ABAW: Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

While thinking about what I might say about this book, I watched the book trailer and listened to Gary Shteyngart’s interview on Studio 360. Both the trailer and interview are on the Studio 360 site for the episode. Go watch and listen. They’ll take you about ten minutes. I’ll wait.

In both venues, Shteyngart uses hyperbolic absurdity to get attention for the book, which is appropriate, since the book is full of hyperbolic absurdity. What that excess of noise belies is the very scary world that Shteyngart illustrates. A very scary world that is already happening.

Super Sad True Love Story is a plausible and damning projection of our current social and economic trajectory.

This is a dystopian novel set in the near future, perhaps within the next few decades (“next Tuesday” quips Shteyngart to Kurt Anderson). Social media rules the world. Everyone is tethered to an äppärät, a social media device that facilitates virtually (and virtually facilitates) all interaction between people (with the exception of the revolutionaries and the most powerful man in the book). Everyone is obsessed with youth, money, and sex. Not necessarily in that order. When a person enters the room, they are immediately judged by everyone else in the room on their fuckability index. Their credit ratings and net worth are displayed for everyone to see. Nothing seems particularly private. No one talks TO anyone (unless they are ‘verballing,’ a seemingly rare action and one of the many very sharp slang terms Shteyngart deploys in this world). No one really listens to anyone. Books (aka bound printed matter) are considered gross by most people, mainly because they smell, but also because they require effort.

The invasion of Venezula has gone poorly. The United States economy is collapsing. The National Guard has been pirated by private corporations. But the main characters aren’t particularly concerned about any of that until it starts boiling up in their apartment.

Lenny is the child of Russian immigrants. In his late thirties he is by modern standards old and decaying. Unlike most people, Lenny actually likes books. And he has a lot of them. A whole bookshelf in his living room. They are his treasured possessions.  He works for a company that helps people live forever. He feels a little disconnected from youth culture, both because of his age and because of his eleven months partying in Italy, but now he has a new reason to want to live forever. He’s met Eunny.

Eunny is in her early twenties. The child of Korean immigrants.  She is perfect, young, androgynous, obsessed with spending money. She and her mother and sister have suffered abuse from her father, a podiatrist who supports the status-obsessed lifestyle of his family.  Eunny initially thinks Lenny is gross, but out of convenience and a sense that Lenny treats her differently than other people (a disconcerting feeling that she fails to describe in words), Eunny ends up moving into Lenny’s New York apartment when they both return to the U.S. from Italy.

Lenny and Eunny are in love. Or what approximates love in this novel.

The triangle in this love story is completed by Joshie, Lenny’s old friend, mentor, boss and all around powerful dude. Joshie subscribes to all the treatments of their company, not just those that prevent aging, but also those that restore youth. He also, very notably, does not use an äppärät (though he does ‘teen,’ the word for electronic communication, with Eunny after he too becomes obsessed with her perfection). Joshie never seems to be in physical danger, and seems to have some control over the National Guard, though his role in the politics of the situation are never made clear.  The only other characters in the story who do not use äppäräti are dissidents.

Lenny’s ineptitude and naivete, Eunny’s shallowness, the absurd way that people talk to one another, the bizarre culture and economics of the story and its shocking reality distance the reader from the horrors perpetuated continually throughout the text. The characters themselves don’t seem to notice the violent private-military takeover of the United States because they’re all too busy staring into their äppäräti.  Only when people die and the äppäräti stop working (temporarily) do the characters begin to notice and to display humanity.

I can’t figure out exactly where the love is in this love story. Absurdist tragedy seems more appropriate. For instance, as the country is falling apart, we figure out that Lenny can’t really read his books. He is capable of reading, but the complexity of the stories turns out to be too much for him to contemplate. The books are just one more kind of status object for him, as he seems incapable of the complex thinking required to read and understand a book.

I sound like I hated this book.  I’m sure I’m making it sound terribly depressing. Don’t get me wrong. This is a smart and funny and scary book, and I really enjoyed it. In his interview with Kurt Anderson, Shteyngart claims to have had to revise the story to match the changes that were actually happening in society. With financial collapse and social media explosion, he had to escalate his hyperbole to outpace reality.  Consider that the next time you update your Facebook status or shop at Victoria’s Secret or read one of my blog posts.

Here are some questions I have as I consider the book:

-What happens when everything about us is public? What is the role of performance?

-As the story unfolds we realize that we’re reading a set of found texts that have been edited into Lenny and Eunny’s love story. How does one accidentally find electronic texts? Dave recently wondered about where off-the-record chat transcripts go. We could also ask what happens to our emails and Facebook stati.  What happens to the storage of Google or of Facebook if those companies cease to exist? Who owns that data? What do they do with it? Are they bound to honor Terms of Use Agreements from the defunct companies? What if they’re unethical? What if they are a foreign government?  Does that data tell a story? A love story? A tragic epic?

-What is so important about Italy and how do we understand the Super Sad ending of the story for Lenny?

-What does the book mean, the physical object, in this society?

-What is the role of smell in the culture of this novel (or in our culture)?

-How exactly do those Total Surrender panties work?