Super Sad Future Story

Book reviewed: Super Sad True Love Story, by Gary Shteyngart. 2010, Random House, 331 pages.



One of my most vivid experiences as a reader occurred when I was probably 15. I was visiting my grandmother in Coushatta, Louisiana, during the summer, and I brought along a copy of Salem's Lot. I had just gotten in to Stephen King, and I think this was the second of his novels I was reading, after The Dead Zone. I was in a familiar place, but still not my everday home, different couch, different curtains blocking out very different uncertainties making very different sounds, and I was staying up really late reading this intoxicatingly creepy and skillfully written vampire novel, and I was scared shitless. I couldn't put the damn thing down, and wouldn't have been able to get to sleep even if I could, so I'm furtively glancing around, looking (trying to convince myself it's a purely theoretical exercise) for something that would serve as a crucifix, loving and hating every minute of it. It is a visceral reading experience I will never forget.

A very different sense of terror creeps in while reading Gary Shteyngart's new novel Super Sad True Love Story. The story takes place in a near future which seems all too plausible, one in which the melding of instant gratification consumerism and digital technological evolution have resulted in a society in which the Haves (identified as High Net Worth Individuals, all of whom seem to work in either Media, Retail or Credit, for multinational corporations) lead lives that are simultaneously narcissistic and masochistic, with all of their pertinent personal information (credit rating, blood pressure, bank statement, estimated lifespan, etc.) broadcast on their "apparats," souped-up Blackberrys or IPads which both transmit and receive information to everyone in the vicinity. Additionally, a sizeable percentage of people (at least of those under 40, it seems?) are continually broadcasting their activities and conversations, and therefore continually editing themselves and their companions, in order to achieve maximum "viewer load."...


Aaaahhhh! It truly is terrifying, particularly as this society, ruled by the Orwellian/P.K. Dickesque American Restoration Authority and the Bipartisan Party, has rendered the book, and by extension reading as a socially-approved way for the dissemination of information, not just utterly irrelevant, but sufficient grounds for peer-group ostracism. This is an occasional problem for Lenny Abramov, the Russian-American "Life Lovers Outreach Coordinator (Grade G) of the Post-Human Services division of the Staatling-Wapachung Corporation," (p. 5), selling clients the hope of immortality through the use of nanotechnology and lifestyle choices. The prestige of such a lucrative position with such a cutting-edge company (Media? Retail? I'm still not sure, but it looks good on the apparat [unlike, say, guerrilla bookseller/stay-at-homsechooling father/polysyllabic blogger]), however, is undercut by his lingering attachment to the written word, particularly the Russians and Central Europeans. His diary (for you kids reading this, a diary is like a blog, only with paper and pencil....Pen-cil, that's right, I'll explain it later) is one of the narrative devices used so skillfully by Shteyngart.


Another source is the transcripts of the "Globalteens Account" of Eunice Park, a young Korean-American woman Lenny meets during an extended business trip in Rome. He falls hard for Eunice, and they commence a tumultuous relationship upon both returns to New York. Her share of the narrative unfolds through exchanges with her mother, sister, best friend, and Lenny, with later correspondents proving quite crucial to the reader's understanding of the larger socio-political context. The clipped, grammtically-challenged, highly sexualized, consumption-obsessed discourse of Eunice and her peers seems note perfect as an extension of the Twitter/Real World style of dialogue:

"Anyway, what kind of freaked me out was that I saw Len reading a book. "No, it didn't SMELL. He uses Pine-Sol on them.) And I don't mean scanning a text like we did in Euro Classics with that Chatterhouse of Parma. I mean seriously READING. He had this ruler out and he was moving it down the page very slowly and just like whispering little things to himself, like trying to understand every little part of it. I was going to teen my sister but I was so embarassed I just stood there and watched him read which lasted for like HALF AN HOUR, and finally he put the book down and I pretend like nothing happened" (p. 144).

This is no navel-gazing relationship novel, however. The socio-political milieu is just as skillfully and disturbingly portrayed, and again seems all too plausible as a projection of the present and recent past into the near future. Secretary of Defense Rubenstein is the acknowledged political leader, while the president is an affably moronic figurehead (pretty far-fetched, huh?). The war with Venezuela has not gone well, and a population of disaffected veterans, demanding their promised bonuses, have set up a squatters' community in New York's Tompkins Square Park, accompanied by the urban human collateral damage from the collapsing U.S. economy.

Now let's just step back from that scenario for a moment and consider the layering of historical references. Veterans agitating for promised bonuses after fighting overseas is an obvious reference to the Bonus Army of 1932, World War I vets camped out in Washington during the Depression, demanding the early payment of promised compensation (they were eventually rousted by federal troops commanded by Douglas MacArthur and George Patton). Tompkins Square Park was the sight of a vicious police riot in August of 1988, a watershed moment in New Yorkers' struggle against gentrification. And, of course, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez is a consistent thorn in the side of the increasingly enfeebled but still-dangerous American Empire, and an armed conflict engineered by a failing state eager to draw attention away from its precipitous demise seems utterly possible and convincingly written.

All of these personal and political intrigues come to a dramatic head late in the novel, with Lenny's immortality-obsessed boss Joshie (I think of him as kind of a cross between Nike CEO Phil Knight and Batman's nemesis Ra's al Ghul, particularly as portrayed by Liam Neeson in Batman Begins) angling to take financial advantage of the chaos, and Lenny and Eunice and their peers, largely clueless to the shifting sands beneath them (or at least the effect on their lives and credit ratings), being forced to....take sides? Perhaps too strong and committed a word for people so emotionally stunted, but in the ballpark.

Finally, something must be said about the spirit of Philip K. Dick, which pervades this novel so palpably (as it does Chronic City, the most recent effort by Jonathan Lethem). I think that one of Dick's most profound stylistic contributions was his ongoing assertion that technological evolution will almost always be at the service of consumerism, rather than transcending it. The delicious irony is that Shteyngart, like Dick, has so masterfully transcended the junk-food intellectual diet of this day and given us something so nuanced and nutritious to gnaw on and mull over. Yummmmm.