The thematic and historical reach of Rachel Kushner’s fourth novel is ambitiously broad, taking in the lives and art of Neanderthals, the mysterious medieval culture of the persecuted Cagot minority in France, and the political sundering of that country during the Vichy years. But the chief intellectual thread of Creation Lake is a postwar lineage of diminishing interest: from the Lettrist and Situationist milieu around Guy Debord, through his fictional associate Bruno Lacombe—Neanderthal fan, cave dweller, post-Marxist guru—to a group of would-be primitives living in a southwestern commune called Le Moulin and plotting to sabotage local agribusiness infrastructure. These pastoral militants like to repeat a line from Fredric Jameson that was later recast by Mark Fisher: “easier to imagine the end of the world than . . . to imagine the end of capitalism.” At its best, Creation Lake essays an absurd but subtle analysis of antinomies arising between anti-capitalist and environmental politics. At its weakest, it feels like a bet-hedging period study of same.
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