The Hard Crowd: Essays 20002020

(Paperback)

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From the Booker-shortlisted author, a wild ride of an essay collection about living fast and free in a crowded world. 'I'm glad to taste something this sharp, this smart' Olivia Laing 'Wide-ranging and unsparingly intelligent throughout' Vogue In her twenties Rachel Kushner went to Mexico in pursuit of her first love - motorbikes - to compete in the notorious and deadly race, Cabo 1000. As fellow racers died on the roadside, bikes were stolen and friends abandoned one another in the heat of the chase, she crashed at 80mph and miraculously survived; soon after, she decided to leave her controlling boyfriend and manoeuvred her way into a freer new life. The Hard Crowd is a white-knuckle ride through that life; a book about muscling your way through, finding your own path and, as she says in the hair-raising opening essay, 'completing the ride without dying'. Charged with hot-blooded humanity - with anger against the world's cruelties, and a free-wheeling passion for rare people, machines, movies, music, art and writing - it is an electrifying work about a woman's determination to reach the finish line.

Reviews

The Hard Crowd is wild, wide-ranging and unsparingly intelligent throughout. * Vogue *
One of America's most exciting writers . . . A brilliant collection of art and literary criticism, reportage, and autobiography. * Daily Telegraph *
She writes as well as any writer alive about the pleasure of a good motor doing what it was designed to do . . . Cool and wise, with real power and control . . . This book has a real gallery of souls . . . As strong a statement about artistic purpose and sensibility as I've read in a while. -- Dwight Garner * New York Times *
She seems to work with a muse and a nail gun, so surprisingly yet forcefully do her sentences pin reality to the page. -- Kathryn Schulz * New York Magazine *
I honestly don't know how she is able to know so much (about motorcycle racing, Italian radical politics) and convey all of it in such a completely entertaining and mesmerizing way. -- George Saunders

Author Bio

Rachel Kushner is the author of The Mars Room, which was shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize. Her previous novels, Telex from Cuba and The Flamethrowers, were both New York Times bestsellers and finalists for the National Book Award. Her fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's and the Paris Review. She lives in Los Angeles.