The Global Novel: Mediations
Hours: M 5:05-7:45
Nancy Armstrong, Roberto Dainotto
Louis Althusser is known to have said that “ideology represents individuals’ imaginary relation to their real conditions of existence.” Assuming that statement is a pretty good fit for traditional literary realism as well, we feel it is time to rephrase this principle for the global novel which would go something like this: “the global novel represents individuals’ imaginary relation to forms of mediation.” Rather than refer to life beyond the page as one organized around the home, the workplace, the school, the legal system and so forth, the novels we have in mind aspire to live not only outside the language in which they were written but also beyond the printed page in film, television series, comic books, audiobooks, electronic games, and so forth. In that a good number of these novels quite literally attempt to escape the material confines of the medium, they require us to figur
(2018), wrote the essay in question, “Girl on a Motorcycle,” in 2001 for an anthology titled She’s a Bad Motorcycle: Writers on Riding
. Describing her first bike, a 500cc Moto Guzzi, Kushner’s voice has all the confidence, wisdom, and cool of her later work. “Motorcycles didn’t enter my own life as gifts from men or ways to travel to men,” Kushner asserts, “but as machines to be ridden.” The piece goes on to describe something called the Cabo 1000, an illegal and dangerous thousand-mile motorcycle race on the Baja California peninsula, much of which takes place on dirt roads that weave precipitously through desert mountains. Kushner participated in the race when she was twenty-four, the age I am now.
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magazine named one of the 21st century s new classics. Her new essay collection, The Hard Crowd
, compiles 20 years of journalism and criticism.
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Dependency, is becoming the subject of a literary craze. As soon as you sink your teeth in, you ll understand why. The books are riveting. The problem is they bite back. I m still recovering.
Agostino by Alberto Moravia (1944).
When my son turned 13, my mother said to me, You have to read Agostino. My mother had previously recommended Moravia s
The Hard Crowd opens with a crash – or at least, the story of one.
Rachel Kushner is speeding down the Baja Peninsula in Mexico at 140mph on her Kawasaki Ninja 600 motorcycle when she loses control and, with it, her place in the famous Baja 1000 bike race. Kushner somehow lives to tell us the tale – one that sets the tone for the rest of her essay collection, which shows us what can be gleaned from (as the collection’s tagline puts it) choosing to live “fast and free”. Whether she’s writing about working in San Francisco’s drug-fuelled dive bars and music venues or getting stranded at a truck stop in Nebraska, Kushner is hard boiled yet keenly present. Like any roadside accident, the book asks: do you want to look, or look away?
THE HARD CROWD
By Rachel Kushner
Not long ago I met a Frenchwoman legendary for her youthful wildness. One story Iâd heard involved her borrowing a motorcycle. She was living up a mountain, it was dead-winter, and she needed to go down into the village for cigarettes. The guy who lent her his motorcycle told her that the only way to make it down the icy hairpin bends to the bottom was never once to put your foot on the brake. She did as he said. I seem to remember that she smashed herself up and maybe the bike too, but she survived, and the guy was in awe. âYou didnât use the brakes? But I was just kidding!â