Rachel Cusk, "Transit"
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- Опубліковано 12 вер 2024
- www.politics-pr...
In the wake of family collapse, a writer and her two young sons move to London. The process of upheaval is the catalyst for a number of transitions personal, moral, artistic, practical as she endeavors to construct a new reality for herself and her children. In the city she is made to confront aspects of living she has, until now, avoided, and to consider questions of vulnerability and power, death and renewal, in what becomes her struggle to reattach herself to, and believe in, life.
Filtered through the impersonal gaze of its keenly intelligent protagonist, Transit sees Rachel Cusk delve deeper into the themes first raised in her critically acclaimed Outline, and offers up a penetrating and moving reflection on childhood and fate, the value of suffering, the moral problems of personal responsibility, and the mystery of change. In this precise, short, and yet epic cycle of novels, Cusk manages to describe the most elemental experiences, the liminal qualities of life, through a narrative near-silence that draws language toward it. She captures with unsettling restraint and honesty the longing to both inhabit and flee one's life and the wrenching ambivalence animating our desire to feel real.
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Produced by Michael A. Kowaleski
Rachel. Your amazing. I’ve read four of your books since Saturday. It’s Tuesday only. I’m sure there are many current writers worth reading but I haven’t come across any until now. So delighted to see you too.
Wow, first of all, I enjoyed listening to Cusk read part of Transit, I could listen to the first half (the reading) many more times. Only Cusk could do justify to her narrative if she reads them (for example on Audible) no one else. I had listened to her reading for the first book- Outline on another UA-cam video and it was simply wonderful to listen to her. Secondly what a refreshing, thought provoking, interesting conversation and answers she gave in the second half of the video. How rare and how refreshing to hear from someone this talented and such a unique approach to story telling/telling of thoughts
I love how the book follows the inner turmoil so many people feel but are unable ro articulate. I rescued this book from a garbage bag full of books someone placed in the street near where i live . I am glad i did despite the fact i have so many towers of books. My cat is with me .he doesnt hunt birds. Fortunately.
Just a point of fact, Punk Rock 1976-77 preceded Mrs Thatcher (1979 onwards). If anything Thatcher so disenfranchised art and collective voice, that we had the escapist music of the New Romantics
Despite being mildly irritated by the hype of the claim that Cusk has "invented a revolutionary" new format or genre (I've been a devotee of "plotless" books for thirty years now), I looked forward to Transit because Cusk has a big brain and she's not afraid to use it. Writers of that type are rare and dwindling.
While Transit wasn't quite as merciless (in a non-self-serving way) and laser-sharp (philosophically) as I'd anticipated, it was still damned good. Plenty to chew on.
But Cusk's genre should be called NAKED SCORE-SETTLING. Cusk invites you to watch as she flays her enemies (anyone who’s ever crossed her, apparently) alive, at her leisure. Much more lively than Teju Cole (who is sometimes tossed in a folder with Cusk owing to his "plotlessness") and his pipe-puffing Sebald pastiches.
I was slightly disappointed by the lazy ending (there's an Art to the postmodern tick of shutting the door before the penny drops, but Transit's end feels more rushed than jarring)... and there's a stomach-punchingly anti-feminist “climax” involving violins and fireworks at the mere touch of some dick’s hand... but, still. We need more Cusks and fewer peach-fuzzed, Brooklynite, second-generation Jonathans... so Cusk has my full support. I will keep buying her books (in hardcover!). I'm hoping she'll develop into a slightly cooler, slightly "meaner" Literary Terror. So done with the Huggers and Boosters and Wimps. Literature isn't (make that shouldn't be) summer camp...
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I'm interested in how the writing strated early on how do you start ?? The next level apart from just typing pages of paragraphs of thing on your computer . The structure , frame work etc any one ??????!!!!! ✨
Is the character of Louie Karl Ove Knausgaard, by any chance.
Judging from her reading and the nature and quality of the comments, I can thank You Tube for reducing my exposure to Ms. Cusk to less than 3 minutes. Any more and I would have been grumbling at my grave.
she looks well, reads poorly in her Canadian-Oxonion monotone. punt. but the recent books are FAB. Hi, Rach!
As a person with an accent in English my trained ear has picked up this odd accent and it sounds like a speech problem.i can only imagine the cultural clash canadian British that formed this accent this mind and this book