushner's works- I devoured and marveled at The Flamethrowers, but was not as impressed by her last novel, The Mars Room. I admired what she was trying to say, but it felt less bold, less sweeping in scope than I had expected.

But this book, in it's collection of essays, feels so potent and vibrant that I am again a convert. It may be that I am also someone who lived in SF during the same years she did. My first vehicle was also a motorcycle and I also took long, treacherous rides on it, though not as disastrous as hers was. I also know many of the people she references and places she checks from 1990s SF. I also am interested in refugee camps, prison abolition and how it's framed up for conversation and debate, Marguerite Duras, and art in general. But hearing her talk and eulogize someone I am acquainted with from many years ago was something that I don't know if I can put into words. She was able to show me another side of him, but one that also contained elements that I recognized in him.

I had no expectations that this book would speak to me so deeply and so personally. I don't know how another reader will relate to this since I feel so close to the material, so I will offer that she writes with such clarity and sharp insight She is incredibly smart, curious, and self-aware. I hope people pick this book up.

I have read The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner and really liked it and loved that she references in this collection of essays some of the background and people who influenced her writing of that novel. The essays in her new book "The Hard Crowd" cover a lot of terrain - and were written over a 20 year timeframe. From insights into her growing up in San Francisco to her love of motorcycles and cars. She also writes about artists and writers (some well known, some not) and I was able to see the influence of these writers on her own fiction writing. She also visits places that most of us would never be able to access or experience (such as the Palestinian Refugee Camp). One essay discusses an Italian Film from the 1970's about Anna (which I just saw on Metrograph New York and she introduced). Her writing style is exquisite. She is not writing as an "outsider" but rather someone who experiences these events first hand which made these essays a joy to read.

I really enjoyed these essays and highly recommend this book.

Originally published in Chicago Review of Books:
https://chireviewofbooks.com/2021/04/09/the-hard-crowd/

From the first time I read Rachel Kushner’s novels, I thought about nonfiction. The biting yet elegant voices of her narrators reminded me of literary criticism, and the detailed renderings of people and places I thought resembled journalism. I was evidently not alone in this response: James Woods praised her fiction as possessing “the authenticity of the reportorial, the solidity of the historical.” Other reviewers, responding negatively to her work, called these same qualities into question. They conceded the works were interesting, but they challenged Kushner’s authenticity, her right to depict such worlds.

In retrospect, both the boosters and skeptics of her work shared the assumption that Kushner’s subject material was separate from her own life. Motorcycles, the art world, revolution, prisons: all of these things were insinuated to be outside of the experience of a female novelist, especially one assumed to be middle-class. Looking back, so much of the criticism was struggling with the same, loaded question: what type of woman writes like this?

In Kushner’s latest book—her first collection of nonfiction, called The Hard Crowd—she answers this question at length, on her own terms. The Hard Crowd collects writing that Kushner has done outside of her career as a novelist, and in doing so fleshes out the story of how Kushner the novelist came to be. The Hard Crowd will doubtlessly appeal to fans of her fiction, especially because the writing often explicitly deals with the novels, photographs, and movies that inspired her own work. But the book’s appeal is not limited to existing fans, or even readers who share her interests; Kushner can spin a compelling story out of the most esoteric subjects or minute details (One of my favorite essays, “Flying Cars,” begins with several paragraphs about which vintage cars Kushner wants to buy). Versions of most of the book’s nineteen essays have previously been published, originally appearing in anthologies, magazines, exhibition catalogues, and reissued literary collections. But the book’s acknowledgements note that many essays were also edited or extended for their inclusion here, and the result is a satisfyingly cohesive collection, even as the works span two decades and a vast array of subjects.

Much of the work in The Hard Crowd revolves around the question of life experience and its relationship to the development of a literary voice. Kushner, for much of her life, has weaved her way through various scenes and subcultures. Beatniks from her parents’ generation, San Francisco punks, barflies, bikers, New York downtown artists, even aged Italian left-feminists appear in The Hard Crowd as groups that Kushner was a part of, learned from—and to varying degrees, incorporated into her writing.

In one essay, also titled “The Hard Crowd,” the author looks back and takes stock of her influences, saying that now in her career it is time to “turn reflective, interior, to examine and sort and tally.” This essay, the final one in the collection, is a depiction of the people she knew growing up in San Francisco. Kushner tells of tattoo artists, early professional skaters, hustlers, and musicians; people who are self-assured, yet vulnerable.

Kushner’s third and latest novel The Mars Room, is in part a portrayal of the bar scene in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco, and in “The Hard Crowd,” Kushner explains that this was not just a choice made out of inspiration, but a mission to preserve a culture that she knew would never pass into literature otherwise. What’s implicit in the essay is the fact that now many of those bars and venues have been replaced through gentrification, and the people Kushner knew have either been priced out of San Francisco, or met worse fates: incarceration or premature death.

Kushner, the writer, survived. In 1996 she quit bartending and moved to New York, where she replaced one scene for another: she entered the “art world” in part through her friend Alex Brown, who she eulogizes in another essay, called “Bunny.” Through all of these worlds, Kushner is both participant and observer, less hardcore and knowledgeable than the people she runs with, and yet unmistakably within the culture. “I was the weak link, the mind always at some remove: watching myself and other people, absorbing the events of their lives and mine.” It is a writerly trait, to be sure, but in The Hard Crowd, Kushner makes the case that she was not simply participating as research for writing. Rather, writing for her is a process of capturing on the page some of the liveliness of the people she admires.

Evaluating this relationship between experience and what one commits to paper is the concern of much of Kushner’s literary criticism in this volume as well. About Denis Johnson, the poet and novelist, Kushner looks past the cult following and legend of his life and writes about him as a literary force. For Marguerite Duras, Kushner does the opposite. She grounds her discussion of Duras’ elemental, sui generis writing in a depiction of Duras the person, to better understand how her class and womanhood influenced her art.

But the standout piece of literary criticism in the collection, to my mind, is Kushner’s essay on late Italian leftist writer Nanni Balestrini. The first half of this essay was originally published as a preface to Balestrini’s novel We Want Everything; in this part of the essay, Kushner recounts how the book channels the anger and revolutionary potential of masses of laborers from South Italy who moved to the North in the 1960s and 70s to work in factories.

The later half of Kushner’s essay was published as an obituary for Balestrini, who passed away in May 2019, and zeroes in on what made his voice so different from other novelists. As an activist, Balestrini practiced “inchiesta,” interviewing factory workers to produce “a movement of their voices and direct experience.” He marshaled this collage of voices in his novel, merging the subjectivity of individual characters with that of their peers, to capture the voice of a class that is conscious of its own exploited position.

The description of Balestrini’s work is striking in how it recalls Kushner’s own attempts at capturing the subcultures of her youth. But there is a difference between a “subculture” and a “class.” Even as her protagonists venture deeper into various scenes (be it the New York art scene in The Flamethrowers, or the culture of the women’s prison in The Mars Room), their voices are still singular in their novels.

After reading Kushner describe Balestrini’s project in such positive terms, I wondered what this signals for her later work. There are other indications that Kushner’s writing might be moving in a more explicitly political direction. One of the later essays in the collection is a profile of activist-scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore. In calm and nuanced language, the essay uses Gilmore’s words to make the case for abolition, and grounds the revolutionary idea in both a history of prisons and the contemporary context of mass incarceration in the US. The piece was one of the first nuanced explanations of abolition that I can remember appearing in a mainstream outlet, until a year later, when massive protests rendered the subject unavoidable for the media.

Although the dominant mode of The Hard Crowd is reflective, it also paints Kushner as a writer attuned to the present, even the future. The Hard Crowd is an engaging collection that demonstrates Kushner’s skill at weaving together the anecdotes, personalities, art, and literature she has absorbed through her life. I wonder though if, years down the line, it will be remembered in the arc of her career not just as a moment of introspection, but as a pivot towards something more radical.

Goodreads and Amazon:

My thanks to Scribner and NetGalley for an e-ARC of this new collection.
OK, I LOVED her personal reminiscences! And I have to wonder if she handed me a drink one evening when she worked the bars at Bill Graham's clubs. And ya gotta love that she is a gearhead from an early age. The title essay brought back a lot of memories of obscure little joints and music clubs I would go to on occasion. And ah yes, Polk Gulch!
OTOH, I found myself browse reading some of her pieces on literature, film, and art. 3 pieces on the 1970's Italian radical movement becomes a bit redundant. The long piece on just "Anna" was more interesting than I thought it would be, but there was a bit of, "I saw this obscure, 4 hour long film, and you didn't....." The longest piece is on prison reform/abolition - it seemed more like a synopsis. But when I saw that it was written for the NYT Magazine, the style and depth fit.
One thing that I do love here, is that Scribner gave us complete bibliographic information on where and when each piece was published. I wish all publsihers would do that for collections of essays, and short stories. The first piece, on a motorcycel race in Mexico, was publsihed in 2001, and then the next piece seems to jump to about 2012.
Really, from her critical pieces, I walked away with one book and a movie that I had not heard of before, and wanted to follow up on in the future. Although I did Google the art work of a couple of the artists she writes about here.
Maybe this is a book that would be most enjoyed by Kushner fans (and I am one myself, I read her books as they are published, and really have enjoyed the novels). For me, I am sure I would have enjoyed it more if there had been additional essays about her personal life.
2.5/3 out of 5

These essays are so good! The only one I didn't vibe with is the first one. Motorcycles don't pique my interest as much as i thought they would. Kushner has such a unique voice. The subject matter of the essays are varied and I think that anyone would find interesting.
Highly reccomend this to anyone who enjoys essay collections with a unique voice

Honestly, I’ve never read Rachel Kushner prior to this, even though I’ve heard so much praise for The Flamethrowers. After reading The Hard Crowd, I definitely want to check out The Flamethrowers. The Hard Crowd is pretty clear at the start that this is simple a collection of essays from 2000-2020, so I’m not sure what reviewers and readers are looking for when they complain about a lack of cohesion. In fact, I really enjoyed the wide range displayed here.

The opening essay, Girl on a Motorcycle, is breathtaking. Kushner gets deeply personal and even though, I couldn’t give a fig about motorcycles, I loved the details about her personalized touches to her bike for an insane motorcycle race that began in California and went deep into Mexico. In subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle ways, she’s able to explore friends who are no longer with us because of the dangerous nature of motorcycles and her relationship with a motorcycle mechanic who seemed great at the time but who is really terrible in hindsight (we’ve all had that relationship). She is able to pinpoint how glamorous motorcycles are portrayed in the movies but how the reality is quite different.

In Not with the Band, Kushner discusses her long history as a bartender at a variety of music venues. She gets to serve Jack Daniels to Keith Richards at The Warfield on Halloween and later sees an incredibly intimate, secret PJ Harvey show.

In Earth Angel, Kushner talks at length about the late Denis Johnson. Most of the essay seems designed as a review of Johnson’s The Largess of the Sea Maiden, and I’m really interested to read it after reading this piece (kudos to Kushner). Kushner treats Johnson in a fair way, discussing the popularity of Jesus’ Son, the overlap with The Largess and discussing Tree of Smoke and Johnson’s personal life.

All in all, I enjoyed Kushner’s collection a great deal. There are personal essays here (which were my personal favorites), as well as stories about literary figures and just gritty everyday people. Kushner captures the details with thoughtful observation and writes in a highly readable manner.

This collection is really all over the place and in the beginning I was really confused. However, as I continued the lack of cohesion bothered me less and less because the writing was strong and interesting. The final essay which bears the same title as the collection itself is particular poignant, as is "Is Prison Necessary?". It's not surprising that a collection of writings that span 20 years touch a wide range of themes and many times don't seem to thread together in any way, but this is the main reason that I wouldn't rate this book. However, when viewed as a 20 year portfolio of work there is depth and breadth and just plain great writing contained throughout this collection.

Rachel Kushner is Joan Didion in a leather jacket and motorcycle boots. Her essays cover many different types of people who may fall into “the hard crowd”, from motorcyclists to truckers to rock and rollers. I found each essay very intriguing and hard to put down. The words flow so easily and really capture your imagination. This was a very quick read for me, and I’m definitely going to check out her other books next.

Kushner is a pure writer who can write with an engaging interest about anything...or nothing...at all with precision and delight. In this case from cross country motorcycle raving to the life and work of Clarice Lispector.

I have never read anything by Rachel Kushner before, and that will definitely change now. Her voice is so clever, funny, and all-around badass. This will definitely have a home in my favorite essay collections.

In a recent Zoom conversation between George Saunders and Tobias Wolfe, Rachel Kushner's name came up -- Saunders said he would read whatever she wrote. She is one of those special talents who is equally at home in fiction as well as non-, and this collection of essays showcases her proficiency with the latter.

Her material covers subjects ranging from a visit to a Palestinian refugee camp to portraits of unconventional personalities, but when she is writing about her own experience, well, that's when the gloves come off (not that the gloves were there to begin with), and a reader can truly appreciate where her gutsy, take-no-prisoners style comes from. Her parents are to be commended, granting her the freedom from a very young age to hone her sense of independence. As she fearlessly enters a motorcycle race (illegal) down the Baja Peninsula or waits bar in San Francisco's Tenderloin, she has the instincts of a keen observer.

The final piece, a nostalgic lookback at growing up on the non-touristy side of San Francisco, closes with the observation "I'm talking about my own life. Which not only can't matter to you, it might bore you." No. Never. Boring is one thing that Rachel Kushner never is.

Kushner has led an extremely interesting, wild life and she writes about it beautifully here. I love these kinds of books in which a talent writer takes a look at their life with a bit of ironic distance. She has some turns of phrase that just make you marvel. Wonderful writing.

Thanks to Netgalley and Scribner for the early ebook. Rachel Kushner is one of my favorite novelist and I’ve read a few of her nonfiction pieces in the New York Times Magazine, but it’s great to read this whole collection. There’s a great straight reporting article about the growing debate about the abolition of jails that is wonderful. There’s also some great thoughts on writers such as Duras, Denis Johnson and Comac McCarthy and his Border Trilogy. But my favorite pieces are the more personal essays like when she’s a bartender in San Francisco and working in various rock clubs, the opening piece of a day long motorcycle race in Mexico that she rode is brilliant and the looking back to her younger years of growing up in San Francisco in the title essay that is filled with the tough and wounded crowd that she knew, most who are missing or dead. That last one has more interesting characters than an Elmore Leonard book and I hope it’s a story she comes back to in a longer, fictional form, though she writes that she’s not ready to do so just yet.