![]() ![]() I shy away from plot structure that depends on the characters behaving in ways that are going to eventually be explained by their childhood, or by some recent trauma or event. The following is a condensed and edited version of several months of e-mailing and talking with Kushner. Shift your eyes, and there are entire eras, heaving up and clashing in brutal misunderstandings, gears grinding. Look at the book from one remove, and you see a woman choosing a life, as well as the conditions that might produce a worthy life. The bulk of the novel is set in the mid-seventies, but the narrative jumps between decades, in part to tease out an economic inequality similar to what we face now. One of the principals, Ronnie Fontaine, has a mission to photograph every person alive. ![]() The characters are interested in erasing art or making conceptual work that defies practicality. She turns away from art, and in some ways, the book turns away from the promise of art (or simply follows the tendency of art to attack itself and destroy its precedents). As the narrative switches between America and Italy, Reno becomes a jack-of-all-trades-bike racer, office worker, model, artist, camera operator. She witnesses riots and protests in Rome and New York, of which Sandro, by virtue of his wealth, is a target. Reno eventually moves to New York and drifts into the art scene though a relationship with the artist and industrial heir Sandro Valera. ![]()
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