Gary Shteyngart, whom Program for Jewish Civilization Director Jacques Berlinerblau described as a “preternaturally gifted young novelist” in his introduction, spoke to a full house in Riggs Library last night. Shteyngart’s first novel The Russian Debutante’s Handbook was received with great critical acclaim when it was released in 2003 and the New York Times recently called his most recent novel, Absurdistan, which he was signing after the event, one of the top 10 books of 2007.

Although many of Shteyngart’s quips last night resonated particularly strongly with the largely Jewish audience (he said that he wrote satire while working at the United Jewish Appeal fundraising agency because he “couldn’t help it”), his answers to Berlinerblau’s questions were funny enough to appeal to everyone. Speaking about his college years, Shteyngart said, “At Oberlin being an immigrant was the best thing you could be, aside from being a person of color or of a different sexual orientation.”

Shteyngart’s humor is all the more compelling because of his thoughtfulness, which was revealed during the talk’s more sobering moments. He discussed his feelings about Russia and the Russian language (”When money comes out of the ATM, I’m always counting it in Russian”), Putin’s government (”I’m such an oaf, such a sap for believing that things would change”) and the future of Zionism (”One hopes Israel will survive, but…the ends will not justify the means in any nationalistic enterprise”).

Shout-outs to fellow “immigrant lit” writers were plentiful, including Junot Diaz, Chang-rae Lee, and Sigrid Nunez (side note: if you’re looking for a quick but brilliant read, Nunez’s A Feather on the Breath of God is where it’s at). Shteyngart also had praise for the Russian novelist Vladimir Sorokin and for Russia’s response to Sorokin’s controversial work, saying, “I like a country where people care enough about their literature to make giant wooden toilet bowls [to throw the books into]. That means it matters.”

In the end, though, Shteyngart was at his best when speaking about himself and his own writing. When Berlinerblau asked why he consistently returns to the Russian experience in his novels, Shteyngart replied, “It’s the only way I can understand my own identity. Oh, I hate that word. But there it is.”

Photo by Sam Sweeney, Blog Editor

This entry was posted on Friday, February 1st, 2008 at 9:20 pm and is filed under Arts and Entertainment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.