Chris Rush is an award-winning artist and designer whose work is held in various museum collections. The Light Years is his first book.
"This memoir has been described as 'a queering of the wild, ' which
is an expression I could never forget. A gay child in a prosperous,
Roman Catholic family in New Jersey during the '60s is violently
abused by his father, finds respite in a community of spiritual
seekers, and embarks on an enlightenment journey that few humans
could survive. This memoir will transport you all over the place
while you shelter at home."
--Ottessa Moshfegh, Buzzfeed "This stunningly beautiful, original
memoir is driven by a search for the divine, a quest that leads
Rush into some dangerous places . . . The Light Years is funny,
harrowing, and deeply tender." --Kate Tuttle, The L.A. Times "Rush
is a fantastically vivid writer, whether he's remembering a New
Jersey of 'meatballs and Windex and hairspray' or the dappled,
dangerous beauty of Northern California, where 'rock stars lurked
like lemurs in the trees.' Read if you loved... Just Kids by Patti
Smith." --Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly "As mythic and wild
with love, possibility, and danger as the decades it spans, you'll
read The Light Years with your breath held. Brutal, buoyant and
wise to the tender terror of growing up, Chris Rush has written a
timeless memoir of boyhood in the American wilderness." --Emma
Cline, author of The Girls "In this vibrant memoir, artist Rush
recounts his strange and colorful childhood and adolescence . . .
Rush's storytelling shines as he travels across the country and
back again, searching for truth, love, UFOs in New Mexico, peace,
something that feels like God, and a place to call home. This is a
mesmerizing record of his journey through adolescence."
--Publisher's Weekly (starred) "In sparkling, lucid prose that
perfectly captures the joy, depression, anger, and wonder that
characterized his adventures, the author recounts the seemingly
endless hills and valleys of his unique tale . . . readers will
wish for more from this talented writer." --Kirkus Reviews
(starred) "What's fresh and interesting about The Light Years is
its account of gay survivalism--what it's like to be rejected or
adrift from others' custody; coupling occasionally; at least once
in love; and often in profound solitude in the natural world . . .
The Light Years is less a queering of the wilderness than a wilding
of queerness . . . In the tradition of Henry Adams, Richard
Rodriguez, Michelle Tea, the book arrives at its genre: an
education." --Brian Blanchfield, The New York Times Book Review
"[A] lucid miracle of [a] literary masterpiece . . . I wanted to
talk to him about how he managed to come through the tsunami of the
wildest memoir I've read, not only alive, but seemingly improved.
How did he write a first book in such dazzling, sparkling prose--so
incredibly deft in execution, so precise and artistic in
naturalistic descriptions--and so loving in human portraiture? How
did he get brought from the desert, to share with us this
light?"--Luke Goebel, Vice "The Light Years Is More Than a Queer
Coming-of-Age Story. It's a Quest for the Divine . . . filled with
sentences lit from the inside like [Rush's] paintings" --Alexander
Chee, Time "Chris Rush . . . not only has one hell of a story, he
also has the talent to bring it to life. You can open his gorgeous
new memoir, The Light Years, to any page and the prose will leap
out. It's funny, charming and effortlessly descriptive." --Aaron
Hicklin, Observer "What's most surprising, though, is the grace
that can emerge from brutality. It's a relief to read someone who's
waited long enough to not only document his rather extraordinary
experience, but most importantly to have the wisdom to understand
it . . . It's hard to fathom how he got out alive. But thank
goodness he did." --Minju Pak, T Magazine "Brace yourself: To enter
The Light Years you must be willing to be changed. It is, in the
end, about the one question we all must ask ourselves--How does one
live? In the end the answer is, always, love. You could wait until
you are ready to read this radiant book, though how will you know
when that moment arrives?" --Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit
Night in Suck City "Darkly comic and told with fire and wisdom, The
Light Years is an iconic American story, the mad love child of Jack
Kerouac, Timothy Leary, and Augustin Burroughs." --Alexandria
Marzano-Lesnevich, author of The Fact of a Body "Chris Rush is a
gorgeous, evocative writer--able to capture the stifling
conventionality of suburbia but also the world of flower children
drawn together by spiritual experimentation that all too easily
gives way to heartbreak and violence. This moving book becomes a
gripping story of resilience and, yes, hope." --George Hodgman,
author of Bettyville
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