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Novelist Gary Shteyngart Brings His Antic Style to a Heartfelt Memoir

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Novelist Gary Shteyngart Brings His Antic Style to a Heartfelt Memoir TALKING WITH C19 WALLYLAMB ON FLOODSAND SECRETS C21 Fanfare books newsday.com/books From Russia, Novelist Gary Shteyngart with love brings his antic style to aheartfelt memoir one writes more, smokes more, LITTLE FAILURE, by Gary drinks more, talks more, wants Shteyngart. Random House, more wantonly. His parents 349 pp., $27. begin to wring their hands over his prospects. Fortunately BY MARION WINIK there’s aliberal arts academy Special to Newsday in Ohio whose Lowest Average Accepted is 5points below the sense of the virtues author’s 88.69 —and that’s not of “Little Failure,” a its only selling point. memoir by novelist “Oberlin College was estab- Gary Shteyngart, is lished in 1833 so that people Aoffered by the who couldn’t otherwise find captions beneath the endearing love, the emotional invalids black-and-white snapshots that and the Elephant Men of the open each chapter. To wit: world, could do so.” In college, Chapter 4, “Moscow Shteyngart gets afew real Square”: “To become a friends, some sympathetic cosmonaut, the author must teachers, a3-foot-high, sky- first conquer his fear of blue bong, yet another nick- heights on aladder his father name —Scary Gary —and the has built for that purpose. He first real love of his life. must also stop wearing asailor The story continues through COMBE outfit and tights.” LA Manhattan in the late ’90s to the Chapter 22, “The Benefactor”: publication of Shteyngart’s first “The author is tripping out of IGITTE novel in 2002; the final chapter his mind on psychedelic BR chronicles apoignant return to mushrooms while being Russia with his parents as part videotaped for adocumentary PHOTO BY of the research for “Little Fail- called ‘Only Children’ by his Novelist and memoirist Gary Shteyngart was nicknamed Failuruchka as akid. ure.” Shteyngart himself sets the new friend John.” bar for its success: “On so many Shteyngart’s novels —“The early nickname for him was The grain harvests have been His experiences to that point occasions in my novels Ihave Russian Debutante’s Soplyak —Snotty. Scenes terrible; there is hardly enough produce a10-year-old approached acertain truth only Handbook,” “Absurdistan” and from this period are grain to feed the masses or Republican who throws to turn away from it, only to newsday.com “Super Sad True Love Story” — interleaved with episodes from keep them fully drunk. Mean- himself into the writing of point my finger and laugh at it are postmodern satires with the present and from the while, in the United States a space fantasy novels and a and then scurry back to safety. imaginative intensity verging on family’s history, both laced grassroots movement to free satire of the Torah. “And G-d In this book, Ipromised myself i the vertiginous. They have with savage wit. His Soviet Jews from their spoke: Don’t worry about would not point the finger. My made him adarling of critics and great-grandfather is “probably polyester captivity has ethics, this does not however laughter would be intermittent. won readers with ataste for his as rich as anyone on that side gained momentum.” Carter mean you can like John There would be no safety.” NEWSDAY, SUNDAY, JANUARY 5, 2014 flavor —smoked Chekhov on of my family has ever been, and Brezhnev work out a Macaenroe. Do not pray to Instead, there are feelings, pumpernickel with aschmear of until nearly ahundred years trade: grain for Jews. The statues of Michael Jackson or complicated and sometimes Philip Roth and David Foster later, in 2013, Ilease myself a Shteyngarts will be among Tom Selleck: Iamyour G-d. If difficult —anger, pride, shame, Wallace. This memoir could Volvo.” In the next sentence, those bartered. you see ablind man do not love. expand his audience, grounding however, fortune deserts this After an interlude in Rome, cheat him: for example do not “Little Failure” succeeds. his methamphetamine style in ancestor, murdered by a the family lands in Queens, sell him cocaine when it is real life and sincere emotion. criminal band for his “Jewish where Igor’s first name is really angel dust.” Born Igor Shteyngart in money.” changed to Gary and his nick- Over time, Shteyngart be- Leningrad in 1972, the author Raised on the proud legacy name to Failuruchka. He comes an American. He eats VIDEO has vivid memories of his of Lenin and the evil across embarks on an unhappy McDonald’s, watches TV, loses Watch the ‘Little Soviet childhood, marked by the Atlantic, little Igor will get elementary education at aHe- his accent. At Stuyvesant High Failure’ book trailer verbal precocity, severe some big surprises in 1977. brew parochial school where he School, he begins to forge an asthma, “pathological” reading, “Unbeknownst to me, the resides just one rung up from identity based not on foreign- newsday.com/books hunger and worry. His father’s Soviet Union is falling apart. the bottom of the pecking order. ness but on prodigiousness. No.
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