Gary Shteyngart: Want to understand Russia? Then read this novel
Other books by Shteyngart include the novels Absurdistan, Super Sad True Love Story, Lake Success and Our Country Friends as well as the memoir Little Failure. He has also worked on television shows including HBO's Succession and The Regime. His latest book is Vera, or Faith, about a dysfunctional family in America told from the perspective of Vera, a ten-year-old girl who is half-Korean, half-Jewish.
Barney's Version by Mordecai Richler. I read the book when I was deep in my fully satirical mode as a twentysomething man. You couldn't stop me from satirising everything in sight. Now I'm middle-aged and full of love. Dogs, children, baristas — I love everyone I encounter. But when my spleen was much more active I craved satire and Barney's Version fit the bill perfectly. It's the story of an old man losing his marbles in Montreal and it is, in some ways, a kind of loud Canadian lament. (Who knew that was possible?) It's also the story of an old man scrutinising his life and trying to figure out where it all went wrong, which, as a 52-year-old I can now begin to understand on a different level.
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I really love Bombay, so I love Maximum City by my old friend Suketu Mehta. It's an over-the-top take on an over-the-top city. No person I know so embodies a place as does Suketu. When I went on a tour of Bombay with him a decade or so ago we were hanging out with Bollywood stars, drinking sodas designed to elicit a belch and being chased out of housing estates by gangsters. In other words the reality is every bit as nuts as the book makes it out to be. Oh, and it's very, very funny, which is important for me.
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Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov, published in 1859. With the genocide being perpetrated by Russia against Ukraine I became more than weary of my Russian-born cultural self. I felt some Pushkin and Dostoevsky represented the worst of Russian experience, while Chekhov remained a sweetheart. Oblomov, the story of a Russian man who never really gets off his couch, is something else. It's what being a Russian is actually like. The instinct to let the world slide off your back (even as you lie on it) explains so much of why Russia is, was and always will be a nightmare.
Vera, or Faith by Gary Shteyngart (Atlantic £16.99 ) is out now. To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk. Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
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The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Vera, or Faith by Gary Shteyngart review – is this the future for America?
Gary Shteyngart is the observational standup of American letters, a puckish, playful Russian-born author who views the US through the eyes of an inquisitive tourist. The immigrant melting pot of New York is his stage; the intricate English language his prop. Shteyngart's characters, typically lightly veiled alter egos, are always getting lost, tripping up and mangling basic social interactions. It's the missed connections and short circuits that give his fictions their spark. Shteyngart's sixth novel is a lively, skittish Bildungsroman, shading towards darkness as it tracks the journey – literal, educational, emotional – of 10-year-old Vera Bradford-Shmulkin, an overanxious, over-watchful academic high achiever whose run of straight As has just been blighted by a B. 'Being smart is one of the few things I have to be proud of,' laments Vera, who diligently maintains a 'Things I Still Need to Know Diary' in which she makes note of difficult words and intriguing figures of speech. The girl is articulate and precocious, bent on self-improvement, and never mind the fact that she confuses 'facile' with 'futile' and 'hollowed' with 'hallowed' and is wont to wax lyrical about the 'she-she' districts of Manhattan. Her vocabulary is almost – but crucially not quite – sufficient to give us the whole story and explain what it means. Always happy to show his workings, Shteyngart cites Henry James's 1897 novel What Maisie Knew as the prompt for Vera, or Faith's child's-eye account of complicated adult affairs, although his gauche heroine bears a passing resemblance to the author himself as portrayed in his 2014 memoir, Little Failure. Friendless Vera lives with her rackety Russian-Jewish father, Igor (Shteyngart's name at birth), who edits a floundering liberal arts magazine, her harried Wasp stepmother, Anne (who added the 'e' in tribute to Anne Frank), and a boisterous younger half-brother, Dylan, who likes exposing himself to houseguests. But she also has (or possibly had) a Korean-born mother, long since vanished from the scene. Invisible Iris Choi plays the tale's white whale or MacGuffin; the elusive hidden figure that Vera is determined to locate. The eccentric Bradford-Shmulkins are lurching towards crisis, but they seem a model of stability when compared with the rest of the country, which reveals itself in unflattering flashes in the corners of the narrative. Shteyngart's novel, we come to realise, plays out a decade from now, in a 'post-democracy' USA where red state officials monitor menstrual cycles, self-driving cars shop their owners to the feds and the news platforms are abuzz with Russian disinformation. Desperate to redeem herself at school, Vera prepares to debate in support of the proposed 'Five-Three Amendment', a piece of racist legislation that would grant added voting weight to those 'exceptional Americans' whose ancestors arrived before the revolutionary war, 'but were exceptional enough not to arrive in chains'. In so doing, of course, she's arguing against her own interests. Blond, blue-eyed Dylan would count as an 'exceptional American'. Dark‑haired, brown-eyed Vera would not. Henry James provides the prompt but his involvement begins and ends there, because Vera, or Faith isn't Jamesian at all. The prose is simple, breezy and conversational, even when it's stumbling artfully over its words. If Shteyngart's novel possesses anything so fixed as a north star or a patron saint, it's surely not James but Vladimir Nabokov. The title references Ada, or Ardor, while its protagonist comes styled in the manner of a pint-sized Timofey Pnin: a dogged innocent caught between cultures and half-lost in translation. In the course of her adventures, Vera learns that she was named after Nabokov's wife, 'a woman who was a genius herself but in the olden days she had to serve her husband'. Vera Nabokov's 21st-century namesake – driven and decent and at the top of her class – similarly risks being dismissed as a second-class citizen. The novel is busy and ingratiating, almost to a fault, which is to say that it feels distracted, unsettled; a cultural code-switcher itself. Vera, or Faith was reputedly drafted at speed in a little under two months, incorporating elements from a spy novel that the author had recently abandoned. That accounts for its messy vitality and its frequent, perturbing shifts of gear. Shteyngart's ode to a good American in a bad America conspires to be, by turns, a rueful human comedy and a coming-of-age caper, a dystopian chiller and an espionage yarn. The colourful tale never satisfyingly hangs together; its component pieces tend to jar more than gel. But Shteyngart sets about his material with abundant energy and charm. He sketches a convincing caricature of a near-future USA and provides a stoical heroine that we can uncomplicatedly root for. Even in a degraded, compromised, up-is-down social climate, that has to be deserving of a solid B grade at least. Vera, or Faith by Gary Shteyngart is published by Atlantic (£16.99). To support the Guardian order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
The Sun
an hour ago
- The Sun
I have 5 kids at 27 – trolls say there's ‘no excuse' for my ‘disgrace' of a home, yes it's muddy but I don't care
A MOTHER-OF-FIVE has shown off her 'muddy' laundry room and clapped back at haters who criticised her 'disgrace' of a home. Despite not caring what trolls think, Gwenn, a 27-year-old stay-at-home mum from the United States, has found herself at the centre of a barrage of abuse from mean keyboard warriors. 2 2 Not only did haters slam the 'ridiculous' mess, but others claimed there was 'no excuse' for Gwenn to let her property get in such a state. It all comes after Gwenn shared a short clip inside her pad on social media, which left users totally divided. As she attempted to clean up the room, which was overflowing with dirty clothes and mess on the floor, the brunette said: 'I know you're gonna be angry at me with this laundry room, but this was two weeks ago, possibly last week, honestly, I don't know what day it is.' She then continued: 'Unless you have a laundry room that is also a mud room and you have five kids changing three times a day because they want to keep going outside, getting in the mud, getting the water, I really don't want to hear it, I just don't.' 'I literally do not care, because at the end of the day, this is a mud room, so it's gonna get muddy,' she added. On a mission to get the space tidied up, Gwenn continued: 'A lot of this was winter stuff that has just kept getting thrown around - I finally have three bags of winter clothes bagged up, but we got hats and gloves put away and then our big winter clothes.' After cleaning up the space, Gwenn was able to fill up three bags with stuff to give away, as well as one bag full of rubbish. She also got rid of a shoe rack and began doing some of the laundry, but confessed that the room was still not in 'super great shape.' Following this, she justified: 'I feel like I can't clean like a normal person - I can't just tidy up an area, whenever I want to clean it, I have to take it all apart and deep clean everything, which makes it very difficult because this is a big old house to clean.' And it appears it's not only Gwenn's laundry room that has left people stunned, as she then gave viewers a close-up look at her living room, which was also in desperate need of a tidy up. I scrub my council house walls but they're COVERED in mould & crumbling away - I have two disabled kids, it's disgusting Not only did hangers and rubbish take over the floor, but endless piles of clothes covered the couch too. Big divide The TikTok clip, which was posted under the username @ gwennewg, has clearly left many open-mouthed, as it has quickly gone viral and racked up 2.1million views, 68,000 likes and 917 comments. But social media users were left totally divided by Gwenn's video - whilst some thought the mess was "ridiculous," others could sympathise with having 'never ending' amounts of washing. One person said: 'Disgrace, no excuse.' children how to pick up after themselves and take responsibility for their own things. That's your job as a parent.' Meanwhile, someone else gasped: 'Why are you letting it get to this?' Not only this, but another user asked: 'Why does the husband not help out? My husband would never watch me drown like this.' However, at the same time, one mother wrote: 'I hate laundry. It's never ending!' A second penned: 'Five you deserve a medal! I hate housework so no judgments from me!' And another admitted: 'As a 26 year old mum of five, I felt this video in my soul.'
The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
Tom Lehrer, acclaimed musical satirist of cold war era, dies aged 97
Tom Lehrer, the acclaimed humorist and pianist whose satirical songs made him one of America's favorite prophets of doom before he retreated to academia, has died, US media reported on Sunday. He was 97. The singer-songwriter died on Saturday at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, his friend David Herder said, according to the New York Times. Lehrer's sardonic numbers, backed up by a dazzling prowess at the piano that reflected his love for up-tempo Broadway show tunes, enchanted audiences in the 1950s and 60s. But Lehrer was always much more than the sum of his parts. A child prodigy, he graduated from Harvard at 19 and later taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Well ahead of his time on issues including pollution and nuclear proliferation, Lehrer made his mark with biting humor and zany rhymes. He was also wickedly funny on random subjects including murder, conjugal discord, chemistry and his distaste for pigeons. Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, one of his signature tunes, conjures up a couple enjoying a spring pastime of slaughtering pigeons with strychnine – 'It just takes a smidgen!' Another song, Folksong Army, mocked 1960s protesters. But his activism was persistent, with songs including Who's Next about nuclear weapons, and Pollution warning that: 'You can use the latest toothpaste, then rinse your mouth with industrial waste.' The seemingly bottomless well of sly, even cynical creativity captured audiences from 1953 until it appeared to go dry in 1965, although Lehrer briefly returned to performing in 1972 for a children's public television show, The Electric Company. Rumor had it that Lehrer stopped composing when his prophecies began coming true, or that he quit in protest over Henry Kissinger being awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1973. But Lehrer, in an interview with the satirical news website the Onion in 2000, dispensed with the second rumor, saying he had 'quit long before that happened'. There was nothing abrupt about it, he said. 'I figure I wrote 37 songs in 20 years, and that's not exactly a full-time job. Every now and then I wrote something, and every now and then I didn't. The second just outnumbered the first.' He claimed to have gone 'from adolescence to senility, trying to bypass maturity'. While most of Lehrer's compositions were original, one adaptation stood out for its genius: his dizzying recitation of all 118 chemical elements to the tune of A Modern Major General from the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Pirates of Penzance. The piece earned adoration from none other than the Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe. 'Tom Lehrer in my opinion is the cleverest and funniest man of the 20th century, and he's kind of my hero,' Radcliffe said, before singing a rendition of The Elements on a British comedy show in 2010. That performance was partly responsible for the music comedian Weird Al Yankovic awarding Radcliffe the role of Weird Al in Yankovic's satirical biopic. 'Singing that song is an extremely nerdy thing to do,' Yankovic said of Radcliffe's rendition. 'It's off-the-charts nerdy. And I thought, 'OK, this guy gets it. This guy's a kindred spirit. He can embody me onscreen.'' Posting to Instagram on Sunday, Yankovic wrote: 'My last living musical hero is still my hero but unfortunately no longer living. RIP to the great, great Mr. Tom Lehrer.' Born on 9 April 1928 to a secular Jewish family, Lehrer grew up in Manhattan's Upper East Side. He attended the prestigious Horace Mann and Loomis Chaffee preparatory schools before entering Harvard at 15, graduating magna cum laude with a degree in mathematics three years later. He went on to teach mathematics at MIT as well as Harvard, Wellesley College and the University of California, Santa Cruz.
