Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel

I had high hopes for this one. Shteyngart was so engaging at his reading at Brattle Theater in Harvard Square. I couldn't wait to read this after that night. I often felt like I was reading a dirty book, and I was just expecting something "smarter," I guess.

It took me a while to figure out, but the biggest problem that I had with Gary Shteyngart's "Absurdistan" was the way that it more-or-less disregarded all objections to the culture of global capitalism. The book got big-time Western capitalism's appeal right, and seemed to criticize those who see poorer, less developed places as automatically more "spiritual" or "pure," but Shteyngart reduced any of its critics to broad ethnic caricatures, cutting off any meaningful debate about whether globalization ultimately dehumanizes people or lets them become more fully human.

So "Super Sad True Love Story" was sort of a surprise for me. The book seems to be a geometric projection of the least-beneficial elements of globalization on the American show more landscape: environmental degradation, income inequality, the loss of manufacturing jobs, the rise of digital culture. It is, in other words, Absurdistan's flip-side. Lenny Abramov, the book's nebbishy, insecure main character, often comes off as the mirror image of the wealthy, shameless, sybarite that he built "Absurdistan" around. Does it work? Sometimes, I think. Shteyngart's parodies of social media's weird, chirpy argot and post-9/11 government doublespeak often spot-on and funny for all the wrong reasons. He also seems to sense the cruelty hidden in the specific ways in which many Americans strive for power, money, youth, status, and recognition: "Super Sad True Love Story" is what happens when "Lookin' Out for Number One" gets taken to its logical extreme. Even so, a profound middle-aged crankiness pervades this book: the novel might as well have been titled "Kids These Days." It might not be entirely unconnected to the author's advancing age, and, if the jacket photo is any indication, severe male-pattern baldness. We see most of its main characters, with the notable exception of the young, radiant Eunice Park, celebrate milestones that usually signify the coming of middle age: marriages, babies, a withdrawal from "the scene." He doesn't make it seem easy. But I also think that Shteyngart underestimates how often young people yearn for time periods they never knew. Young people aren't always futurists, after all: did he miss all those suspenders and elaborately waxed mustaches as he was walking around Brooklyn? The coming of a digital culture only means that a large-ish sector of the population will romanticize paper books and handwritten notes, just as people have been fetishizing the "warm" sound of vinyl records ever since compact discs became available.

"Super Sad True Love Story" also seems be asking itself how we can tell the difference between what's ephemeral and what really stays with us. As a unified American identity slides out of view, the main character seems to spend more time considering his stolid, unchanging parents and their Russian/Jewish heritage: an island of physical and cultural stability in a sea of chaos. In the same vein, the book also seems to be a love letter to a socially promiscuous, defiantly multicultural New York which might also be fading from view thanks to the unofficial segregation brought on by sharply diverging income levels. While this is a political book, it's tone is often more melancholy than hectoring, and it's anything but optimistic. Lenny Abramov is, after all, one of New York's last remaining readers. "Super Sad True Love Story" sometimes seems like a book that asks why we should write literature and comes up with few answers. It's a good thing, then, that Shteyngart's prose can be so good: it's got a natural flowing, lyricism, a drop-dead precision to it that makes its most annoying characters' musings seem important and worth reading. Maybe sometimes old guys are worth listening to sometimes, huh? show less

Some might say that it is wrong to invoke the names of Philip K Dick and Kurt Vonnegut, however I think Gary Shteyngart's imagination, social satire and storytelling are right up there with those two iconic science fiction novelists. I'm also tempted to invoke the "M" word. Masterpiece. I have been engrossed by this book for the last few days - and have picked it up at every opportunity.

The novel blends satire with a moving portrait of two lonely people (Lenny and Eunice) who, against all the odds, discover mutual love. Their love story starts in Rome and concludes in New York. The setting is the near future. A future where the US dollar is plummeting, China is threatening to stop providing the US with financial support, and most people show more work in either finance or media. People constantly stream information about each other on their "apparati" (a very, very smart 'smart phone') and no one reads books. It's a future where current social trends (social media, a preoccupation with youth, online pornography etc.) have reached their zenith and inform all aspects of daily life. Friends meet in a bar and live stream in the manner of a chat show host, crowbarring in mentions for their sponsors, whilst elsewhere everyone inputs "hotness" ratings for those around them via their "apparati".

This dark and prescient evocation of an all too plausible future would be sufficient to make this a very readable novel however Shteyngart manages some great writing too. The tale is told through Lenny's self-absorbed diary entries and Eunice's honest, simple, immediate - but still insightful - social media exchanges. Two very contrasting - but very distinctive - narrative voices. Here's Lenny describing Eunice's abused mother: "She was pretty, the features economical, the eyes evenly spaced, the nose strong and straight, but seeing her reminded me of approaching a reassembled piece of Greek or Roman pottery. You had to draw out the beauty and elegance of the design, but your eyes kept returning to the seams and the cracks filled with some dark cohesive substance, the missing handles and random pockmarks." Masterly.

There is so much richness and detail to enjoy in this book. Shteyngart manages to make all kinds of amusing, chilling and interesting observations about: this dystopian future; Lenny and Eunice's emotional journey; early 21st century Western culture; and the human condition. It's a compelling, moving, and remarkable book. show less

“If we can't take care of each other now, when the world is going to shit, how are we ever going to make it?”

Lenny Abramov is on the brink of turning 40. He works for a company that is attempting to provide immortality for its super-rich clientele. The setting is NYC in the near future. Lenny feels like his life is at a crossroads, while America is slowly collapsing around him. Then he meets Eunice, a petite, but snarky, young Korean woman and this fortunate encounter gives him hope that there is a bright light at the end of his murky tunnel. First off- this novel will not work for everyone, as the many mixed reviews can attest to but it sure hit my sweet spot. Wildly inventive, ambitious, hilarious and prescient. He nails so many show more things like our attachment to our “devices” and our slow decline into illiteracy. If this mini-review appeals at all, please give it a try. I will be reading more of his work. show less

I usually write reviews soon after I finish a book. Sometimes within moments, sometimes the next day, but always soon after. I do that in part because as I age my memory continues to deteriorate, and because most of the time I know how I felt, what I learned or observed, and what I want to say about that reading experience. Not so with this book.

This book is indeed sad, but also funny and thought provoking. There were aspects of this book that were 5-star worthy, some more than 5-star worthy. Lenny is a beautifully drawn character. He is a 40 year old who is old before his time in a country that values nothing so highly as youth. I suspect Gary Shteyngart had an intimate understanding of Lenny. Which brings me to one aspect of the book show more that I did not like. This story set in the near-future (which was of course not based on a real near-future but very much 2008-09 blown up for satire's sake) read like the hand-wringing of a neurotic 70-year old with his "in my day" and "the kids these days have no work-ethic" and "we are going to hell in a handbasket", etc. In its chicken-littleness it is off-base in so many particulars. In this near future we are apparently so vulgar that we are going to be shopping at AssLuxury for Juicy Pussy clothing and watching amateur water sport porn for fun. Again, I get that its satire, but it really just seemed fussy and cranky. Books will be a thing of the past and language reduced to a pastiche of slang and simple declarative statements (and there is Shteyngart's Achilles heel) instead we'll only read streamed information off our mobiles. In this world no one needs people building their intellect or empathy through reading. New York will clearly divide its haves from its have-lesses and its have-nots, protecting people in Manhattan and "Brownstone Brooklyn" from the odious necessity of having to glimpse anything unpleasant. The only jobs available will be in healthcare aimed at eternal life, media (journalism is dead in this future, media is just content creation), banking, and retail. Some of these things have a grain of truth in them, but its a grain. The one really interesting idea is that China and the Netherlands will call in their markers and own our asses. That might happen. But other than the impact on the monetary system (the dollar becomes meaningless unless its a form of the currency linked to the Yuan.) Shteyngart does not fully explore what that will mean, our domination by foreign powers. The monetary issue is huge, but there are other things that would come with loss of control, and I don't think Shteyngart handled that well. In the book the US has become militarized, life in some ways being like I imagine it is in North Korea and noticeably what it was like in China when I lived there in the 80's and 90's. Maybe I was supposed to assume everything was being controlled by despotic foreign powers, but as far as I could tell it was just a despotic American president who was in cahoots with the money guys. But though I think those were all missed opportunities to tighten up the story, it was the way in which Shteyngart spoke of men and women in this imagined future that ruined part of the book for me.

Apparently in the future gender interactions will tumble back to the 50's, except the women will fuck more, or at least more openly (there are no gender or sexuality fluid people in this future other than one gay man who does videos where he talks while being pounded in the ass [that is for the Chuck Tingle fans out there] by a large person for the entertainment of all and sundry.) Men in Shteyngart's invented world value women only for their youth and their hyper thin bodies. We hear over and over about beautiful Eunice, Lenny's "love" and her obsession with losing some of her 87 pounds. Women work in retail while men work in media and banking. Mostly women shop. Yes, I do believe that Americans are lauded for excess consumption, and that over time that will be more true, but why is it only the women who shop? In the future women remain obsessed only with acquisition and obsessed with their muffin tops. Why? We are past that point now, is there a reason we regress in the future? Shteyngart completely dehumanizes every woman in the book. There are some he sees as maternal figures and others he sees as or potential sex partners and status symbols. That is all he sees them as - hollow shells defined only by the ways they can (actually or potentially) please him. To quote John Lydon, this is not a love song. Lenny never loves Eunice. Lenny loves that other men envy him and think more highly of him because he has snared a young and skinny woman. Eunice never loves Lenny. She loves having a father figure who, unlike her own father, protects her, or at least tries. I don't know, maybe that was part of the satire but I don't think so. I think Shteyngart wanted this to be a couple in love forced apart by the shadowy leaders and a country gone to hell. I just could not get past this because it was a factor on every single page. Dystopia is fine, but why does our dystopia turn women back into mere adornment for men?

But there is a second super-sad love story here that I did love, and that is Shteyngart's love for New York. Shteyngart writes so heart-squeezingly well about this city that I love, and some of the things he sees as threats to its soul are real. The concentration of wealth in a few. The elimination of programs like rent control and stabilization that made this city "small d" demoncratic. You can't live here without seeing the rich, the middle class, the working class, the poor. Its right there, and that ugliness is what makes the city perfect. That is something we are losing in favor of things being cleaner or not being offensive. Go ahead NY, offend me! Keep offending me, and I will offend you right back. That right there is the good stuff, and there are a lot of people trying to change that and Gary and I, we are going to just stay and keep loving this place until its ours again. Even in his dystopian fantasy, Shteyngart finds moments to appreciate the city's magic. I was walking downtown on Fifth Ave today and as I passed The Pierre I was suddenly in this moment in the book where Shteyngart says “We headed south, and when the trees ran out, the park handed us over to the city. We surrendered to a skyscraper with a green mansard roof and two stark chimneys. New York exploded all around us, people hawking, buying, demanding, streaming..” (I had to riffle through the book to find this exact quote when I got home because it is perfect). "The park handed us over," damn that man can write.

So I have written a lot, and sometimes when I write it helps me cement my feelings about a book, but I am still conflicted. I am going with a four, but I believe that is many ways this book fails and is also almost violently misogynistic. (Notwithstanding the fact that Lenny and Eunice tell us repeatedly how much he enjoys cunnilingus. While that is a lovely attribute, it does not automatically mean you don't devalue and dehumanize women. And I could have stood to hear less about the face to genital experience of giving Eunice head,) In other ways I think this is one of the best 21st century books I have read. Maybe the reason for the good and the bad is that in some ways this is a late 20th century book wedged into the 21st century. Ach, I don't know, I need to keep thinking. I can say without question this is worth the time and effort. show less

I've read a good deal of dystopian fiction, and I found this book to be rather unique in that it seems quite plausible given the current state of the world. Perhaps all novels in the genre are like this, at the time of publication, but rather than offering up a clear picture of a totalitarian state, this book gives an account of the collapse of US based more on culture than politics. Any nefarious deeds or political commentary is a backdrop to the psychology of the characters and their all-consuming consumerism. And it's all in NYC, as though Manhattan's finally achieved what its current residents tell themselves is true: the rest of the country doesn't much matter.

This isn't a particularly easy read, but it is stimulating and show more entertaining, moreso if one is a fan of dystopian works. show less

The love story takes place in a believable, near-future. Lenny, an older gentleman by the book’s standard at 39, falls deeply in love with young Eunice—who isn’t interested. She later decides to “try to make it work” for the convenience of having a place to live in New York. Through the entire story, Eunice treats Lenny poorly and he pathetically tries to build a hopeless relationship. This isn’t the sad part of the story, however.

The love story is really just a façade for the underlying political, social and economic turmoil that eventually leads to the fall of the US to Venezuela and its award to our main debt holders of China and Norway. What was really frightening is how realistic and plausible the situations presented show more in the book are today.

The prime jobs are in “media” or “credit.” Everyone’s entire sense of worth is based on either how popular they are or how much Yen they have in the bank. Credit poles are placed throughout the city so everyone knows each other’s total net worth which is displayed as you pass. Everyone also carries an apparati (think miniaturized smart phone) which continually feeds a stream of information and rates people they come in contact with in regards to worth and sex appeal. The device also connects to an online service called GlobalTeens that everyone, regardless of age, uses as their main communication tool. This is an obvious jab at Facebook which was started for college students but has now become a world-wide communication platform.

While everyone remains self absorbed in their looks, bank account and social standing, few notice the decay of the government and society around them. Citizens are subjected to random searches and bureaucratic hurdles often marked by a sign that states that they must “deny its existence and imply consent.”

The author is incredibly skilled with words and uses them to evoke mixed emotions which leads to an unsettling atmosphere. Even if the story doesn’t sound interesting, read it for the sheer quality of the writing. show less