The New York Times Book Review - Brian Blanchfield
Remarkably, [Rush's] beatific innocence remains intact, as does the lightheartedness of the narration. If The Light Years can seem haphazard or uncurated, scribbling hitchhiking routes back and forth across the map, what it sacrifices in reflection on Chris's experience it makes up for in reflection of the culture…What's fresh and interesting about The Light Years is its account of gay survivalism…The rare thing the book offers is a nearly documentary collection of gay and genderqueer kids, and their situations, in the early 1970s…In the tradition of Henry Adams, Richard Rodriguez, Michelle Tea, the book arrives at its genre: an education.
Publishers Weekly
★ 11/26/2018
In this vibrant memoir, artist Rush recounts his strange and colorful childhood and adolescence, from his upbringing in an affluent but turbulent New Jersey home to trying to find his place in the 1970s drug and art scene. Eccentric and with an extremely high IQ, Rush was often seen as a problem child, embarrassing his father by making paper flowers or wandering the neighborhood in a pink silk cape. Later, he overheard his father telling his mother, “The boy is a goddamn queer,” and his parents sent him to Catholic boarding school, where he was bullied and expelled a year later for kissing another boy. At home, his favorite sister, Donna, had become involved with a group of hippies who smoked pot, which she introduced to the 11-year-old Rush as a “sacrament.” It was the first time he’d found people who accepted him (“You’re one of us now,” Valentine, a dealer, told him). Thus began Chris’s journey into drug use and the blossoming American counterculture. 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. (Apr.)
From the Publisher
"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
Library Journal
11/15/2018
Award-winning artist Rush may have been raised in a strict Catholic family in New Jersey, but by age 12 he had been introduced to LSD by a friend of his older sister, and he rounded out his teenage years by being tossed from art school and heading to Tucson to buy drugs and enter America's flourishing counterculture. A personal story of his search for belonging that also sums up America's transition from sparkly Sixties to darkening Seventies; an FSG reading group selection attracting interest.
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2019-02-04
A dazzling debut memoir from artist and designer Rush.
Growing up in a strict Roman Catholic family in New Jersey, the author felt both trapped and adrift as a child, a feeling exacerbated by his neglectful mother and alcoholic father, who was "a dark planet, exerting only vague astrological influence on his offspring." Introduced to drugs, especially LSD, early on by his loving hippie sister, Donna, Rush continued to chafe under his suburban adolescence before finally setting out on a remarkable journey into the counterculture and across America, from his hometown to the wilderness of the Southwest. By the age of 13, he writes, "I took LSD as often as possible. Taking acid was like entering a painting of a storybook—a glowing dream world, lush and lovely. I felt no conflict between the real and the unreal. It was so easy to slip in between." 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. Among others, these experiences included countless days getting stoned in his parents' basement, avoiding his dysfunctional parents; a stint in boarding school, where he became the primary drug dealer on campus; time living with Donna and a group of her friends on a drug compound in rural Arizona; enduring a shocking act of violence; and some weeks living a feral life in caves scattered around the deserts of the West. Along the way, while struggling with significant substance abuse ("sometimes I'd shoot up with…customers who craved a speechless high, who wanted to grow dim with me, become sputtering candles in the dark") and grappling with his sexuality, Rush continued to draw, an artistic spark that took years to ignite into a career. He also suffered a near overdose. Though the narrative ends on a slight uptick, the author refreshingly avoids tying his story up with a pretty bow, and readers will wish for more from this talented writer.
A captivating, psychedelically charged coming-of-age memoir.
