Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Tenderberg.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we need without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblad, and this is Bookworm.

Today I'm very excited to have as my guest, Rachel Kushner, who has written a novel called

The Flame Throwers. It's published by Scribner.

I'm always looking for a novel that defines the present. This book takes place in the 1970s,

but I feel that it is alive in all of its fibers at every moment and it brings the present to life.

It moves between the response to the uprising of fascism in the Italian political movement

autonomia,

and the response to, in a way,

the conservative American lifestyle by the downtown art scene in New York in the 70s.

And it's making a comparison between two lifestyles, the lifestyle of the activist and the lifestyle of the

revolutionary artist who is not, in fact, concerned with revolution. What was it about this period

that attracted you?

Well, there were multiple things about the period that attracted me. I think I started with an

interest in New York City in the mid-70s because I've written a bit about contemporary art

over the years and I was always interested in the art world,

...