Rachel Kushner’s ambitious new novel scares male critics

When Rachel Kushner – not a venerable male auteur – writes the Great American Novel, male reviewers are flummoxed

Thoughtful recap of the reception of The Flamethrowers when it came out last year. The author is also more perceptive than most about the narrator’s youth and how it plays out – how her problems are a young woman’s problems (vs., for example, Cristina Garcia in the NY Times review, who was bothered by the narrator’s passivity).