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- [00:01]
Narrator/Announcer
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- [00:26]
Rachel Kushner
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- [01:20]
Bella
Welcome to Fashion Neurosis. Rachel Kushner.
- [01:23]
Rachel Kushner
Thank you, Bella.
- [01:25]
Bella
Can you tell me what you're wearing today and why you chose these particular clothes?
- [01:30]
Rachel Kushner
Yes. Well, I happen to be wearing a shirt, a denim shirt with a tie, although I didn't knot it in a traditional way designed by you. I just really feel like myself in this shirt. I do often wear it with jeans because the denim on denim for me is a kind of homeostasis. But it's quite hot here in London and so I chose to go with it. These very light, thin silk pants that I recently acquired on vacation in a small village in the Department Lhote in France. And there was a little store in the village called l' Heure des Sud, like southern time. And I went in and the guy had things. I think these pants are made in India, but they're very much of a style that you see French women wearing, but only when they're on vacation. Like there's a whole modality of being that is just for, you know, l' eau de sud. You see these women in linen or, you know, like these kinds of pants that are summer pants. And they're not the kind of clothes I naturally just own or would even think to acquire. But sometimes when you're on vacation and you see everybody around you dressing a certain way, it kind of seeps in the desire. It's partly to assimilate and partly to sort of be distinct in assimilation. It's a funny contradiction. So I tried on the pants and I was talking to the guy who owns the store. I said, I think I'm gonna get these pants, and I can become one among the. I said the les femmes des vacances. And he said something really funny back to me. And this is all happening in French, which is a challenge for me, but one that I've been trying to focus on in terms of studying and learning French the last few years. And so to have, like, repartee feels especially triumphant. And I said, I can finally become one of the women of vacation. And he said, just like them, except with the classical goal of being just very marginally better than they are.
- [04:09]
Bella
Ooh.
- [04:10]
Rachel Kushner
And it was so great. Yeah. And then I said something like, mais la difference et abstrat. You know, like, it's a little abstract, marginal difference. And it was just some fantasy that the shopkeeper and I were having, but it lent these pants a little bit of extra difference themselves that they were purchased. I mean, they were, like €28 or something. Not expensive pants. But what came with them was priceless, which was this exchange of about how people dress on vacation. And then I'm wearing heels made by Maison Mail. It's a shop in New York. I've actually never been there. I bought them online, but they're a kind of shoe. And I don't mean to equate them with this fabulous shirt I'm wearing, which I can say it's fabulous because it was designed by you. But the shoes, for me are a similar kind of genre in that they transcend fashion for me and are a look that I feel always remains in style, which is a kind of. With the shoe, it's different. The shirt is a little more like. It has a slightly 1970s, 80s kind of vintage for me. And the shoes are more like the 70s meets the 1940s.
- [05:43]
Bella
Mm. They are. Exactly.
- [05:45]
Rachel Kushner
And they reminded me, when I saw them, of a kind of shoe I've always looked for, which is something I think of as being worn by the actresses in Fassbender movies.
- [05:57]
Bella
Oh, yeah.
- [05:57]
Rachel Kushner
And whether it's a movie that's meant to take place in the 70s or it's one of Fassbender's kind of, like, wartime historical films, the women sort of dress the same. It's like, I feel like there's a secret link between the 40s and the 70s. And this is a shoe that I would put into a genre I think of as sexy secretary. Although that's not. If I were wearing them that way, that would. It would be a skirt and a. And a kind of cupcake blouse or something.
- [06:30]
Bella
But, yeah, when I was at school, I had this syndrome I used to call being friends with the prettiest girl in the class. And to me, you're the prettiest girl equivalent in the writing world. And there's something about you that makes people want to read your books, even though they may not even read much. And, like, your cleverness is going to rub off on us when we read you. And I wondered how you feel about being at the center of attention, being in the beam.
- [07:03]
Rachel Kushner
That is extremely flattering to me in a way that makes me feel strange because, like, when you say that you were. How did you put it?
- [07:18]
Bella
Attracted to friends with the prettiest girl in the class.
- [07:23]
Rachel Kushner
Yeah. And I never put myself in that position and didn't recognize any evidence that I was in that position growing up at all. And instead, like you, I was always adjacent to and certainly friends with the prettiest girl. And I mean, I suppose if I had been given the choice to be her, I would have taken it, you know, if life worked that way. But it doesn't. And so instead I felt like that glow was always just sort of rubbing off on me and that it was almost like a kind of intelligence. I thought my friends who were beautiful had that. And I'm still friends with one of my childhood friends that we met when we were 10. And she was just the coolest, prettiest, most exciting girl. Her name's Emily Goldman. And I'm still friends with her. And she still feels that way to me and even has that effect on me. Like, if she's wearing something, I sort of want to get the thing, you know, and, like, want to be like her in a way that I just adore. Because. Because it's like somebody is close to the source.
- [08:47]
Bella
Yeah.
- [08:48]
Rachel Kushner
And I want to drink from that source. So it's hard to answer because I don't put myself. I don't think of myself in that kind of position. I feel like. I mean, to the second part of your question of like, to be. How does it feel to. To get attention? I think I'm by instinct, consider attention to be something slightly unwholesome. And it's one thing to know that in theory, and it's another thing to know how to not get too distracted by it, to know how to not enjoy it too much. And if one starts to sort of live for attention and think that getting attention is being alive, my fear with that is that a person can lose the capacity. Well, all kinds of things, but maybe most importantly, Lose the capacity to listen. Because paying attention to other people and being curious about them and interested in them and kind of being a watcher is. That's the source for me to being a writer. And it's also my comfort zone. And attention can be a really useful, just in a pragmatic way, a means to an end. Because if you can make a living writing fiction, that's a phenomenally special thing to do. It means that you get to go back and make more art. So the attention is a means to an end rather than an end in and of itself. But I think that it is easy to fall into kind of enjoying it.
- [11:01]
Bella
Yeah, I have the same kind of attitude. I fear that if I enjoy attention too much, I'll forget about. I'll forget how to pay attention. Or I'll become kind of too addicted to trying to, you know, kind of weasel out some compliment from somebody.
- [11:25]
Rachel Kushner
But that's very similar. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's like it's attention itself could maybe obscure my ability to kind of remain more humbly on the margins of things, which is where I draw my real power.
- [11:41]
Bella
Yeah. Yeah.
- [11:42]
Rachel Kushner
Listening to other people.
- [11:45]
Bella
I think that's a very good way to consider it because it's actually wonderful to receive attention. But my previous attitude was more of a Spartan, like, don't, you know, just don't do that. Because, you know, like, I've had some drug put in my water that I'll become obsessed with. But.
- [12:07]
Rachel Kushner
But. So how do you avoid it when you say don't do that?
- [12:11]
Bella
No, no, I. I don't do that now. Cause I feel a bit more mellow about everything in general. But before, I was too superstitious about something going well because I was more in the habit of being in an adversarial position. You know, you also talked about your parents being. You said that they described hippies as being conformist. And I thought that was. I mean, I experienced growing up with hippies, and I really didn't like the sloppiness of it. And your parents sounded like they were much more organized than you seem. Have always seemed very organized and. And I wondered what your uniform was as a child.
- [13:08]
Rachel Kushner
Yeah, I mean, from the outside, I think somebody could have described my parents as hippies. You know, my mother had very long flaming red hair and white. White skin. And she would saunter around the house nude. And we had this old. A yellow school bus that was painted all in hippie colors parked in our driveway in Eugene, Oregon. So they might have appeared like hippies, but I remember her saying that the whole hippie thing just seemed very conformist because everybody's wearing the same clothes and listening to the same music. And even worse, sort of believing in the same sort of ideas about how to live. And they're a little bit older than that. They were more influenced by the beatnik generation, as she always put it. Too young to be beatniks, too old to be hippies, kind of in between, maybe slightly more influenced by the beatniks. But in terms of clothes, you know, it's like a funny thing talking about the privations of childhood, because my parents are educated people. On my mother's side. Even my great grandmother went to college. So, like, in terms of class, you know, I feel like I'm firmly from the middle class, especially on my mother's side. But my parents were graduate students when I was a kid. And so they were living on such a shoestring budget. And, you know, we had, like, government assistance, like food stamps and government cheese, and everything was just. There was not money for clothes. My mother sewed us some clothes. So I had these little dresses when I was a toddler that she sewed. And I still remember the fabric. And really she would get free fabric from my grandfather who worked in the textile industry on the East Coast. So he would send these boxes of fabric, and she would make shirts for my brother and dresses for me. And then later my brother and I sewed some of our own clothes. I. I remember I had pajamas that I sewed myself. And one leg was, like, kind of narrow and fitted the way these pants are. And then the other was quite wide. I don't know how I ended up with that. But, you know, it's like. And then what did I wear to school? I mean, I had this T shirt that I got at the county fair. This is in Eugene, Oregon. And every summer the Lane County Fair took place. And it was just the most exciting thing, partly because of clothes, because I could see teenagers there and, like, boys and girls with their sort of arms draped over each other. And the girls are wearing these, like, really tight denim bell bottoms with tube tops. And people are tan in a way I've never been able to get a tan. And that seemed like just this fabulous accessory. And there was a place where you could get a T shirt with an iron on design on it. And I got one at the fair one summer, which was a picture of Farrah Fawcett in. I don't know if you would remember this image wearing a red bathing suit. To me, I picked this little yellow T shirt. And I got that ironed onto it, and I think I sort of thought it was aspirational to wear that shirt. And Farrah's so tan, and she has this fabulously feathered hair. She's like some kind of purebred stallion or something. She just looks amazing.
- [17:23]
Bella
And does she have the nipples in that? It's.
- [17:25]
Rachel Kushner
The nipple is visible, but I guess I didn't really notice that until I'd been wearing that shirt to school every day. And an adult at some point said to me, you know, that shirt's not really appropriate for a child. And I sort of thought, what? I just didn't know. But so I wore that. And then I wore some bell bottoms. And I remember that I bought these pants myself. I had a paper route one summer, and so I made money and I went to the department store downtown, and they were like $4, these white pants. And I almost never washed them, so they were filthy. And that was how I dressed. And my brother and I each got like, one new pair of tennis shoes a year from Tom McCann. So I wore Tom McCann shoes. I remember my mother wanted me to wear saddle shoes. I have no idea why, but I hated them so much.
- [18:27]
Bella
What are they?
- [18:29]
Rachel Kushner
If I understand this right, it's like a leather lace up shoe with a rubber sole like that people would have worn with a uniform in the 1950s. And I think she got me a pair at Goodwill or something. And I thought, what are these? I mean, now I probably would think they were cool, but, you know, as a kid, you just want to assimilate. You just want to wear what the other kids are wearing. I wanted clogs when I was a child so badly, and my mother got me clogs at Salvation army or Goodwill. And they were fluorescent green. And at the time, it was the 1970s and you had to have earth toned clogs.
- [19:14]
Bella
Yes, I had earth toned. Toned.
- [19:16]
Rachel Kushner
I wanted them so badly. Okay, the pumpkin spice latte is back at Starbucks. Crafted with our signature espresso and real pumpkin sauce, then topped with whipped cream, cinnamon, and nutmeg. The psl. Get it while it's hot or iced. Only at Starbucks.
- [19:37]
Narrator/Announcer
Hey, Vox Media listeners, it's Mike Murphy. What happens when you get two political hacks who've been running campaigns against each other for forever and add a world class journalist? You get a big bar tab. That's what you get. This David Axelrod telling you, you also get a great podcast called Hacks on Tap.
- [19:54]
Bella
This is John Heilman. I'll tell you what?
- [19:56]
Rachel Kushner
We give you a weekly podcast that covers news, the headlines, and also the longer term trends driving our politics from the perspective of three guys who've seen it all, from the campaign trail to.
- [20:05]
Narrator/Announcer
The forward cabin of Air Force One. Join us every week on Hacks on Tap on the Vox Media Podcast network.
- [20:17]
Bella
Hello, Daisy speaking.
- [20:19]
Rachel Kushner
Hello, Daisy. This is Phoebe Judge from the irs.
- [20:22]
Bella
Oh, bless, that does sound serious. I wouldn't want to end up in any sort of trouble.
- [20:27]
Rachel Kushner
This September on Criminal, we've been thinking a lot about scams. Over the next couple of weeks, we're releasing episodes about a surprising way to stop scammers. The people you didn't know were on the other end of the line. And we have a special bonus episode on Criminal plus with tips to protect yourself. Listen to Criminal wherever you get your podcasts. And sign up for criminal plus@thisiscriminal.com plus.
- [20:55]
Bella
I came to your work. I was sitting next to someone at lunch and they Talk told me about your book of essays, the Hard Crowd. And one of them was about you visiting the west bank. And I also visited the west bank many times. And then she sent me the book and I saw your picture on the COVID and thought, oh, wow, you know. And then I contacted my pr, I had a PR in LA and said, ask her if she wants to ever borrow any of my clothes. And then when he replied, he had sent me your email that you had allowed him to pass on. And then we started writing to each other and until we finally met. And I wondered how you knew I'd be an okay friend.
- [21:49]
Rachel Kushner
Yeah, that was just the luckiest thing I remember that you reached out and it got forwarded to me by the publishers publicist. And I mean, to have the connection of a mutual interest in the rights of the Palestinian people is no small commonality. But it was the way that you wrote also. I mean, it's quite flattering to have somebody who's read my work and interested in me because of it, but I think I'm often thinking more along the lines of, oh, this person is really reading and reaching out to people. Like using the good luck of their position to make contact with people who are writing because they're reading those people's work. And I want to be like that too, honestly. I want to be ever curious and reading and seeing who is generating ideas that I can learn from and be in correspondence with. And so there was something about the way you wrote that was exciting to me. Like I want to be like Bella. And then getting to know You, I feel like you are always reading and thinking about who out there is making interesting work. And there's just something very like open and affirming and positive about it. And you have a very soft way of communicating. I mean, do you feel this way sometimes with email? Even if part of it is a projection? The projection is part of who the other person is for you.
- [23:44]
Bella
Yeah.
- [23:44]
Rachel Kushner
It's how you think, how you imagine, fantasize, dream that they're gonna receive your words. And so it can shape and inform how I speak and how I experience myself to another.
- [24:00]
Bella
Yeah.
- [24:01]
Rachel Kushner
Like I just had this sense that if I said something to you through email, you would. The ball would be passed back in this really inspiring way.
- [24:11]
Bella
I remember thinking, being quite self conscious about what words I'd choose to write, how I'd write to you, and worried that I'd be over stylized by mistake. And then just sort of getting the pen out. I mean, obviously not the pen, but just thinking. And then what was really lovely was that you sent me a picture of your son and then I don't remember that I did. And then we both each have one child, a son. And then the picture was so endearing because it was, I find like with me and my son, it was all about him and this photo was all about him with you kind of adoringly looking at him and I. That kind of was like the measure. And then, and then we started writing very slowly and it was just so enjoyable to find out like a 19th century type of correspondence, how. What's going on in your life in this slow way. I thought it was really cool that you had a picture of yourself on the COVID of that. Especially these sort of particularly academic essays. So they're not, they're just. I only use that word because they're just so filled with intelligence. And I found out all sorts of things like about that writer Dennis Johnson, who I. I'd never heard of. And I felt like, how did, how did I miss this person? But then I wondered if you ever find your intelligence can get in the way of a good outfit. Like people expect only your intelligence and not your beauty.
- [26:08]
Rachel Kushner
Well, it's funny the way you put that. Can intelligence get in the way of a good outfit? Rather than can a good outfit get in the way of intelligence in the sense of. Does it seem less serious to make a concerted effort when it comes to your look?
- [26:30]
Bella
Yeah.
- [26:30]
Rachel Kushner
Do you know what I mean?
- [26:31]
Bella
Yeah. Because you can think, well, I'm just going to be sitting in this chair, so I should wear Something practical and nondescript. And then in theory, that's intelligent, but it's actually utterly dreary. And so you have to flip it somehow, you know, and there's a sort of war that goes on occasionally, which I'm giving up this idea that less is more. That actually more is more in terms.
- [27:02]
Rachel Kushner
Of that book and putting myself on the COVID It was my editor's idea to do that. It's something that maybe a writer in the 1970s would have allowed. Just a picture of yourself. And since it's nonfiction and it has some more personal work in it, I kind of thought, why not? I mean, now I feel a little more shy about it when I look at that book. Like, it's pretty bold to put yourself on the COVID of your own book.
- [27:28]
Bella
It's good. Bold, though. It's exactly right. I think it's fantastic. Anyway, it spoke to me.
- [27:36]
Rachel Kushner
But you know, Denis Johnson. Jimmy loves Dennis Johnson. Also something now that I have gotten the. I've experienced the wonderful good luck of getting to know your son, Jimmy.
- [27:51]
Bella
Yeah. So we.
- [27:53]
Rachel Kushner
I feel like we share taste in literature, he and I. And it's really fun to kind of marvel over sentences and passages and pieces of writing, short stories by people we both really love. Among them. Dennis Johnson.
- [28:11]
Bella
You thought you'd get on so well.
- [28:15]
Rachel Kushner
DeLillo. For me, it's funny because, you know, he's Don now, to me, but that just sounds so. You know, it's like when people shorten a name and you only think of that person from a great distance. It seems a little pretentious or something, but. But it's odd for me now to call him DeLillo, because at first he's just a writer that meant so much to me when I was younger. Still means a lot to me now. But when you get to know a person, some of that distance has to collapse because it's a real person, it's a man. It's not just this sort of giant of American literature and humor and style and originality that you think of from a distance. Because that would be creepy to treat that person continually and obsessively like that, you know, once you get to know them. But I don't know. He. We have the same editor at Scribner, Nan Graham, and she sent him my first novel, Telex from Cuba, way back when, before it came out in 2007. And he wrote me a really nice letter. And I'm certainly not the only person who's gotten a nice letter from Don. He's actually quite generous with Other writers, especially with younger writers. And he takes his correspondence so seriously. He writes people back.
- [29:53]
Bella
That's incredible.
- [29:54]
Rachel Kushner
It is incredible. And I actually feel like the further you are from your own greatness, the easier it is to be a kind of slob about that sort of thing, you know, and to not remember to attend to other people. I remember him saying to me once that he's always on time. He's always five minutes early. I said, you're always on time. And he said, I can't imagine the confidence that would be required to be late.
- [30:24]
Bella
God.
- [30:26]
Rachel Kushner
I know. But. So he'd written me back and then we became friends through Nan and started spending time together.
- [30:37]
Bella
Wow.
- [30:38]
Rachel Kushner
And now I feel quite close to him and his wife, also, Barbara. They're wonderful people. I just. I feel like my role in Don's life is to make him laugh. And he makes me laugh. And for a long time it was going to the movies together. And he doesn't go to the movies that much anymore. He's little more, Watches movies, stays home. He will go to a restaurant. And I think it's just. I don't know.
- [31:14]
Bella
It's funny that you said he makes you laugh, because I went to a reading he did at the Shakespeare bookshop in Paris about 10 years ago or something, and his face was. I mean, he didn't move a muscle. He didn't smile or laugh. And then his wife was so wreathed in smiles and just was so kind of beaming. And I love the idea that the special relationship is about smiling, that you have a way in because he was so fascinating and intriguing. And then I knew Jimmy loved his books as well, and I managed to get a signed book. And it seems very nice that you have this thing.
- [32:09]
Rachel Kushner
I love to be around him. I also feel like he's a unique combination of extremely serious about art and making art and extremely humble. And it's a rare combination, like a fusing of those two things, because to make art, you really have to think. You have to know you have something.
- [32:39]
Bella
Yeah.
- [32:40]
Rachel Kushner
And at the same time, he doesn't put himself above other people. And he's very self minimizing.
- [32:48]
Bella
Wow.
- [32:49]
Rachel Kushner
So I'm attracted to that combination. I think there is something for me that is a bit like there's a sort of father figure component to what he is to me. And that was not the case when I was merely his reader. But getting to know him, it's become much more the case. And it's because he's the same generation as my father. And Don is from the Bronx. My father is from Brooklyn. They both have basically the same sideburns. They both were really shaped by their interest in jazz. And there's just some cultural. Even though Don is Italian, my father is Jewish. But there's this, like, immigrant sensibility there a little bit. And they met each other in San Francisco, and they were facing each other. And so I was looking at the two of them, like these two profile faces, and they were each smiling at the other with the sideburns. And it was almost like a Rorschach, like two people in mirror image. And they liked each other a lot. And it kind of was, like, very powerfully confirming for me of this myth that I've unconsciously confected into place, which is that Don is a kind of father. And obviously my father is my father.
- [34:23]
Bella
God.
- [34:24]
Rachel Kushner
Incredible. I really wanted them to have a conversation with each other about jazz because they were both at these tiny clubs, you know, seeing Coltrane, seeing Monk, et cetera. And they both still talk about it. And my dad said, but you can't listen in because you'll just take all the good stuff and try to write about it.
- [34:48]
Bella
Well, you had this talent and this incredible ability to tell stories about people that aren't you. And in the Mars Room, about a girl in a women's prison, it's so real. And when I read it, I just thought, well, you must have experienced this. It was so. I believed in it, and I. You know, and it was. And it's so real. And in your book Creation Lake, the character Sadie Smith, she has this amazing boob job. And you describe how she doesn't wear a bra, and her modus is based on her way of being, which is not your way. You're much more kind of inscrutable and discreet. And I wondered how you. When you're making this. Like, when you're describing her making this character, how do you feel when you're creating it? And do you suddenly own those breasts for a moment?
- [35:54]
Rachel Kushner
Yeah.
- [35:54]
Bella
Well, I know everyone noted the breasts because they were so good.
- [35:59]
Rachel Kushner
There were so some people were sort of upset about that. I mean, I think there's only, like, three mentions of it in the book, but maybe just that kind of using your body as a tool. I mean, that character, you know, is a disgraced former FBI agent who has this arsenal. Like, she travels with weaponry and infrared goggles. I mean, I was sort of having a little bit of fun in a way that was quite new for me in terms of, like, dabbling in the crime genre. Obviously, the novel's not a. It's not a noir, it's not a crime novel. But the main character seems to believe that she's in a crime novel. And so I was giving her this equipment, and then I just thought that, you know, her rack is like just another arsenal in her toolbox. And I think that I was thinking of women I knew in the 90s in San Francisco who were making their living working at strip clubs. Like, the Mitchell Brothers was sort of like a famous place in San Francisco. And like the girls. There was a girl who worked at Mitchell Brothers who came into the bar that I worked in and she. She said, I just got a boob job. And she was lifting up her blouse to show everyone her breast augmentation. And I think what I took away from it was that once she'd had that done, her breasts were more like a public service. They weren't hers anymore. And she'd gone from being naked to being nude. Like, she could just be for show and anyone could look at the breasts and people were touching them.
- [37:52]
Bella
Wow.
- [37:53]
Rachel Kushner
And so I sort of thought Sadie could be like that. It was sort of like hearkening back to this memory I had of a woman who doesn't feel like her body is just something private and rather something that she's instrumentalizing.
- [38:10]
Bella
Yeah, it does a job.
- [38:12]
Rachel Kushner
It does a job. Yeah. And Sadie's using it when she's describing it, when she's. That point in the book when she says her breasts don't need a bra. She's manipulating this young man into a relationship with her so that she can make contact with his friend who's the de facto leader of this group of militants in a rural part of France. And it's all part of her mission. But in terms of imagining myself into that position, yeah, it's more like. I mean, fiction. It's really hard, but it's so fun when it works. And I think that the first person is, for me, it's the hardest. The third person is easier because some of the trappings of, like, all the literature I've read in the third person are there for me. And you can see the character from a little bit outside of the character. And when you speak in the eye, but as a fictional eye, you really have to feel who that person is so that you can remember that they are not you. Like, you can't just say, well, they're not me because you're speaking in the first person. And so you have to have a very worked out idea of who that I is and why they're speaking in the first person. And also like how they're being insistent. I mean, she's very overconfident and telling the reader that, for instance, she's a better driver while drunk.
- [39:48]
Bella
Yeah.
- [39:49]
Rachel Kushner
And so that all requires me to kind of like get deeply into the role and never ever to mistake that person for me. Because I'm not really interested in using myself in my fiction. I'm much more interested in other people and what it feels like to be them. I was just going to ask you, do you think that. That it's dangerous to be really good looking?
- [40:16]
Bella
God, I mean, I think, I think it brings a whole load of problems with it because whenever I've hung out with very beautiful friends and one of my good friends, Susie Cave is just. I remember walking down the street with her and the creepiest guys came up to her and then I'd get very defensive and like a bodyguard.
- [40:41]
Rachel Kushner
Well, I love the episode that you did with Susie. And she seems very unusual.
- [40:48]
Bella
Yeah, she is.
- [40:49]
Rachel Kushner
As somebody who's uncommonly and ethereally beautiful. I don't know her, but the way she speaks, she sounds sort of like she didn't identify as beautiful when she was young.
- [41:06]
Bella
Yeah, I think very beautiful girls have lots of this insecurity. So everyone else projects that they must be having an amazing time and they're, they have all these extra insecurities about this incredible beauty that they're burdened with. So in that way it must be quite a full time job. And how do you feel about competitiveness? Because when I was having a crisis of inadequacy with my. My shrink told me to treat competitiveness as a game and enjoy playing it. And I found that really helpful, especially about people who I knew and they were suddenly doing much better with me. And I, I felt like, oh God, I don't know how to cope. And then he said you could enjoy it. And that was, that was like recasting that a whole way of thinking about myself.
- [42:14]
Rachel Kushner
That was effective advice for you.
- [42:16]
Bella
Really good.
- [42:17]
Rachel Kushner
I've never thought of that. And I'm going to. I think that. And I can see why he says that too, because our instinct is that it's unwholesome to feel competition with other people because you want to just be happy for them. And also. Well, at least for me, competition feels unwholesome because it suggests that I've decided that I'm equally deserving, if not more so, than other people for the same, you know, whatever it is, if it's a prize or a certain kind of attention. And I don't want to think of myself as being someone who thinks they're more deserved than other people. And I also am pretty unsure if I am, because, I mean, how you make a novel is never about how other people make novels or how novels are generally made. It's a pretty solipsistic enterprise in the sense that I'm really following some very deep instinct. Like, I'm digging until I hit water, and when I do, it's only water that I would recognize, you know, that's so beautifully explained.
- [43:45]
Bella
That's like a pure philosophy. I like that a lot.
- [43:51]
Rachel Kushner
I mean, you. You make a thing that, you know, speaks to you and is, like, a true engagement with your own unconscious. And, like, the book seems to be smarter than the writer is, and whether other people gravitate toward it or not is sort of impossible to predict and dangerous to try to anticipate. Like, I don't try to please other people because I think it's. Well, it's just. It isn't how my art would be made. But I also think it's like a recipe for failure because it's like pandering to people rather than trying to conjure the thing that I would dream of seeing, you know? But so. Because making it is a little solipsistic, I can't say that the dream that other people conjure to please themselves is objectively inferior to what I make, you know. So I just try to remember that. And there's been situations, well, like in England with the Booker Prize. I've gone through that kind of set of rituals with two different novels and just, you know, with the most recent one in the fall. And actually, you know, you came with me.
- [45:17]
Bella
Yes.
- [45:18]
Rachel Kushner
As my date, which was so wonderful, because I find you to just be the most soothing, reassuring person. And they try to make it into this, like, kind of Hunger Games environment.
- [45:32]
Bella
It was quite shocking, really, to have literature dragged in. But then, you know, why not? And also, poets are famously the most competitive people in the world, which I found, like, goes against the notion. But that night, it was so intense.
- [45:53]
Rachel Kushner
I mean, I think maybe, you know, to their credit, it's sort of sweet because they want to dress up literature as something worth fighting over, something worth fighting for. But I think that it's uncomfortable for the writers who don't want to be like that. And I just want to want to leave every situation like that, frankly, feeling like a winner rather than as a loser. And so I have a very deep instinct to expect nothing, because I never Want to be disappointed. I just feel like it's undignified for me as a feeling. And so I have, like, very deep sort of prophylactic instincts against it. And I've been like that, I would say, always. Like, when I met my husband, I told myself, oh, he just wants to be friends. It's just gonna be a friendship. Because I didn't wanna get my hopes up, you know. So with the Booker prize, I thought, well, I'm not gonna win. And I told Samantha, harvey, I think you're gonna win. And then she won, and I gave her this huge hug, and I felt like I got to have the very tiny victory of having told her she would win and having been correct. That's really good because, you know, it's just. It feels better in that situation to give the winner a hug and feel happy for them and good about things than to feel bad. And I just. I think I'm experienced at some of this because I mostly don't win. But I also don't know. I mean, it is fun to win. That's the problem is I have won one prize in France, and I thought, oh, damn, it actually is more fun to win. I remember I met. I think it was Wolfgang Tillmans who told me this and was at his opening, and he said something like, oh, congratulations. It was with the Mars Room, like, I see you, or on the short list. And I said, oh, I. You know, I can't remember something like, you know, I don't. I don't expect to win. And he goes, but the thing is, it is better to win. And it was so funny to me at the time. Then the one time I did win, I thought that. And in a German accent, oh, it is better to win. But the main thing is just not to feel bad and. And not to be ungenerous toward the person who wins.
- [48:29]
Bella
And that can all go well with. It is better to win. You know, it's kind of in harmony. That's so good. I'm definitely going to remember that.
- [48:41]
Narrator/Announcer
Is gun reform a matter of law or culture? There are more people who are gun.
- [48:46]
Rachel Kushner
Enthusiasts today who believe guns are a.
- [48:49]
Narrator/Announcer
Good thing for them and the safety of their homes, regardless of whether the public health data supports that or not. I'm Preet Bharara, and this week, the president of Everytown for Gun Safety, John Feinblatt and Second Amendment scholar Adam Winkler, joined me on my podcast. Stay tuned with Preet. We discuss the state of gun violence in this country, the biggest mistakes Democrats have made in seeking reform, and why the best prospect for meaningful change may take place outside the courts. The episode is out now. Search and follow Stay tuned with Preet wherever you get your podcasts.
- [49:21]
Bella
And if you fancy someone and don't like what they're wearing, does it kill your attraction to them?
- [49:30]
Rachel Kushner
I can see times where I'm quickly trying to readjust what sexiness is if somebody is interrupting a kind of affective projection that I've made onto them. You know, like if they were to show up in cargo shorts and Birkenstocks or something. I'm already doing a sort of work to try to hold on to the earlier fantasy. So I guess that's like a way of saying yes. Yeah, yeah, it does. It does interrupt. I remember being. I always think of this when I hear you ask this question of other guests. I remember when I was younger I was on a ski team and when you're on the hill with a bunch of ski racers, everybody is just in their ski clothing and there's a sort of like cool hierarchy of the best racers and the most good looking guys and also the ski patrollers, like there would be like cool patrollers on the hill who helped run our races and were working with them and they're wearing a uniform from the ski area. And I remember the end of the day, like people showing up to our parties that we'd met on the hill, like a patroller. And then suddenly he's wearing a Hawaiian shirt and some weird jeans and you think this is just some country guy and he's suddenly less attractive because in place of the uniform is something that doesn't quite fit with how I was projecting onto that person on the hill.
- [51:32]
Bella
I know, because especially skiers, they're. There's an edit. There's a kind of. Also a proportion with this long leg and this agility and that is so captivating. And then for that uniform to come off and there's, you know, shape and some flowery shirt is.
- [51:54]
Rachel Kushner
You have to feel the real person suddenly, which when you're young, I think for me partly crushes. They weren't really about these people. So much of it is a fantasy and a projection.
- [52:11]
Bella
And in Creation Lake, you say the title of the book was inspired by a French novel that featured a map in which all the sites are emotional states rather than physical places. And I wondered where you live on the emotional map.
- [52:32]
Rachel Kushner
Ooh, that's a good question. Yeah, I mean there's right, there's this ancient French map that has like, you know, the Lake of Forgetting and you know, the Glade of deception. I can't see it in front of me right now in order to choose. So I'll just have to invent. Well, it's some kind of meadow. Emotionally, it's really hard to say. That's a tough question for me to answer. I mean, I'm interested in tenderness, for sure, in the sense that I want to really experience feelings and other people's feelings. What about you?
- [53:31]
Bella
When I found that question for you, I was really excited about asking you because it's not immediately obvious because you're so composed and you also give a lot to other people.
- [53:45]
Rachel Kushner
So.
- [53:46]
Bella
So on the emotional map, what's coming into my thoughts is like ferocity, but it's also ferocity. Yeah. I suppose it's also connected to love. That love is a fierce thing. So on the borders of love and ferocity, maybe that's where my little heart would be.
- [54:15]
Rachel Kushner
What kind of love?
- [54:18]
Bella
I suppose the courage to have love without certain conditions that really are imposed by me, or love without a distance regulator. And that's what I'm exploring at the moment, how to stop putting things in the way. I mean, I'm definitely improving. But.
- [54:46]
Rachel Kushner
Is this romantic love that you think it's romantic?
- [54:50]
Bella
Because with. With my son and my friendships, I feel like I'm way ahead of romantic love, which is still like a. A kind of an assault course that I'm always having to climb up millions of bars or go into tunnels.
- [55:09]
Rachel Kushner
It's a more complicated kind of love, to be sure.
- [55:12]
Bella
Yeah. Yeah.
- [55:13]
Rachel Kushner
But, you know, you seem like somebody who is really good at friendship.
- [55:17]
Bella
Yeah, I love friendship.
- [55:19]
Rachel Kushner
I feel the same way. So maybe. Which I don't want to, you know, bask in our. In our incredible qualities, but I feel like I've been incredibly lucky in my life when it comes to friendships. And maybe it is something that I might have a talent for. And maybe you're like that, too.
- [55:43]
Bella
Yeah, maybe.
- [55:44]
Rachel Kushner
Like, I don't spend any of my time ever feeling upset at friends. I'm really good at taking what other people offer and not expecting more or wanting more. Like, each friend, they just give what they can. They give what they give. And I love the way that all of friendships and other people really do form a kind of symphony for me where, like, I can go to different friends for different forms of inspiration and also different modalities of self. Like, different people kind of bring out different aspects of myself.
- [56:27]
Bella
Yeah, totally. Yes.
- [56:29]
Rachel Kushner
And I just love that. And I am. I'm so excited about all my friends. I really feel like other People are like. They have a sort of star quality.
- [56:43]
Bella
And.
- [56:44]
Rachel Kushner
Yeah. Loving other people is becoming more and more clear to me. Even as sort of sentimental or basic as that sounds, just wanting to be present for them so that I don't miss what's amazing about people.
- [57:00]
Bella
Yeah. And you cite Dolly Parton as a person whose values you respect, and I do too. She's not in the revenge business, which seems to be all the rage at the moment. And did you listen to that podcast, Dolly Parton's America?
- [57:19]
Rachel Kushner
I actually haven't listened to that podcast, but I know about it. Should I?
- [57:25]
Bella
Totally. It's of the most amazing things I've. It's like where you learn about kind of accepting people and also to, to be ambitious and to survive in a. In a kind of competitive world and. But where did you find her to. To choose her as the one?
- [57:48]
Rachel Kushner
Well, I've long been interested in country music and maybe part of it is because my mother spent part of her childhood in eastern Tennessee, you know, and they would go to the Grand Ole Opry and then I guess it's like the style and the look of the people who performed at the Grand Old opry in the 70s was always of interest to me. And I have this huge book, I mean, it's just enormous, which is all photographs from the Grand Ole opry in the 60s and the 70s. And there are pictures in there of Dolly Parton and I love Down From Dover, which is basically maybe the saddest song that's ever been sung. And she just, she just always. I mean, even before she sort of became like newly famous as somebody who can embody something American that's not divisive. You know, even before all of that, she always seemed like a woman who used her looks and her sort of costume in this very self knowing, like camp manner. And I just always thought that was really fantastic. And she's never saccharine or fake.
- [59:14]
Bella
Never.
- [59:15]
Rachel Kushner
She's just absolutely a real person who's also a performer. Like there's these kind of, you know, there's these layers there, and yet she's also quite frank. I love the contradiction of it.
- [59:32]
Bella
Yeah. Because when you listen to Dolly Parton's America, it's almost like Candide, but the opposite, where she gets everything right. She goes through all these experiences, but she's this knowledge that she sort of shares, you know, her way of conducting herself in life is just extraordinarily is like a lesson from some. The Bible and every good philosophy that was ever invented. And I thought it was great that you chose her because it sort of conjures up everything. Beauty, intelligence, good instinct, creative brilliance, and kind of acceptance as well.
- [60:24]
Rachel Kushner
I mean, people like that, who kind of have a light that they know how to shine, they make everybody else seem to glow also. Like, they can inspire other people to be better people.
- [60:40]
Bella
Well, thank you so much, Rachel, for being on Fashion Neurosis.
- [60:44]
Rachel Kushner
Oh, thank you so much, Bella. It's really nice lying on your couch.