Fashion Neurosis with Rachel Kushner

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1:10Hi, come in.

1:17Welcome to Fashion Neurosis, Rachel Kushner. Thank you, Bella. Can you tell me what you're wearing today and why you chose these particular clothes? Uh, yes. Well, um, I happen to be wearing a shirt, a denim shirt with a tie, although I didn't knot it in a traditional way, um, designed by you. I just really feel like myself in this shirt. I do often wear it with jeans, um, 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. And these very light, thin silk pants that I recently acquired on vacation in a small village in the Department L 'Ot in France.

2:20And there was a little store in the village called L 'Eure de 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 'Eure 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.

3:07The 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 going to 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, you know, one of the women of vacation.

3:57And he said, just like them, except with the classical goal of being just very marginally better than they are. And it was so great. Yeah. And then I said something like, Mais la différence est abstraite. 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 euros or something, not expensive pants. but what came with them was priceless which was this exchange about how people dress on vacation and then I'm wearing um heels made by um 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 um 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.

5:11But 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 they are exactly and um 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. 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.

6:07It'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 it's not, if I were wearing them that way, it would be a skirt and a kind of cupcake blouse or something. 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.

6:53And I wondered how you feel about being at the center of attention, being in the beam. that is extremely flattering to me in a way that um makes me feel um strange because like when you say that you were um how did you put it attracted to um friends with the prettiest girl in the class yeah and i and i i never um put myself in that position and and didn't um 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.

7:56And 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. um her name is emily goldman and um 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 it's like somebody is close to the source yeah and um i want to drink from that source so it's hard to answer because i don't put myself um i don't think of myself in that kind of position i i feel like um i mean the to the second part of your question of like to be how does it feel to to get attention.

9:12I 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, 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. Yeah.

10:18Is, 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. Yeah, I have the same kind of attitude. I fear that if I enjoy attention too much, 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.

11:22But that's very similar. I mean, yeah, 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, listening to other people. 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 so how do you avoid it when you say don't do that? No, no, I don't do that now because I feel a bit more mellow about everything in general.

12:16But 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 and you you seem have always seemed very organized and and I wondered what your uniform was as a child yeah I'm 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 and white white skin and shoot saunter around the house nude and we had this old yellow school bus that was painted all in hippie colors parked in our driveway in Eugene, Oregon.

13:33So 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 we're sort of believing, you know, 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,

14:18it's like a funny thing talking about the privations of childhood because 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. um and uh so they were living on such a shoestring budget and you know we had like government assistance like food stamps and government cheese and um everything was just there was not money for clothes um my mother sewed us some clothes so i had these little dresses when i was a toddler that she sewed.

15:14And I still remember the fabric. 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 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.

16:05This 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.

16:56Oh, yeah. It's hard 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 you know she's like some kind of like purebred stallion or something she just looks amazing and does she have the nipples in that it's 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?

17:39I 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. What are they? If I understand this right, it's like a leather lace-up shoe with a rubber sole that people would have worn with a uniform in the 1950s.

18:39And 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 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. Yes, I had earth-toned. I wanted them so badly. Okay. Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start? Thumbtack knows homes.

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21:07I came to your work. I was sitting next to someone at lunch and they 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 cover and thought, oh, wow. 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 until we finally met. and I wondered how you knew I'd be an okay friend.

22:01Yeah, that was just the luckiest thing. I remember that you reached out and it got forwarded to me by the publishers, my 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.

23:01And 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 at 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 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.

23:56Yeah. It's how you think, how you imagine, fantasize, dream that they're going to receive your words. And so it can shape and inform how I speak and how I experience myself to another. Yeah. Like I just had this sense that if I said something to you through email, the ball would be passed back in this really inspiring way. 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.

24:50and 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 um and then and then we started writing very slowly and um 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 cover 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 well it's funny the way you put that um 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?

26:42Yeah. Do you know what I mean? 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, there's a sort of war that goes on occasionally, which I'm giving up this idea that less is more, but actually more is more. In terms of that book and putting myself on the cover, 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?

27:33I 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 cover of your own book. It's good bold, though. It's exactly right. I think it's fantastic. Anyway, it spoke to me. But, you know, Dennis Johnson, Jimmy loves Dennis Johnson also. So something, now that I've gotten the, I've experienced the wonderful good luck of getting to know your son, Jimmy. Yeah, so mine. 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.

28:22You thought you'd get on so well. Delillo for me, it's funny because 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 um pretentious or something but um but it's odd for me now to call him delillo because you know at first he's just a writer that meant so much to me when i was younger um still means a lot to me now um but when you get to know a person some of that distance has to collapse because it it's it's a real person it's a man it's not um 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 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 um she sent him my first novel um Telex from Cuba way back when before it came out in 2007 and he wrote me a really nice letter and um yeah i'm certainly not the only person who's gotten a nice letter from don he's he's actually quite generous um with uh with other writers especially with younger writers and he takes his correspondence so seriously he writes people back that's incredible 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.

30:21I 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. Oh, God. I know. So he'd written me back, and then we became friends through Nan and started spending time together. Wow. And now I feel quite close to him and his wife also, Barbara. They're wonderful people. I feel like my role in Don's life is to make him laugh, and he makes me laugh. and um for a long time it was going to the movies together um and he doesn't go to the movies that much anymore he's a little more watches movies stays home he will go to a restaurant and i think it's just um i don't know it's funny that you said he makes you laugh because i 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.

31:40He 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. 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 yeah and at the same time he doesn't put himself above other people and he's very self-minimizing wow so i'm attracted to that combination i think there is something for me that um is a bit uh like there's of sort of father figure component to what he is to me.

33:15And 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 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 um and they liked each other a lot and um and it kind of was like very powerfully confirming for me of this myth that I've unconsciously confected into a place, which is that Don is a kind of father.

34:32And obviously my father is my father. God, 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. Well, you have 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.

35:20It was so, I believed in it. And I, you know and it what and it's so real and um and in your book creation lake um the character sadie smith she has this amazing boob job and um and 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 you have you're much more 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? Yeah, well. I know everyone noted the breasts because they were so good.

36:11Some 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, it 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.

36:56And 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 said, you know, 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.