Being an observer of passion is one of the strangest perspectives I’ve found myself thrown into, as a reader, but the strangeness makes it no less wonderful.
The Flamethrowers is a novel by Rachel Kushner that explores the passion that one woman has for motorcycle riding, a defining part of her existence as she explores the world of 1970s New York. The novel is told in several places and times, and while all are linked by this passion for motorcycles, very rarely do we observe our protagonist, Reno, being the agent of her own passion. Rather, she becomes entwined in a different passion – a love story both for the heir to a motorcycle fortune and for the world that she has found herself in, a world of artists in New York, that takes her out of the driver’s seat (so to speak) and makes her an observer, rather than a participant: a lens through whom we, as the reader, discover her discovery.
Writing a passive protagonist, especially a passive female protagonist, is a dangerous endeavor, but it’s one that Kushner pulls off with aplomb. I read one critique of this novel in the Guardian that really hit the nail on the head:
“Her passivity is partly a narrative necessity, in that we observe this world through her eyes. They are a bewildering crowd, these older, more successful artists, all of whom seem engaged in a complex yet codified wrangling of ego, sexual politics and aesthetic allegiances.”
From a technical and stylistic standpoint, this novel is a gem. On a personal level, however, my attraction to it runs even deeper due to the setting. While the novel jumps through place and time – to the salt flats of Nevada, to the rubber plantations of Brazil, to the headquarters of a motorcycle empire in Rome – the scenes set in 1970s New York were the ones that drew me in the most. It was as a teenager that I found myself obsessed with this New York that my father had known, a New York that I never had and never would; the gritty romance of this period is one that’s always attracted me, as a reader or viewer, and it’s perhaps for this deft portrayal of a city I so love, more than anything else, that I fell so hard for this novel.