Gosh Rachel Kushner is cool, and what a life she has lived, as is often the case with anyone who grew up in the San Francisco Bay area! It's not a prerequisite for an accomplished author to have an interesting personal life but in the case of Kushner, it seems that both her imagination and lived experience has informed her excellent offerings in fiction (Telex From Cuba, The Flamethrowers & The Mars Room). I was very keen to read this collection of 19 essays of criticism and memoir from a journalism career spanning two decades from 2000-2020. With topics spanning the gamut from writers like Denis Johnson and Marguerite Duras to auto worker strikes, life on two wheels on the open road in Baja or the music scene that raised her in San Francisco, this is a truly lush offering of tales of life at the margins with an underlying misfit sensibility. Highly recommend reading anything that Rachel Kushner writes, whether fiction or non.

The Hard Crowd by Rachel Kushner, author of the highly popular “The Flamethrowers” is a collection of her essays penned from 2000-2020,

Bookended by writing detailing her experiences in a motorcycle rally that sees her taken out as she swerves to avoid a race mate and a deep look at her growing up in San Francisco via memories supplied to her while watching a YouTube video originally filmed in 1966, Kushner writes about not only her own life experiences but different forms of art.

One particular standout is her essay featuring old cars. The in depth detail transported me to my youth as well, remembering my fathers love & passion for vintage vehicles. Also a standout was her writing around her job at nightclubs and concert venues touched by the wonderful Bill Graham. The personal recollections of the goings-on of famous rock n rollers never gets tired.

I will say that Kushners deep dive into books & film trudged along for me, but mainly given I hadn’t read or been exposed to those works prior to this book. Admittedly, reading her work hasn’t made me WANT to, but this is such a personal view that I wouldn’t suggest most people to skip this book.

Overall, I enjoyed the collection. Not often will you read someone pulling the sad crashing of the Costa Concordia in with a harkening back of the tv series The Love Boat, but Kushner does so. In this Covid age, this collection will whisk you away in so many different directions you feel like you’ve finally escaped your four walls.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for providing a copy for review.