So consider the atrocious banality that Kushner stoops to time after time (perhaps to perform the banality of the philosophy of time embedded in the novel): "time had stretched like taffy, the night a place we would tumble into and through together, a kind of gymnasium, a space of generous borders." "This was a different Italy from what I had experienced during my two semesters in Florence" (a phrase, or one like it, repeated ad nauseum, lest we forget the oft-stated fact that the narrator spent two semesters in Florence). Since FT is meant to be great, I'm judging it next to later Dostoevsky, which is ridiculous, but also the only way to take the book as seriously as it wants to be taken. Failed great books are often great (ambitious, intellectually stimulating, timely but also timeless) just when they're also bad, viz., early Dostoevsky. Really great Great Books manage to be both good (i.e., competent) and great (i.e., fascinating) at the same time, viz., Muriel Spark at her best. A more tech-savvy reviewer could insert a Venn diagram here, but I'm limited to words: there's too much overlap between the 'great' bits and the 'not good' bits. Much of this book is also great, not in the sense of 'very good,' but in the sense of Great American Novel. Much of this book just isn't very good, indeed, it's quite bad.
Thrilling and fearless, this is a major American novel from a writer of spectacular talent and imagination.
At its center is Kushner’s brilliantly realized protagonist, a young woman on the verge.
The Flamethrowers is an intensely engaging exploration of the mystique of the feminine, the fake, the terrorist. Betrayal sends her reeling into a clandestine undertow. When they visit Sandro’s family home in Italy, Reno falls in with members of the radical movement that overtook Italy in the seventies. Ardent, vulnerable, and bold, she begins an affair with an artist named Sandro Valera, the semi-estranged scion of an Italian tire and motorcycle empire. Reno meets a group of dreamers and raconteurs who submit her to a sentimental education of sorts. Her arrival coincides with an explosion of activity in the art world-artists have colonized a deserted and industrial SoHo, are staging actions in the East Village, and are blurring the line between life and art. The year is 1975 and Reno-so-called because of the place of her birth-has come to New York intent on turning her fascination with motorcycles and speed into art.
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