Gary Shteyngart is getting plenty of good attention this spring for his new novel, "Lake Success." But remember this one, from 2010, "Super Sad True Love Story?" 

This novel was a comedic take on an alternate near-future world, in which people eschew face-to-face interaction in favor of communicating on personal electronic devices (apparats, with umlauts over all three as, if you please). People become "media" stars, making their living by broadcasting themselves doing pretty much anything online. The United States' economy is collapsing, and society is at the mercy of money or resource-holding countries such as Norway and China. 

Here's one detail that didn't strike me as so prescient when I first read the novel but now is screaming out at me: The U.S., in this novel, has a broken government and is losing an ill-advised, unpopular war in -- wait for it -- Venezuela. 

Let's not go there.

-cg

It must be gotten out of the way right up front: I never even heard of Gary Shteyngart before I put "Little Failure" on my "Wish List" on my Barnes and Noble Nook. I read a blurb somewhere - more than likely the Huffington Post (while it was still the Huffington Post), in which in a small paragraph managed to convince me this was a book worth reading. Finally the price was reduced, and being unemployed at the time, swooped at the chance to purchase the book at a really cheap price.

But honestly, it would have been worth the full price. Though only 41 when he wrote this memoir, I can tell you his life was anything but dull. This is someone who was born a Russian Jew in Leningrad, and by the time he was 7 was living in the Bronx when his parents had to flee the collapsing Soviet Union. So having to go from Soviet Union to soon-to-be-Reagan years would be enough for someone to feel a little alienated, confused, not to mention angry and sad. Which would lead to a drug-induced stay at college, and how, despite all that has happened to him, ended up being a writer - and a very highly praised one at that. Yes, it's having to come to terms with what has happened, acceptance, and moving on. Not that original, but told in an original prose that now makes me want to read his other works.

And trust me, I will. But first..............

DNF not quite halfway through. In the beginning I was impressed by the fine line this book walks between annoyance and charm. The word I thought of to best describe it was "rambunctious." Then I thought, "Will this 'rambunction' get old?" And it basically did. Or maybe I'm just not in the mood for satire of life 15+ years ago when the present is even crazier. Like, we're living a satire right now. I will say I enjoyed the physicality that Shteyngart revels in; that's rare. On the other hand, I could do without the meta quality, references to an author with a name like Shteyngart's who published a novel that sounds like his debut novel.

The plot summary to the Penguin Classics edition reads:

"In its adventurous happenings, its abductions, duels, and sexual intrigues, A Hero of Our Time looks backward to the tales of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron, so beloved by Russian society in the 1820s and '30s. In the character of its protagonist, Pechorin, the archetypal Russian antihero, Lermontov's novel looks forward to the subsequent glories of a Russian literature that it helped, in great measure, to make possible."

With which I take issue. The description about adventurous happenings, abductions, duels and sexual intrigues makes it sound far more interesting than it actually is. The "archetypal Russian anti-hero," Pechorin, is a tedious pile of the self-absorption lacking in even rudimentary self-awareness.

I actually read a different version. But the cover of this one is so much more perfect than my edition that I had to use it. Because, if I had to come up with a modern equivalent for Pechorin, he is the pretentious, annoying hipster, pretending to be deep and soulful, but really as shallow as a puddle on a hot day. The kind of irritating manipulative assbasket who needs to be unironically beaten to death with his copy of Gravity's Rainbow before he cuts a swathe of destruction through the lives of other people with twice as much character.

Upon finishing, I was reminded of the men in Fitzergerald's books (Gatsby, Tom Buchanan, and the relentlessly douchey Dick Diver), which I universally loathe, and Bungalow 89, a revolting piece of pretentiousness passing for meta-fiction that I somehow stumbled upon in Vice, written (badly) by James Franco. You can find the original here, if you feel like a morning spent retching would be a good use of your time.

If I could Thunderdome him, I'd put him up against Austen's mistress of manipulation Lady Susan. She'd take him down in a minute.

Conclusion: a bag of dicks is more interesting than this book. Skip it and go straight to Tolstoy.

An old article "Has plot driven out other kinds of story?" http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jul/14/plot-driven-out-other-kinds-story has asked this question. 

As readers we all worry that the biggest money making for book writer is to have their books sold as potential movies. And if the book really turned into movies that did not suck, it would in turn drive sales of their books.

For very literary work, this might not translate as well onto screen.  There might not be any plot that drive the story.

For me, it is more difficult to read work that is not plot driven, but that's probably where the skill of writing that turned into art form, for appreciation of the beauty of words joined together instead of having likable central characters and things that happen to them.

In order to support these form of literature, the publishing has to think not only of sales and markets, but on the values of books as a form of art.