{"id":2339,"date":"2024-11-24T12:27:10","date_gmt":"2024-11-24T19:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/seconddraft\/?p=2339"},"modified":"2024-11-24T12:27:13","modified_gmt":"2024-11-24T19:27:13","slug":"a-review-by-tim-porter-of-creation-lake-by-rachel-kushner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/seconddraft\/?p=2339","title":{"rendered":"Creation Lake, Rachel Kushner (2024)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap wp-block-paragraph\">I doubt there are many readers of \u201cCreation Lake\u201d who don\u2019t pause in more than one section \u2013 perhaps in a passage about the values or Neanderthals vis a vis those of Homo sapiens \u2013 and wonder: What is going on here?\u201d Or, \u201cWhy am I still reading this?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignleft size-medium\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\" src=\"http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/seconddraft\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/CreationLake-199x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2340\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/seconddraft\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/CreationLake-199x300.jpg 199w, http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/seconddraft\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/CreationLake-679x1024.jpg 679w, http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/seconddraft\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/CreationLake-768x1159.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/seconddraft\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/CreationLake.jpg 994w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 199px) 100vw, 199px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Just such questions caused me to abandon \u201cCreation Lake\u201d at page 175, but the next morning, I read ahead a couple of more pages and became entranced by a lengthy antidote about a French boy named Bruno who, during World War II, finds a dead German soldier. Bruno grabs the soldier\u2019s helmet, puts it on his head, and unwittingly infects himself with the dead man\u2019s lice. His grandmother tries to kill the lice with kerosene, which damages his vision. The boy matures to be one France\u2019s leading radical activists, and now, as an old man, he is the visionary for a nascent group of eco-terrorists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is this communal band, Le Moulin, and the freelance American spy, former FBI agent Sadie Smith, hired to disrupt them, around which \u201cCreation Lake\u201d revolves (and sometimes wobbles). There are several interwoven plots \u2013 the spy game, Sadie\u2019s search for self-identity (which has gone missing after years of working undercover), and Bruno\u2019s Aristotelian musings on love, war, politics, the purpose of life itself, and the aforementioned stages of hominin development, all fo which emerge from the cave where his retreat from late capitalism has taken him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sounds heavy, right? But it\u2019s not if you approach \u201cCreation Lake\u201d as I did after my brief departure on page 175 \u2013 not as a novel, but as a journal in which entry, while mutually connected by strands either obvious or diaphanous, is complete unto itself. That perspective enables you to pass through the more maddening moments unperturbed and enjoy what the New York Times, in its gushing review, calls Kushner\u2019s \u201cfloor-level interest in humanity,\u201d meaning she doesn\u2019t miss a tic or a trick of our post-evolutionary habits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, yes, amid Bruno\u2019s philosophizing, Sadie\u2019s searching, and the I-spying, there is fun amid the complexity. For the most part, I found \u201cCreation Lake\u201d engaging, entertaining and, even, thought-provoking. Yes, it is uneven, but all journals are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I doubt there are many readers of \u201cCreation Lake\u201d who don\u2019t pause in more than one section \u2013 perhaps in a passage about the values or Neanderthals vis a vis those of Homo sapiens \u2013 and wonder: What is going &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/seconddraft\/?p=2339\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[784],"tags":[770,917,920,919,837,918],"class_list":["post-2339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-book-review","tag-creation-lake","tag-home-sapiens","tag-neandertha","tag-novel","tag-rachel-kushner"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.1 - 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