Little failure A memoir

Review by New York Times Review

EARLY IN HIS hilarious and moving memoir, Gary Shteyngart reveals that his mother's post-collegiate nickname for him is Little Failure, which would seem more insulting if his father didn't already call him Snotty. In this Russian Jewish family - the Shteyngarts moved from Leningrad to Queens in 1979, when Gary was 7 - barbed jokes, or shutki, are tokens of love: weird, hostile tokens, but tokens nonetheless. The shutki continue to fly in Shteyngart's direction even after - or maybe especially after - he becomes a successful novelist ("The Russian Debutante's Handbook," "Absurdistan," "Super Sad True Love Story"). Treating his parents to dinner at the revolving restaurant atop the Marriott Marquis to celebrate his mother's birthday, Shteyngart is a sitting duck as his father fires off this one: "I read on the Russian Internet that you and your novels will soon be forgotten." While that may not sound exactly like a joke, it's riotous compared with what he tells his son at another dinner: "I burn with a black envy toward you. I should have been an artist as well." Shteyngart's father is a depressive, a fate his childhood seemed to decree. His four earliest memories are the wartime evacuation of Leningrad, the deaths of his father and his best friend, and the sight of a female relative leaping from a second-story window, pursued by rats. Later, Shteyngart's grandmother "is remarried to a man who will all but destroy my father's life and make me into whatever it is I am today." Professionally, his father is thwarted in his ambition to become an opera singer and has to settle for being an engineer (hence the black envy). And yet, for all his Chekhovian gloom, Shteyngart's dad is still capable of enlivening Gary's childhood by telling him outlandish, funny stories, like "The Planet of the Yids," a sci-fi saga about a Jewish planet under constant attack by volleys of pork. Shteyngart summarizes his father's duality - and his own - by referring to "the rage and humor that are our chief inheritance." "Little Failure" is so packed with humor, it's easy to overlook the rage, but it's there, and it's part of what makes the book so compelling. It even lurks in some of the photo captions, like the one under a snapshot of Shteyngart and his mother, taken shortly after their move to Queens: "One of the few photographs we have from this period. We were too busy suffering." The Shteyngarts come to the United States as part of the wave of Soviet Jews allowed to emigrate under an agreement Jimmy Carter made with the Soviet government. In Shteyngart's précis, "Russia gets the grain it needs to run; America gets the Jews it needs to run: all in all, an excellent trade deal." Arriving in what until very recently had been enemy territory, Shteyngart is anxious and asthmatic, shepherded by parents who are unburdened by any understanding of American life. They change his Russian name, Igor, to the more American-sounding Gary so he will "suffer one or two fewer beatings" ; that is pretty much the only cultural adaptation they get right. They receive a letter from Publishers Clearing House informing them that they have already won $10 million and believe this to be true. (Somehow, years of being lied to by the Soviet government have not prepared them for this moment.) In another epic misunderstanding, Shteyngart's father unwittingly takes little Gary to the X-rated "Emmanuelle: The Joys of a Woman." Shteyngart senior covers his son's eyes throughout the film, but, as the author remembers, "Despite my father's best efforts I see about seven vaginas on the big screen that day, seven more than I will see for a very long time." With such hapless tour guides as parents, Shteyngart turns to a more reliable source to decode American culture: television. Unfortunately, the sitcoms he watches raise more questions than they answer. About "Gilligan's Island," he asks, "Is it really possible that a country as powerful as the United States would not be able to locate two of its best citizens lost at sea, to wit, the millionaire a¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿ ¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿d his wife?" As the book traces Shteyngart's progress from small child to small adult, it follows him to the Solomon Schechter Hebrew school, where he develops twin obsessions, science fiction and computer games (played on his brand new Commodore 64 with Datasette drive) ; Stuyvesant High School, where those obsessions give way to booze and pot; and Oberlin, where love eclipses all else. He chooses Oberlin in the hopes of finally emigrating from the Planet of the Virgins: "Oberlin College was established in 1833 so that people who couldn't find love, the emotional invalids and Elephant Men of the world, could do so." Sure enough, he meets a woman from North Carolina who becomes his first real girlfriend. In the course of trying to impress her with his manliness during a visit to the South, he drives her Oldsmobile 88 into the wall of a Shoney's restaurant. Post-graduation, he moves to New York and falls for Pamela, a woman who has everything, including another boyfriend. "I love Pamela," he writes. "She is what I've been waiting for all my life. A chance to lower myself into complete abasement, a chance to beg for someone's love over and over again, knowing I will never get it." Pamela later serves a jail term for following a man into a public bathroom and hitting him in the head repeatedly with the claw end of a hammer. ("How quickly the term 'Pamma Hamma Slamma' would be coined.") After a woman like that, life can only get better. Approaching 30, Shteyngart senses he is drinking too much (no mean feat for a Russian), goes into therapy, and sells his first novel. Why does Shteyngart become a writer? His answer is unassailable: "Who wouldn't, under the circumstances?" At age 5 he tries his hand at a novel, about a statue of Lenin coming to life and attacking Finland with the aid of an enormous talking goose. He writes it at the urging of his grandmother, who pays him for each chapter with a cheese sandwich, establishing "a pattern of exchange, goods for words, that has seen me through to the present day." But he's not really in it for the cheese. In writing his book, 5-year-old Gary is sending a message to his grandmother: "Please love me. It's a message, both desperate and common, that I will extend to her and to my parents and, later, to a bunch of yeshiva schoolchildren in Queens and, still later, to my several readers around the world." That last bit of self-effacement is one more Shteyngart joke, of course, but it's one he might have to retire soon. Thanks to "Little Failure," the army of readers who love Gary Shteyngart is about to get bigger. 'Rage and humor . . . are our chief inheritance,' Shteyngart says of his father and himself. ANDY BOROWITZ is the creator of The Borowitz Report, a satirical column that appears at NewYorker.com.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 5, 2014]

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Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Novelist Shteyngart (Super Sad True Love Story, 2010) looks back at his tug-of-war life in this caustic, funny, brash, and self-immolating memoir. Born in Leningrad, in 1972, the only child of a kindergarten piano teacher and a mechanical engineer, Shteyngart was a small, anxious, severely asthmatic boy stretched on the rack of his warring parents' needs and worries and subjected to downright medieval treatments for his ailment. While gasping for breath and paralyzed with fear, including a terror of the Soviets' notorious exploding televisions, Shteyngart nicknamed Little Failure became a pathological reader. Encouraged to write by his indomitable grandmother, who paid him for his efforts in cheese, he composed his first novel at age five: Lenin and His Magical Goose. Veering between flaying candor and chagrined adoration in his vivid depictions of his family, Shteyngart is also diabolically droll in his accounts of social absurdities, including what he basically describes as the grain-for-Jews agreement reached between Jimmy Carter and the USSR that freed Soviet Jewry, including the battling Shteyngarts. He then experienced a second life-changing liberation when he received his first inhaler. Finally able to breath, the Little Failure figures out that writing is his only defense against being a hated freak in a Hebrew school in Queens. Shteyngart's penetrating attentiveness, outlandish precision, abrading and embracing humor, and ability to extrapolate larger truths about inheritance, immigration, assimilation, and creativity from his own epic floundering and yearning make for a memoir of exceptional dimension, provocation, and pleasure.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2014 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

One afternoon in 1996, a book titled St. Petersburg: Architecture of the Tsars becomes Shytengart's madeleine, carrying him back in time and memory to his childhood in Moscow and launching him on a career of writing about the past in his novels (Absurdistan). In his typical laugh-aloud approach, the acclaimed novelist carries us with him on his journey, from his birth in Leningrad and his decision to become a writer at age five to his immigration to America and his family's settling in New York City in 1979. Adolescent misadventure, his days at Oberlin College, his psychoanalysis, and his struggles after college to wend his way through the workaday world of Wall Street toward becoming a writer round out the trip. Shytengart spends much of his pre-adolescence glued to the television set, watching shows like Gilligan's Island, which causes him to ask himself questions about American culture: "Is it really possible that a country as powerful as the United States would not be able to locate two of its best citizens lost at sea, to wit the millionaire and his wife?" Shytengart's self-deprecating humor contains the sharp-edged twist of the knife of melancholy in this take of a young man "desperately trying to have a history, a past." (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Shteyngart's (Absurdistan) latest title is a rambling memoir, as hairy and pungent as the giant fur coat young Igor/Gary wears and is ridiculed for as a seven-year-old Russian Jewish immigrant. Unlike the coat in question, Little Failure has considerable charms as it follows young Igor's transformation into Gary. We begin with his asthmatic early childhood in Leningrad, follow his family's 1979 journey to the United States, and ultimately conclude with his return visit to Leningrad many years later, accompanied by his still-challenging parents and in search of the answer to a small but pivotal mystery of his own psychology. Whatever shame young Shteyngart may have felt as a boy, as a writer, he doesn't shy away from the most cringe-worthy but hilariously character-revealing details. The portraits of his parents are a high point of the book-appropriately complex, confusing, unflattering, sympathetic and almost helplessly affectionate. Jonathan Todd Ross is a game reader, taking on Shteyngart's parents' accents, the Talking Heads, and children's lullabies with aplomb. Verdict Shteyngart fans will love this. Be prepared for an explicit, embarrassing, profane journey that is ultimately winningly human. ["A self-examination that is entertaining and devastating in equal measure," read the review of the Random hc, LJ 12/13.]-Heather Malcolm, Bow, WA (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

An immigrant's memoir like few others, with as sharp an edge and as much stylistic audacity as the author's well-received novels. The Russian-American novelist writes that after completing this memoir, he reread his three novels (Super Sad True Love Story, 2010, etc.) and was "shocked by the overlaps between fiction and reality....On many occasions in my novels I have approached a certain truth only to turn away from it, only to point my finger and laugh at it and then scurry back to safety. In this book I promised myself I would not point the finger. My laughter would be intermittent. There would be no safety." That observation minimizes just how funny this memoir frequently is, but it suggests that the richest, most complex character the author has ever rendered on the page is the one once known to his family as "Little Igor" and later tagged with "Scary Gary" by his Oberlin College classmates, with whom he recalls an incident, likely among many, in which he was "the drunkest, the stonedest, and, naturally, the scariest." Fueled by "the rage and humor that are our chief inheritance," Shteyngart traces his family history from the atrocities suffered in Stalinist Russia, through his difficulties assimilating as the "Red Nerd" of schoolboy America, through the asthma and panic attacks, alcoholism and psychoanalysis that preceded his literary breakthrough. He writes of the patronage of Korean-American novelist Chang-Rae Lee, who recruited him for a new creative writing program at Hunter College, helped him get a book deal for a novel he'd despaired over ever publishing and had "severely shaken my perception of what fiction about immigrants can get away with." Ever since, he's been getting away with as much as he dares. Though fans of the author's fiction will find illumination, a memoir this compelling and entertaining--one that frequently collapses the distinction between comedy and tragedy--should expand his readership beyond those who have loved his novels.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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1. The Church and the Helicopter A year after graduating college, I worked downtown in the immense shadows of the World Trade Center, and as part of my freewheeling, four-hour daily lunch break I would eat and drink my way past these two giants, up Broadway, down Fulton Street, and over to the Strand Book Annex. In 1996, people still read books and the city could support an extra branch of the legendary Strand in the Financial District, which is to say that stockbrokers, secretaries, government functionaries--everybody back then was expected to have some kind of inner life. In the previous year I had tried being a paralegal for a civil rights law firm, but that did not work out well. The paralegaling involved a lot of detail, way more detail than a nervous young man with a ponytail, a small substance-abuse problem, and a hemp pin on his cardboard tie could handle. This was as close as I would ever come to fulfilling my parents' dreams of my becoming a lawyer. Like most Soviet Jews, like most immigrants from Communist nations, my parents were deeply conservative, and they never thought much of the four years I had spent at my liberal alma mater, Oberlin College, studying Marxist politics and book-writing. On his first visit to Oberlin my father stood on a giant vagina painted in the middle of the quad by the campus lesbian, gay, and bisexual organization, oblivious to the rising tide of hissing and camp around him, as he enumerated to me the differences between laser-jet and ink-jet printers, specifically the price points of the cartridges. If I'm not mistaken, he thought he was standing on a peach. I graduated summa cum laude and this improved my profile with Mama and Papa, but when I spoke to them it was understood that I was still a disappointment. Because I was often sick and runny nosed as a child (and as an adult) my father called me Soplyak, or Snotty. My mother was developing an interesting fusion of English and Russian and, all by herself, had worked out the term Failurchka, or Little Failure. That term made it from her lips into the overblown manuscript of a novel I was typing up in my spare time, one whose opening chapter was about to be rejected by the important writing program at the University of Iowa, letting me know that my parents weren't the only ones to think that I was nothing. Realizing that I was never going to amount to much, my mother, working her connections as only a Soviet Jewish mama can, got me a job as a "staff writer" at an immigrant resettlement agency downtown, which involved maybe thirty minutes of work per year, mostly proofing brochures teaching newly arrived Russians the wonders of deodorant, the dangers of AIDS, and the subtle satisfaction of not getting totally drunk at some American party. In the meantime, the Russian members of our office team and I got totally drunk at some American party. Eventually we were all laid off, but before that happened I wrote and rewrote great chunks of my first novel and learned the Irish pleasures of matching gin martinis with steamed corned beef and slaw at the neighborhood dive, the name of which is, if I recall correctly, the Blarney Stone. I'd lie there on top of my office desk at 2:00 p.m., letting out proud Hibernian cabbage farts, my mind dazed with high romantic feeling. The mailbox of my parents' sturdy colonial in Little Neck, Queens, continued to bulge with the remnants of their American dream for me, the pretty brochures from graduate school dropping in quality from Harvard Law School to Fordham Law School to the John F. Kennedy School of Government (sort of like law school, but not really) to the Cornell Department of City and Regional Planning, and finally to the most frightening prospect for any immigrant family, the master of fine arts program in creative writing at the University of Iowa. "But what kind of profession is this, writer?" my mother would ask. "You want to be this?" I want to be this. At the Strand Book Annex I stuffed my tote with specimens from the 50-percent-discounted trade paperbacks aisle, sifting through the discarded review copies, looking for someone just like me on the back cover: a young goateed boulevardier, a desperately urban person, obsessed with the Orwells and Dos Passoses, ready for another Spanish Civil War if only those temperamental Spanishers would get around to having one. And if I found such a doppelganger I would pray that his writing wasn't good. Because the publication pie was only so big. Surely these blue-blooded American publishers, those most Random of Houses, would see right through my overeager immigrant prose and give the ring to some jerk from Brown, his junior year at Oxford or Salamanca giving him all the pale color needed for a marketable bildungsroman. After handing over six dollars to the Strand, I would run back to my office to swallow all 240 pages of the novel in one go, while my Russian coworkers hooted it up next door with their vodka-fueled poetry. I was desperately looking for the sloppy turn of phrase or the MFA cliché that would mark the novel in question inferior to the one gestating in my office computer (idiotic working title: The Pyramids of Prague). One day after courting gastric disaster by eating two portions of Wall Street vindaloo I exploded into the Strand's Art and Architecture section, my then $29,000-a-year salary no match for the handsome price tag on a Rizzoli volume of nudes by Egon Schiele. But it wasn't a melancholic Austrian who would begin to chip away at the alcoholic and doped-up urban gorilla I was steadily becoming. It wouldn't be those handsome Teutonic nudes that would lead me on the path back to the uncomfortable place. The book was called St. Petersburg: Architecture of the Tsars, the baroque blue hues of the Smolny Convent Cathedral practically jumping off the cover. With its six pounds of thick, glossy weight, it was, and still is, a coffee-table book. This was in itself a problem. The woman I was in love with at the time, another Oberlin graduate ("love who you know," my provincial theory), had already criticized my bookshelves for containing material either too lightweight or too masculine. Whenever she came by my new Brooklyn studio apartment, her pale midwestern eyes scanning the assembled soldiers of my literary army for a Tess Gallagher or a Jeanette Winterson, I found myself yearning for her taste and, as a corollary, the press of her razor-sharp collarbone against mine. Hopelessly, I arranged my Oberlin texts such as Tabitha Konogo's Squatters & the Roots of Mau Mau next to newly found woman-ethnic gems such as Lois-Ann Yamanaka's Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers, which I always imagined to be the quintessential Hawaiian coming-of-age story. (Someday I should read it.) If I bought Architecture of the Tsars I would have to hide it from this girl-woman in one of my cupboards behind a scrim of roach motels and bottles of cheap GEOGI vodka. Other than failing my parents and being unable to finish The Pyramids of Prague, my main sorrow consisted of my loneliness. My first girlfriend ever, a fellow Oberlin student, an attractive, curly-haired white girl from North Carolina, had gone down south to live with a handsome drummer in his van. I would spend four years after graduating college without so much as kissing a girl. Breasts and backsides and caresses and the words "I love you, Gary" lived on only in abstract memory. Unless I'm telling you otherwise, I am completely in love with everyone around me for the rest of this book. And then there was the price tag of Architecture of the Tsars--ninety-five dollars, marked down to sixty dollars--this would buy me just under forty-three chicken cutlets over at my parents' house. My mother always practiced tough love with me when it came to matters fiscal. When her failure showed up for dinner one night, she gave me a packet of chicken cutlets, Kiev style, meaning stuffed with butter. Gratefully, I accepted the chicken, but Mama told me each cutlet was worth "approximately one dollar forty." I tried to buy fourteen cutlets for seventeen dollars, but she charged me a full twenty, inclusive of a roll of Saran Wrap in which to store the poultry. A decade later, when I had stopped drinking so much, the knowledge that my parents would not stand by me and that I had to go at life furiously and alone drove me to perform terrifying amounts of work. I twirled through the pages of the monumental Architecture of the Tsars, examining all those familiar childhood landmarks, feeling the vulgar nostalgia, the poshlost' Nabokov so despised. Here was the General Staff Arch with its twisted perspectives giving out onto the creamery of Palace Square, the creamery of the Winter Palace as seen from the glorious golden spike of the Admiralty, the glorious spike of the Admiralty as seen from the creamery of the Winter Palace, the Winter Palace and the Admiralty as seen from atop a beer truck, and so on in an endless tourist whirlwind. I was looking at page 90. "Ginger ale in my skull" is how Tony Soprano describes the first signs of a panic attack to his psychiatrist. There's dryness and wetness all at once, but in all the wrong places, as if the armpits and the mouth have embarked upon a cultural exchange. There's the substitution of a slightly different film from the one you've been watching, so that the mind is constantly recalculating for the unfamiliar colors, the strange, threatening snatches of conversation. Why are we suddenly in Bangladesh? the mind says. When have we joined the mission to Mars? Why are we floating on a cloud of black pepper toward an NBC rainbow? Add to that the supposition that your nervous, twitching body will never find rest, or maybe that it will find eternal rest all too soon, that is to say pass out and die, and you have the makings of a hyperventilating breakdown. That's what I was experiencing. And here's what I was looking at as my brain rolled around its stony cavity: a church. The Chesme Church on Lensovet (Leningrad Soviet) Street in the Moskovsky District of the city formerly known as Leningrad. Eight years later I would describe it thusly for a Travel + Leisure article: The raspberry and white candy box of the Chesme Church is an outrageous example of the neo-Gothic in Russia, made all the more precious by its location between the worst hotel in the world and a particularly gray Soviet block. The eye reels at the church's dazzling conceit, its mad collection of seemingly sugarcoated spires and crenellations, its utter edibility. Here is a building more pastry than edifice. But in 1996 I did not have the wherewithal to spin clever prose. I had not yet undergone twelve years of four-times-a-week psychoanalysis that would make of me a sleekly rational animal, able to quantify, catalog, and retreat casually from most sources of pain, save one. I beheld the tiny scale of the church; the photographer had framed it between two trees, and there was a stretch of potholed asphalt in front of its diminutive entrance. It looked vaguely like a child overdressed for a ceremony. Like a little red-faced, tiny-bellied failure. It looked like how I felt. I began to master the panic attack. I put the book down with sweaty hands. I thought of the girl that I loved at the time, that not-so-gentle censor of my bookshelf and my tastes; I thought about how she was taller than me and how her teeth were gray and straight, purposeful like the rest of her. And then I wasn't thinking of her at all. The memories were queuing. The church. My father. What did Papa look like when we were younger? I saw the big brows, the near-Sephardic skin tone, the harried expression of someone to whom life had been invariably unkind. But no, that was my father in the present day. When I imagined my early father, my preimmigrant father, I always bathed myself in his untrammeled love for me. I would think of him as just this awkward man, childish and bright, happy to have a little sidekick named Igor (my pre-Gary Russian name), palling around with this Igoryochek who is not judgmental or anti-Semitic, a tiny fellow warrior, first against the indignities of the Soviet Union and then against those of moving to America, the great uprooting of language and familiarity. There he was, Early Father and Igoryochek, and we had just gone to the church in the book! The joyous raspberry Popsicle of Chesme Church, some five blocks away from our Leningrad apartment, a pink baroque ornament amidst the fourteen shades of Stalin-era beige. It wasn't a church in Soviet days but a naval museum dedicated, if memory serves correctly (and please let it serve correctly), to the victorious Battle of Chesme in 1770, during which the Orthodox Russians really gave it to those sonofabitch Turks. The interior of the sacred space back then (now it is once again a fully functional church) was crammed with a young boy's delight--maquettes of gallant eighteenth-century fighting ships. Allow me to stay with the theme of early Papa and the Turks for just a few pages more. Let me introduce some new vocabulary to help me complete this quest. Dacha is the Russian word for country house, and as spoken by my parents it might as well have meant the "Loving Grace of God." When summer warmth finally broke the grip of the lifeless Leningrad winter and lackluster spring, they schlepped me around to an endless series of dachas in the former Soviet Union. A mushroom-ridden village near Daugavpils, Latvia; beautifully wooded Sestroretsk on the Gulf of Finland; the infamous Yalta in the Crimea (Stalin, Churchill, and FDR signed some kind of real estate deal here); Sukhumi, today a wrecked Black Sea resort in a breakaway part of Georgia. I was taught to prostrate myself before the sun, giver of life, grower of bananas, and thank it for every cruel, burning ray. My mother's favorite childhood diminutive for me? Little Failure? No! It was Solnyshko. Little Sun! Photographs from this era show a tired group of women in bathing suits and a Marcel Proust-looking boy in a kind of Warsaw Pact Speedo (that would be me) staring ahead into the limitless future while the Black Sea gently tickles their feet. Soviet vacationing was a rough, exhausting business. In the Crimea, we would wake up early in the morning to join a line for yogurt, cherries, and other edibles. All around us KGB colonels and party officials would be living it up in their snazzy waterfront digs while the rest of us stood weary-eyed beneath the miserable sun waiting to snag a loaf of bread. I had a pet that year, a gaily colored wind-up mechanical rooster, whom I would show off to everyone on the food line. "His name is Pyotr Petrovich Roosterovich," I would declare with uncharacteristic swagger. "As you can see he has a limp, because he was injured in the Great Patriotic War." My mother, fearful that there would be anti-Semites queuing for cherries (they have to eat, too, you know), would whisper for me to be quiet or there would be no Little Red Riding Hood chocolate candy for dessert. Excerpted from Little Failure: A Memoir by Gary Shteyngart All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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