Gary Shteyngart is starting to look like the Stephan Marbury of writing. He’s really good at it, all the necessary tools, but can’t focus for a whole 200 pages. There are moments of isolated brilliance, and sometimes events, or language, are connected. You can start to see the big web of narrative and fictive elements, and you start to think you might be reading the next Nabakov, but then….he trips over his ego, or gets distracted by religion, or otherwise shoots himself in the foot.
Which by the way, Stephan Marbury is bound to do any day now. Has he ever actually worn a Starbury 1? I’ve worn more comfortable buckets. Also, seeing how his foot is currently in his mouth following his “p.s. I had sex with an intern in my truck” footnote to Isaiah’s trial, the results of the foot-shooting should be quite spectacular.
See what I just did there? I was building a promising discussion of Gary Shteyngart, when I couldn’t help shovel a little extra completely unnecessary shit on Stephan Marbury. That’s what Shteyngart does, and the result is that the meaning of what he writes become diluted, or fails to emerge all together. Without that essential ingredient, I have to take him off the “canonical” shelf, where Nabakov and Dostoevsky live, and demote him to the “talented entertainers” shelf with Tim Robbins and Hunter Thompson.
(I feel like now, less Gary come after me with that bear, is a good time to point out that having two novels published is a rare accomplishment. Having them sit on a shelf with Robbins and Thompson is extraordinary, and fun company. Shit, I can’t focus for 10 minutes, never mind 200 pages. Also, I much prefer Shteyngart’s paragraph long brain farts to Thomas’s Pynchon’s multiple 100 page diversions from last year’s “Against the Day.”)
As a debut effort, “The Russian Debutante's Handbook” was stunning. You know what I love about writers for whom English was a second language? They don’t fall into the same patterns, the syntactical ruts that everyone else does. They don’t what words we really do, and do not, use. It’s fantastic. I found the mechanics of Shteyngart’s writing to be endlessly entertaining. He’s not quite speaking 21st century American English, and benefits from it. And rightly so, 21st century American English has become a stagnated, polluted bog of a language.
“Absurdistan” was following it up nicely. We had some easily identifiable symbols: the single minded goals of a father, or fatherland, white American consumerism, and black American soul. We had classic literary themes: exile, excess, obsession, and self-depreciation. It was building, building, building, and then “Gary Shteynfarb” slips into the plot to seduce Misha’s bootylicious girlfriend. Why do they all want to do this? Vonnegut: Guilty. Robbins: Guilty. It’s troped out at this point. I can’t take your book as a meaningful piece of literature if you give yourself a cameo. Sorry.
This particular offense is symptomatic of what I feel haunts these novels in general. At some point, Mr. Shteyngart decided to be entertaining instead of holding true to the purpose and the meaning of what he set out to do. He didn’t have the restraint to keep it lean the way that the true greats did in their primes. The John Steinbeck school of editing: edit out half of everything you wrote. It’s quite possible that here, in his second novel, Gary Shteyngart didn’t set out to write a “great” novel in the canonical sense. Dude has to eat.
The thing is: that’s what everybody is doing. No one is setting out to write “great” novels anymore. At least no one with the talent to actually do so. No one is brooding in dark rooms, eating ramen noodles, burning Atlantic Monthly rejection letters for warmth, and suffering through the greatness. I would like to formally beg Mr. Shteyngart to do it. Move away from the immigrant themes just a bit and get to something universal. Let the laughing happen naturally and stop forcing it out of us. Submit the greatness, whether it sells a hundred or a million copies. We’ll figure it out. Trust us to buy the greatness. You’re one of a handful that I think can do it.
I’m hearing rumors that your next book is about the death of meaning in language. I’m already pissed that you got to that one first, I’ve been trying to write it for years. Maybe this is it, huh? The first definitely Great Novel of the 21st century? I sincerely hope he pulled it off.
Which by the way, Stephan Marbury is bound to do any day now. Has he ever actually worn a Starbury 1? I’ve worn more comfortable buckets. Also, seeing how his foot is currently in his mouth following his “p.s. I had sex with an intern in my truck” footnote to Isaiah’s trial, the results of the foot-shooting should be quite spectacular.
See what I just did there? I was building a promising discussion of Gary Shteyngart, when I couldn’t help shovel a little extra completely unnecessary shit on Stephan Marbury. That’s what Shteyngart does, and the result is that the meaning of what he writes become diluted, or fails to emerge all together. Without that essential ingredient, I have to take him off the “canonical” shelf, where Nabakov and Dostoevsky live, and demote him to the “talented entertainers” shelf with Tim Robbins and Hunter Thompson.
(I feel like now, less Gary come after me with that bear, is a good time to point out that having two novels published is a rare accomplishment. Having them sit on a shelf with Robbins and Thompson is extraordinary, and fun company. Shit, I can’t focus for 10 minutes, never mind 200 pages. Also, I much prefer Shteyngart’s paragraph long brain farts to Thomas’s Pynchon’s multiple 100 page diversions from last year’s “Against the Day.”)
As a debut effort, “The Russian Debutante's Handbook” was stunning. You know what I love about writers for whom English was a second language? They don’t fall into the same patterns, the syntactical ruts that everyone else does. They don’t what words we really do, and do not, use. It’s fantastic. I found the mechanics of Shteyngart’s writing to be endlessly entertaining. He’s not quite speaking 21st century American English, and benefits from it. And rightly so, 21st century American English has become a stagnated, polluted bog of a language.
“Absurdistan” was following it up nicely. We had some easily identifiable symbols: the single minded goals of a father, or fatherland, white American consumerism, and black American soul. We had classic literary themes: exile, excess, obsession, and self-depreciation. It was building, building, building, and then “Gary Shteynfarb” slips into the plot to seduce Misha’s bootylicious girlfriend. Why do they all want to do this? Vonnegut: Guilty. Robbins: Guilty. It’s troped out at this point. I can’t take your book as a meaningful piece of literature if you give yourself a cameo. Sorry.
This particular offense is symptomatic of what I feel haunts these novels in general. At some point, Mr. Shteyngart decided to be entertaining instead of holding true to the purpose and the meaning of what he set out to do. He didn’t have the restraint to keep it lean the way that the true greats did in their primes. The John Steinbeck school of editing: edit out half of everything you wrote. It’s quite possible that here, in his second novel, Gary Shteyngart didn’t set out to write a “great” novel in the canonical sense. Dude has to eat.
The thing is: that’s what everybody is doing. No one is setting out to write “great” novels anymore. At least no one with the talent to actually do so. No one is brooding in dark rooms, eating ramen noodles, burning Atlantic Monthly rejection letters for warmth, and suffering through the greatness. I would like to formally beg Mr. Shteyngart to do it. Move away from the immigrant themes just a bit and get to something universal. Let the laughing happen naturally and stop forcing it out of us. Submit the greatness, whether it sells a hundred or a million copies. We’ll figure it out. Trust us to buy the greatness. You’re one of a handful that I think can do it.
I’m hearing rumors that your next book is about the death of meaning in language. I’m already pissed that you got to that one first, I’ve been trying to write it for years. Maybe this is it, huh? The first definitely Great Novel of the 21st century? I sincerely hope he pulled it off.
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