Culturebox: Gary Shteyngart Gets Serious

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books Gary Shteyngart Gets Serious His Super Sad True Love Story truly is sad. By Terrence Rafferty Posted Monday, Aug. 2, 2010, at 10:21 AM ET Gary Shteyngart might be too funny for his own good. His new novel, Super Sad True Love Story, is a spectacularly clever near-future dystopian satire, but it may actually disappoint admirers of his first two, more consistently hilarious, novels, The Russian Debutante's Handbook and Absurdistan. At first, the book seems like Shteyngart business-as-usual as we delve into the diary of one Lenny Abramov, a pure exemplar of this writer's favorite species of comic protagonist: a self-deprecating Russian-American Jewish male, self-conscious about his appearance, uselessly well-educated, wry, passionate, neither old nor young, and helplessly prone to error. The first, and biggest, of Lenny's mistakes is embodied in the diary's opening sentence: "Today I've made a major decision: I am never going to die." This decision, though obviously--in the great Russian literary tradition--insane, is not entirely implausible in Lenny's world. He is in fact the employee of a New York firm that promises to extend its clients' lives more or less indefinitely. To be precise, he is the "Life Lovers Outreach Coordinator (Grade G) of the Post-Human Services division of the Staatling-Wapachung Corporation," headed by a septuagenarian who, thanks to his own company's services, looks a good deal younger than 39-year-old Lenny. It's a nice setup for a science-fiction comedy, particularly since the hero, prior to his momentous bad decision, has been pretty determinedly a pre-post-human kind of guy. Unlike everyone else in this nightmarishly youth-obsessed America, he doesn't monitor his blood pressure and ACTH levels constantly, and (his crowning eccentricity) he likes to read books. He's practically the last man in New York who does. To continue reading, click here. Terrence Rafferty writes frequently about books and movies for the New York Times. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Why Doesn't True Blood Get as Much Critical Love as Mad Men? Has Ann Coulter Vanished off the Face of the Earth? It's Much Harder for Nerds To Pick Up Girls in the E-Book Era	Advertisement
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