Rachel Kushner's New Espionage Novel, 'Creation Lake'

Summary

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All Of It with Alison Stewart

Rachel Kushner's New Espionage Novel, 'Creation Lake'

Aired: September 9, 2024
Guest: Rachel Kushner
Host: Alison Stewart

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Alison Stewart sits down with acclaimed novelist Rachel Kushner to discuss her latest book, Creation Lake. The novel follows American spy Sadie Smith as she infiltrates a French commune suspected of eco-terrorism. Their conversation dives deep into the book's inspirations, the complexities of the central character, themes of infiltration, radicalization, and the real-world parallels of the eco-political struggles depicted in the novel. Together, they explore how Creation Lake reflects and anticipates contemporary cultural and ecological tensions in France and beyond.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Genesis of ‘Creation Lake’

• Lengthy Creation Process:

  • Kushner explains the novel took 14 months of intense writing after "years of fumbling" and ideation. (02:32–02:38)
    • "It tends to take me about five years to write a novel...I wanted to write a novel about that world, but kept asking myself, you know, is it an act of betrayal to include details that only somebody closer to one of these kind of groups would know?" — Rachel Kushner (02:38)
  • Real-life precedent: Inspired by communes in France infiltrated by undercover UK agents.

• Perspective Shift:

  • The crucial turning point was realizing the story's narrator should be the outsider, the infiltrator—Sadie Smith.
    • "And once I situated myself in her point of view as somebody who really is 180 degrees from myself...but adopting her purview, that must have..." — Rachel Kushner (04:51)

2. Depicting "The Real Europe"

• Contrast to the Pastoral Ideal:
  • The novel’s opening, according to Kushner, intentionally undermines the romanticized vision of France, emphasizing logistics, highways, nuclear plants—the industrial “real” Europe.
    • "What she's emphasizing is something to do with the European Union...She's giving an ugly view, which isn't the ultimate view, but is nonetheless a form of the truth of...how a super industrialized country like France functions." — Rachel Kushner (06:12)

3. Why 2013?

• Timing the Setting:
  • Chosen to evoke a particular post-commune, post-police-raid France.
  • "I wanted to set the book in a time that would be contiguous with the aura that hovered over that and the paranoia that was part of the fallout of that...it also happens to be the case that I was in Marseille in the summer of 2013 and you could not go...without hearing a snippet of Get Lucky by Daft Punk." — Rachel Kushner (07:28)

4. Naming the Protagonist and Real-World Inspiration

• Sadie Smith’s Name:
  • No intentional link to novelist Zadie Smith; “Smith” is Kushner’s married name.
    • "My husband has always joked that Smith isn't really a last Name...it's English for last name. ...Zadie Smith's birth name is Sadie. I had no idea until she actually read the book and wrote me a very nice note..." — Rachel Kushner (08:55)
• Research on Eco-Terrorism:
  • Kushner distances her work from the term “eco-terrorism,” highlighting how the commune’s actions stem from resistance to state-backed corporate water expropriation (“mega basins”).
    • "I've never actually used that term. I don't know where the terror part of it starts because these people just, they've not been convicted of anything. They are suspected of having incurred sabotage..." — Rachel Kushner (09:59)

5. Parallels with Real-World Events

• Fiction Anticipates Headlines:
  • The commune’s resistance over water presages real movements and clashes in France.
    • "Not at all. In fact, you know, the headlines are ripped from my book, Alison..." — Rachel Kushner (11:45)
  • Reference to the group "Les Sous le Vermont de la Terre" and contemporary farmer protests.

6. Sadie Smith—A Morally Ambiguous Spy

• Character Analysis:

  • Amoral, manipulative, and detached—Sadie judges others’ weaknesses and creates situations for others’ downfall largely without personal convictions.
    • "She does not have particular attachments or judgments and instead judges all people equally, although she does prize her own ability to see in other people what their weaknesses are..." — Rachel Kushner (12:38)
  • Her perspective allows the reader an inside look at both the group and the philosophical struggles within.

• Backstory and Professional Ruin:

  • Sadie’s past—a failed infiltration marred by entrapment—serves not as moral justification but as a succession of destructive professional feats, not trauma.
    • "Her backstory would only be her reporting on previous guises and dissimulations, previous scenarios in which she set out to destroy the lives of other people...And this young man is fond of her and she suggests to him that the consummation of their love will take place through his willingness to commit an act of sabotage..." — Rachel Kushner (14:24)

7. On Radicalization and The Prehistoric Temptation

• Thematic Inquiry:
  • Kushner resists labeling her work as exploration of radicalization, instead focusing on notions of retreat, prehistory, survival, and the desire for meaning in a “driverless car” world.
    • "We are currently careening off a cliff in a driverless car, and the question is, how do we exit the car?...I'm interested in the temptation to look into prehistory and the time before the written down, which is rife for speculation..." — Rachel Kushner (17:11)

8. The Character of Bruno

• Philosopher and Anchor of the Novel:
  • Bruno, the commune’s aging mentor, is described as a “homespun philosopher”—his wisdom and eccentricity provide the novel's emotional depth.
    • "Bruno is a sort of homespun philosopher. ...it's the homespun quality of Bruno's philosophy. He makes things up. ...it's a free indoor indirect discourse of an unfettered mind who's creating his own, his own way of being...I'm proud of Bruno because he's the heart of the book." — Rachel Kushner (18:36)

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Memorable Quotes & Notable Moments

• On Literary Perspective:
  "Once I situated myself in her point of view as somebody who really is 180 degrees from myself, she has no sympathy for these people. She is intent on destroying their lives effectively, whereas I would be quite sympathetic." — Rachel Kushner (04:51)

• On “Eco-Terrorism”:
  "I've never actually used that term. I don't know where the terror part of it starts because these people just, they've not been convicted of anything. They are suspected of having incurred sabotage to state equipment." — Rachel Kushner (09:59)

• On the Timeliness of The Novel:
  "In fact, you know, the headlines are ripped from my book, Alison." — Rachel Kushner (11:45)

• On the Character of Sadie Smith:
  "She is being told by her higher ups to create provocation if it is not already there, among the people that she's infiltrated." — Rachel Kushner (12:38)

• On Influences and Themes:
  "We are currently careening off a cliff in a driverless car, and the question is, how do we exit the car?" — Rachel Kushner (17:11)

• On What She’s Most Proud Of:
  "I'm proud of Bruno because he's the heart of the book." — Rachel Kushner (18:36)

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Essential Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:32 | Rachel Kushner on the inception and research for Creation Lake | | 04:51 | The perspective-shift: making the spy the narrator | | 06:12 | Depiction of the “real” Europe; industrial and infrastructural | | 07:28 | Reason for setting the novel in 2013 | | 08:55 | Sadie Smith’s name and connection (or not) to Zadie Smith | | 09:59 | Discussion on “eco-terrorism” terminology and research | | 11:45 | Real events in France mirroring her fictional plot | | 12:38 | Analysis of Sadie's personality and objectives | | 14:24 | Sadie’s professional and moral backstory | | 17:11 | Kushner’s philosophy on radicalization and existential questions | | 18:36 | Discussion of the character Bruno and Kushner’s pride in his creation |

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Conclusion

Rachel Kushner’s interview offers an incisive look at the complex ethical, philosophical, and societal questions at the heart of Creation Lake. By blending real-world inspiration with nuanced character work and timely themes, Kushner crafts a narrative that is both of the moment and deeply reflective. Her candid discussion about the writing process, the moral ambiguity of her protagonist, and the eerily prophetic nature of her plot ensures that listeners come away eagerly curious to read—and reflect on—the novel.

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Transcript

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[Alison Stewart]

This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. In the latest novel from Rachel Kushner, a spy attempts to infiltrate a French commune that is suspected of eco terrorism. The spy is Sadie Smith, who has been hired to investigate to stop the diversion of a local water sources into one giant quote, mega basin. She seduces a filmmaker named Lucien, an old friend of the leader of the group Pascal, and gets hired as an English translator. Now she hacks into Pascal's email in his inbox. Sadie finds ideas she compelling almost in spite of herself. Correspondence from Pascal's mentor, a radical cave dweller named Bruno. Will Sadie follow through with her mission or will she suddenly become seduced by Bruno's desire to return to an ancient past? The novel is titled Creation Lake. It has been long listed for the Booker Prize. Tonight, Rachel Kushner will be speaking at Books Are Magic with our friend Emma Straub. But first, she joins me in studio. It is really nice to meet you.

[Rachel Kushner]

Thank you. Nice to meet you too.

[Alison Stewart]

Alison, you said in an interview with the Drift, this novel took you 14 months to WR after, quote, years of fumbling.

[Rachel Kushner]

Well, yeah, it tends to take me about five years to write a novel. But within that five years, I'm not sitting at the desk every single day until the five year clock dings finished. And for many years, actually even more than five, I had the idea to write A novel that would be situated among a group of French, like young idealists, who decamp from Paris to build a communal life in a rural, remote part of France, who are set on a collision course with French police. There are some precedents for this in real life that I have had exposure to and I am familiar with. And one of those groups had been infiltrated by. By an undercover agent working for the UK police, the metropolitan uk and subsequently. They were very guarded, and understandably so about outsiders coming into the commune. I wanted to write a novel about that world, but kept asking myself, you know, is it an act of betrayal to include details that only somebody closer to one of these kind of groups would know? And that was three years of thinking on the world, some themes to do with it. Also their mentor, who you mentioned, Bruno, is an elder. He's in his 80s. He lived through World War II through May 1968, through the moment when those involved with May 68 decided that the factory worker is no longer the revolutionary subject. What about the peasant class, the farmers in rural France? They decamp there in the 1970s. Bruno finally decides no revolution is coming and the only option left is to retreat from society and transform consciousness rather than capitalism. I had all those pieces in place, but not who is the teller of this story, who arrives to this world and can report on all of it, until suddenly it occurred to me that she is in fact something along the lines of the infiltrator in real life that I just mentioned from the metropolitan UK that made a real life version of this commune, with which I'm quite familiar with paranoid about outsiders. And once I situated myself in her point of view as somebody who really is 180 degrees from myself, she has no sympathy for these people. She is intent on destroying their lives effectively, whereas I would be quite sympathetic. But adopting her purview, that must have.

[Interviewer]

Been fun to get into.

[Rachel Kushner]

It was very interesting. And I had always asked myself, like, what kind of a person could do this, you know? And my answer is, Sadie, you write about Europe.

[Alison Stewart]

The real Europe is a borderless network of supply and transport. It is a shrink wrapped pallets of unpasteurized milk or powdered Nesquik or semiconductors. The real Europe is highways and nuclear power plants. Why did you want to capture the real Europe in this book?

[Rachel Kushner]

Well, you know, again, that is Sadie speaking to the reader in her description. And there's something hyperbolic on her insistence may be laid into the qualifier, you know, real. There are multiple realities at once at any given time. And the subjective view of a character, in this case a narrator, tells you what's real to them. But she's also insisting that that's the real Europe, in order to be somewhat perverse and throw in the face of those who have a more romantic view of France as being an anc, its ancient cultures, if not itself an ancient nation. What she's emphasizing is something to do with the European Union, who builds most of the highways in France. And she's describing logistics, she's describing supply and transport, and in fact, most French energy is from nuclear power. And if you're on those main routes, you will see that kind of infrastructure. And so she's giving an ugly view, which isn't the ultimate view, but is nonetheless a form of the truth of the reality of how a super industrialized country like France functions.

[Interviewer]

You said it in 2013. Daft Punk is playing on the stereo. Why did you, why did you set 2013 as the setting?

[Rachel Kushner]

Well, you know, novels need to be set in time, and even the contemporary is historical time. I was thinking of a time that wouldn't be too, too far from. As I mentioned, there's, you know, there are some real life precedents and there's a commune called Tarnak, and I'm familiar with some of the people involved with that commune, and they were raided by the police in, I believe, 2008. And I wanted to set the book in a time that would be contiguous with the aura that hovered over that and the paranoia that was part of the fallout of that. But it also happens to be the case that I was in Marseille in the summer of 2013 and you could not go from the train station to the taxi to the club, to the hotel to the beach to the pharmacy to the restaurant without hearing a snippet of Get Lucky by Daft Punk. With Farrell Williams, I'm speaking with author.

[Interviewer]

Rachel Kushner about her latest novel, Creation Lake. It's about an American spy who infiltrates a French commune suspected of eco terrorists. By the way, Rachel, we will speaking at the Brooklyn Public Library. It's co presented with books or Magic. Our friends will be there. Emma Straub Sadie's Personality let's start with Sadie Smith. Is it close to Zadie Smith or is that just an accident?

[Rachel Kushner]

Yeah, no intention of that whatsoever. I chose Smith because it's my married last name and my husband's last name is Smith, my son's last name is Smith. So we are a world of Smith people. And my husband has always joked that Smith isn't really a last Name, no shade to Zadie, who is a friend, that it's a placeholder for last name. And Sadie jokes that it's English for last name. So I chose Smith for that. And I've just always liked the name Sadie I actually had. So apparently Zadie Smith's birth name is Sadie. I had no idea until she actually read the book and wrote me a very nice note about it and said that people had told her that the character's name was Sadie Smith. But when she read it, she understood that there's no connection. Coincidence.

[Interviewer]

All right, so Sadie Smith, she goes undercover to become. To infiltrate this group suspected of plotting eco terrorism. What kind of research did you do into eco terrorism?

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Well.

[Rachel Kushner]

I've never actually used that term. I don't know where the terror part of it starts because these people just, they've not been convicted of anything. They are suspected of having incurred sabotage to state equipment. Like you mentioned, there are these things and they're real in France. And it's become a much bigger issue. Interestingly, since I wrote the book, I had chosen this concept of the mega basin, where big business in France and the state want to. Want to expropriate all of the groundwater and put it into these huge plastic lined bays, which will make it easier for corporate interests to have access to the water and take it away from small farmers and basically control who gets water and what gets grown and how life gets lived in these places. And needing for my commune, they're called the Moulinards. Le Moulin just means the mill. Needing them to have some issue that sets them on a collision course with the state. I chose the mega basin. I've spent a lot of time in rural France. Every summer of, you know, for the last 12 years or 15 years has been spent there. And I've seen how hard farming is for people and what happens when corporate interests move in and they suck out the water and then there's nothing left in the river and people are irrigating from that. So I just chose it not at random, but not with the intention that this would be like the flashpoint issue for rural France, which in fact it has become. It's.

[Alison Stewart]

I was gonna ask you, is this.

[Interviewer]

Ripped from the headlines?

[Rachel Kushner]

Not at all. In fact, you know, the headlines are ripped from my book, Alison. Since. Yeah, there's an organization that has, you know, come to the fore called Les Sous le Vermont de la Terre. And that really started to form and come together and be quite public. And you would see if you log on and look at French news Pitched battles between farmers and clergy and activists against French police who are bringing out all of this bizarre paramilitary equipment. And then Macron attempting to attend an agricultural fair outside of Paris and being pushed back by farmers on tractors. And it was interesting to see that unfold in the wake of having written the book. And I think to some degree, I simply got lucky.

[Alison Stewart]

What does Sadie think about the Mission.

[Interviewer]

Of the Moon Arts?

[Rachel Kushner]

So Sadie is, I would consider her an amoral figure, meaning she does not have particular attachments or judgments and instead judges all people equally, although she does prize her own ability to see in other people what their weaknesses are, that they, not they, may not themselves see. She thinks when she walks into a room that she has reality rigged and that she is orchestrating other people as if they are her puppets. And she is set. You know, her mission is to dissimulate. She is being told by her higher ups to create provocation if it is not already there, among the people that she's infiltrated. So she's able to provide for the reader a critique of every one of the people that she's surveilling, but not from a place of a motivated political position herself. This does start to change over the course of the book because she's reading very closely the communiques from a person who originally had a lot of influence over the group, Bruno, and then ultimately starts to lose his influence over the group. And it may be, in fact, the case that his lone listener to these sermon, like, you know, passages is her.

[Interviewer]

She did get in trouble years ago when she was on a mission and she convinced a young man to come forward with this plot, and he was acquitted due to entrapment. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is this bio story that we learn about her? Tell us about her.

[Rachel Kushner]

Yeah, I love this question. So when I started to develop Sadie, when I realized that I was going to occupy, like, getting into a tank and driving it, the point of view of somebody who in real life, I would consider to be a kind of enemy. Like, what kind of person would do this? I decided that her backstory would only be her reporting on previous guises and dissimulations, previous scenarios in which she set out to destroy the lives of other people. She has set out now to destroy the lives of other people. And she keeps returning as though it's a kind of primal scene. I mean, in classic contemporary literary fiction, there is often an explanation given about why a character is motivated to make the decisions that they make based on some previous and essentialized trauma that they've experienced. And with Sadie instead, I only provided other stories which she's. When she's faked people out, but in this case, her first job. It wasn't her first job, but her. Her. The job that got her fired from working for the American feds was following a group of green anarchists. And this young man is fond of her and she suggests to him that the consummation of their love will take place through his willingness to commit an act of sabotage and risk being arrested and going to prison. He is arrested, is charged, goes to prison, serves several years, and then his conviction is overturned when entrapment is proven and she is fired, loses her job with the FBI and is kind of kicked into the shadowy world of private surveillance, which is real. It exists. The metropolitan UK agent I mentioned who infiltrated this group in France turn up. He was caught and called out. And this became a very public case because he had affairs with nine different women in the group who subsequently sued the UK police. He also himself sued the UK police for, quote, unquote, failing to protect him from falling in love. I saw Sadie as being a bit more polished, more hardened and savvy than that UK agent, although she does eventually, you know, fall prey to the temptation to have an affair with one of the members of the group.

[Alison Stewart]

What did you want to explore about radicalization in this book?

[Rachel Kushner]

I don't know if that's what I wanted to explore. I think that we live in a. You know, as my character, Bruno says, about the long trajectory of human life on earth and where it has led us. We are currently careening off a cliff in a driverless car, and the question is, how do we exit the car? And I think that it's a fair question and an open question, and there are people in the book who are trying to answer it in different ways. I'm interested in the temptation to look into prehistory and the time before the written down, which is rife for speculation as having something to do with the future and the not yet written down. To put it in simple terms, where we've come from and where we're going, you know. I'm also interested in France. I'm interested in French crime novels. I draw inspiration from things I've had the good fortune to be close to, to witness, and I can bring those things into my fiction. So it wasn't really about radicalization and more an extreme state of reality that all of us have found our ourselves in.

[Alison Stewart]

What is the facet of this novel.

[Rachel Kushner]

You'Re most proud of?

[Alison Stewart]

You're like I did that.

[Rachel Kushner]

Oh, well, I would say that Bruno is a sort of homespun philosopher. I mean, some people take pizza dough and spin it in the air and form a beautiful shape from it. And Bruno takes some of his learning and his life experience. He, he's lived through the 20th century. He lost his family in World War II. He saw the hopes and failures of May 68. He moved to the countryside. He lost his eight year old daughter who was killed by a tractor as he was teaching her to drive it. He's thought a lot about people. He's gone down into a cave. He's put his ear to the cave wall and heard what seems to him something like the messages like you might find in shortwave radio. But they are the cessations of human whispering him to him. Messages that the rest of us may have forgotten how to hear. And it's the homespun quality of Bruno's philosophy. He makes things up. He tells the group that the Neanderthals were prone to addiction and especially smoking. And it's a free indoor indirect discourse of an unfettered mind who's creating his own, his own way of being. Yeah, he really is. Yeah. So I guess I'm proud of Bruno because he's the heart of the book.

[Interviewer]

Rachel Kushner is the author of Creation Lake. She will be speaking tonight at the Brooklyn Public Library. With Books are Magic's Emma Straub. Rachel, thank you so much for coming to the studio.

[Rachel Kushner]

Thank you so much for having me.

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