Praise for THE HARD CROWD "This is a book of attitude--attitude distilled so finely it becomes philosophy, a matter of telling truth from lie." -- Greil Marcus, Los Angeles Review of Books "You need not have read Rachel Kushner''s novels to appreciate her prismatic essay collection, The Hard Crowd. If you have, though, it''s not hard to see the material preoccupations of her fiction refracted in the 19 essays here.Kushner writes with equal verve about the self''s ecstatic movement into the world and the world''s permeation of self." --Anita Felicelli, Alta "Tying together and making explicit all of Kushner''s heady influences, The Hard Crowd acts like a code, and coda, to all that came before. It''s an exemplary work of self-mythologizing, but by that point in the book you don''t need it." --Laura Adamczyk, AV Club "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.
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." --Elliot Frank, Chicago Review of Books " The Hard Crowd -- a collection of essays written over the last 20 years -- is testimony to the breadth both of Kushner''s experience and of her intellectual convictions. gallant and moving.Her attraction is to chivalrous gestures, physical daring.and maybe also to lost causes. Kushner is unusual in combining her taste for ''the old, weird America'' of desert highways, vintage cars, autodidact loners, with a grounding in 20th-century European thought, an interest in the ways in which working-class struggle on the Continent was filtered into industrial action, armed revolt or documentary art. These competing aesthetic/moral strands are what form the double whammy in Kushner''s prose: a narrative voice that''s hip, raspy, rich in caustic or deadpan one-liners, and an ethic of almost wide-eyed ''permeability,'' of feeling painfully responsible for history''s wrongs.
" --Fernanda Eberstadt, New York Times Book Review "Rachel Kushner, primarily known for her fiction, proves she''s also a master essayist in THE HARD CROWD: 19 pieces of memoir and criticism that display her omnivorous tastes in literature, art and history. Throughout these essays, Kushner steals back subjects normally hopelessly tied to masculinity, like classic cars, dive bars, Marxism and motorcycles. Despite these essays spanning two decades, there''s something essentially Kushner-esque threaded throughout, a sense of cool girl remove, which is tempered by her engaged activist interests in prison abolition and workers rights. Despite Kushner''s reluctance to take center stage, the personal essays shine. For San Franciscans, the book''s titular essay The Hard Crowd is worth the price of admission alone. In the closing essays she writes, ''I''m talking about my own life. Which not only can''t matter to you, it might bore you.'' Bore us? Hardly.
Sounds exactly like something the coolest, smartest girl in the room might say, knowing full well we''re under her spell." --Anisse Gross, The San Francisco Chronicle "In her first book of essays, THE HARD CROWD, the novelist Rachel Kushner reminds us that she writes as well as any writer alive about the pleasure of a good motor doing what it was designed to do. There are intuitive appraisals of writers such as Denis Johnson, Clarice Lispector, Marguerite Duras and Cormac McCarthy. There are a pair of long, moving essays about growing up semi-feral in San Francisco in the late 1970s and early ''80s .But THE HARD CROWD swings back around to engines and to motion. The author had found wings; she meant to use them. We watch her move her soul around.[Kushner has a] wary voice, cool and wise, with real power and control.
[and] typical aphoristic grace." --Dwight Garner, The New York Times "Novelist Rachel Kushner blends journalism, memoir and criticism in her new collection of essays. The 19 pieces, which are from the past 20 years of the author''s career, are wide-ranging in scope. In one, Kushner recounts a visit to a Palestinian refugee camp; in another, she reflects on the music scene of her youth in San Francisco. Throughout, her energetic voice carries the reader through as she muses about art, nostalgia, writing and more." --Annabel Gutterman, Time "The two-time National Book Award nominee turns her inspiringly acerbic tongue on topics including her youth in 1980s San Francisco; a motorcycle race in Baja, Mexico; Jeff Koons; and a plethora of cultural moments in this essay collection of new, expanded, and previously published work." --Selija Rankin, Entertainment Weekly "Kushner is a two-time finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction, and her novel The Mars Room is a selection of Alta ''s California Book Club. Her new book gathers essays from the past two decades.
She offers reportage--including an account of her visit to a Palestinian refugee camp--and literary journalism, memoir, and cultural criticism, interrogating figures such as Denis Johnson and Marguerite Duras." -- Alta "Chronicling select writing over the last two decades, Kushner''s latest offers up 19 essays that range from memoir to art criticism to journalism to political commentary. Accounts of visiting a Palestinian refugee camp and attending an illegal motorcycle race in Baja California are joined by stories of growing up in San Fancisco, insights on artist Jeff Koons and authors Marguerite Duras, Denis Johnson and Clarice Lispector and thoughts on the 2012 captain who crashed an Italian cruise ship. And for those who love Kushner''s acclaimed "The Flamethrowers," the essay "Made to Burn" offers inspiration for the novel." --Lesley Kennedy, CNN "If you want to ride in a famous motorcycle race, then hang out with Keith Richards in 1990s San Francisco and finally consider the work of Marguerite Duras -- and who wouldn''t? -- all you have to do is pick up this wide-ranging book of journalism from the novelist behind ''The Flamethrowers.''" --Bethanne Patrick, The Washington Post "Rachel Kushner''s dauntless essays include pieces on Jeff Koons and Marguerite Duras, an illegal motorcycle race down Baja, and a Fiat strike, all propelled by a singular and ferocious curiosity; her sober, often sardonic, voice keeps the train on the tracks." -- Cornelia Channing, Vulture "Kushner proves as shrewd and daring in her essays as she is in her fiction, and a reader gets the same sense of tagging along with an author who has slept rough, thought hard, and gotten into her car to drive out and witness an event with her own two eyes.[a] dazzling collection.
" --Christopher Bollen, Interview "Readers of Kushner''s high-voltage novels, including The Mars Room, can''t help but wonder about the source of her far-roaming and omnivorous imagination. Much is revealed in this vitalizing essay collection. Kushner''s autobiographical pieces illuminate complicated aspects of her adventurous life and why and how she developed the skills to write about it with such breath-catching clarity and polished rigor, the literary equivalent of the fine-tuned mechanics of the motorcycles and classic cars she treasures.riveting.astute and vigorous.tell she does, steering her way through perilous curves with steely agility and purpose, leaving her passengers exultant and enlightened." --Donna Seaman, Booklist, STARRED review "Herein are collected two decades of literary journalism, cultural criticism, and memoir by the author of the lauded Telex from Cuba, The Flamethrowers, and The Mars Room. Come for the sharp portraits of Jeff Koons and Denis Johnson, the blistering reportage from refugee camps and illegal motorcycle races, or the light-with-laughter-yet-heavy-with-yearning paeans to classic cars and the San Francisco indie scene of the 1980s; stay for the opportunity to witness the maturation of one of the most intelligent and distinctive literary sensibilities of our time.
" --Emily Firetog, Lithub "Award-winning novelist Kushner. who''s also turned toward criminal-justice-reform activism, shifts modes with an essay collection that promises something for all who love her work. (Yes, there will be motorcycles)." -- Entertainment Weekly " The Hard Crowd is wild, wide-ranging, and unsparingly intelligent throughout." --Taylor Antrim, Vogue "[Kushner] seems to work with a muse and a nail gun, so surprisingly yet forcefully do her sentences pin reality to the page." --Kathryn S.