Also, $20 will buy you this book.
This is a tiny hardback edition of three mediocre short stories. They are called “pieces” in this collection, but don’t let that fool you. They are stories, and they are utterly derivative, forgettable, and affected. I have to admit that Rachel Kushner has long been on my list of suspected con-artists when it comes to contemporary fiction. And for once, I don’t think this is a case of being out of my element or not being attuned to the specifics of a genre. Whatever other limitations I have, I generally read a lot of contemporary American fiction and have always read a lot of it. And this is both weak, as a text, and it’s frustrating to have a book that my local library spent a decent amount of money on, based some kind of promise from this being an otherwise well-known writer.
None of which is even to get into the fact that I really disliked her novel that came out last year and felt it was basically an edgelord retelling of Orange is the New Black without the actual expertise of having been to prison.
So I am not sure what else to tell you about it. There are three stories, one of which is a short four or five page set of dispatches from an unmoored voiced. One is a kind of retelling of a film involving Nazis and Cuba and a prostitute, but not nearly as interesting as that sounds, and the third is a conquistador meditating on a journey. In the beginning there’s a self indulgent introduction that tells us all about the motivation for the pieces, which ok, but actually let them speak for themselves. Also, I was annoyed at how the author’s name “Rachel K” kept creeping in as as kind of self-referential thing. Blegh.
(Photo: https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-8112-2421-5)