Rachel Kushner's "Telex From Cuba"

The cover of Kushner's bookFor my second book, I read "Telex From Cuba" by Rachel Kusher. "Telex From Cuba" is a novel, and an employee at Idlewild suggested it to me when I bought "Havana: an Autobiography." I didn't buy the book (since hardcovers are so expensive) but I did find it at Bobst Library.
In "Telex From Cuba" Kushner wrote beautiful fiction about the buildup of tension in Havana and the Oriente Province until the explosion of the Cuban Revolution. In the pursuit of showing this, Kushner makes clear the hierarchy of 1950s Cuban society, in which most Cubans were near the bottom. The book is written more heavily from characters who are Americans living in Cuba in the ten or so years before the Revolution.
Kushner’s descriptions of Cuba are my favorite parts of “Telex.” One character, La Maziere, inhibits a red-light district of Havana and sees the city as a sticky, off-color version of Paris. Most of all I love Cuba through the eyes of K.C. Stites. On page 83 he describes a beach called Saetia as a “perfectly protected cove, with pink sand that sparkled like it had grown up diamonds in it, and reefs that were teeming with sea life.” K.C.’s experience in Cuba is driven by his childlike, physical relationship to his environment. He lives like a prince among beggars; with a paradise for his playground. While K.C.’s position seems morally repugnant in terms of Cuban political values, K.C.’s Cuba is beautiful in its simplicity. K.C. saw the harsh treatment of poor Cubans, but his narrow scope left no room for questioning. His ignorance of inequality is easily justified: "it wasn't right, but that's just the way it was."
When K.C.’s older brother, Del, joins forces with Castro’s rebels in the mountains, everything changes. As the younger generation becomes aware of the socio-political tension in Cuba, La Maziere and Rachel K. help firsthand in the underground cause. In Havana, the story revolves around a nightclub dancer, Rachel K, and a mysterious French arms supplier named La Maziere. Rachel K. is jaded and just living to get by; as the prettiest girl at the club she cavorts around with Presidente Prio, Batista and the Castro brothers, and through her companionship with each she has insides into both the government and the rebels. La Maziere is an agitator that travels in and out of Cuba: he is a bored sensation seeker who is fascinated by the indifferent Rachel K. As they play games with each other, they both become involved in the underground movement for Cuba's independence.
It's interesting to read Kushner’s fictional personalities of people like the Castros and Hemingway, but I wonder how factual Kushner's portraitures are. Throughout the book people gossip about Raul Castro being a homosexual, a rumor I hadn't heard before. In one chapter Hemingway drunkenly strikes up a conversation with La Maziere. Their drunken subjects range from humping to the distaste of the word and concept of "I." Instead of "I," Hemingway proposes using a more humble descriptor, such as "Your Operative." I like that while Kushner's book shows the variety of lifestyles in Cuba, her writing also weaves her disparate characters together--for example K.C. overhears La Maziere and Hemingway's conversation while in The Floridita with his parents, and although K.C. lives a sheltered life he inevitably comes into contact with the violence and prejudice experienced by those living outside his American community in Oriente Province. K.C.'s older brother Del ran away to join the rebel forces, and Del's renunciation of his privileged American status illustrates the force of the tension between Cubans and Americans in the 1950s. I've read three of the four parts of the book, which have mainly been the buildup to the Revolution. I'm eager to see how Kushner will describe the Rachel K. and La Maziere’s roles in the Revolution, and also the deportation of the ruling class.