I picked up this book because its author, Gary Shteynhgart, had spoken at my graduation from high school. We both went to Stuyvesant. I must admit I trudged my way through some of the sexual tidbits of the prose. I usually don’t touch this stuff, but the crux of the story kept me reading.
Thirty-nine year old Lenny Abramov, an unkempt, old, and unattractive Jew falls in love with the beautiful, still childlike, twenty-four year old Eunice Park, from a totally different world. He courts her, and they fall in love in a third world New York where China has taken over. American culture has become focused on a thing called the apparati, which satirizes the cell phones we all carry now. Ratings flying every second as the people from across the room gather information about each other and shoot “fuckability” ratings, good or bad, at the girls who walk into the room. The girls buy clothes from “Juicypussy” and “Assluxury” stores and they wear “Onionskin” jeans that are transparent and show everything. The shallow, moral thread of America seems just about to burst. And Lenny and Eunice are supposed to be this beautiful paradigm of a couple, whose love is supposed to shine through the muck of the apocalypse.
But as the title of the novel suggests, this is a sad, love story. In their little microcosm, Lenny and Eunice have sex and read actual books (which this post-literature NY does not do), and are beautiful. They need each other. And in the scene when they consummate their relationships she cries out: “Dont please ever leave me.” And their need for each other is beautiful. It is steeped in history: “the instinct for sex came from somewhere else inside her; it spoke of the need for warmth instead of debasement.” They are creations from a different world, where sex was pure, and such a love as theirs could transcend looks and social statuses and the world’s expectations. But when they walk back onto the cement of New York, the stark reality breaks their magnetization and they see that they are destined to be drawn apart.
But they are not afraid to love. They threw away their fears and loved with a disregard for career and money. And though their hearts would break, they loved. And as an uptight Christian, I cringe at this display of recklessness, but somewhere inside me, I felt a deep longing to love like that. I think we all do. We all want this wild love, even if it can’t shine through. I don’t know.
I’m just glad that I threw away my caution as a Christian to delve into this powerful novel. Schteyngart was a wonderful graduation speaker, and his story speaks with a similar air: a beckoning to live life fully, conquering fears, unafraid to poke fun at our history, and daring to love, even when it hurts and the future is dim. I recommend this book. The prose is wonderful and true.
