As I was driving home one night last week, Mississippi Public Broadcasting was replaying the morning edition of “Fresh Air”, so I got to hear the excellent review of Gary Shteyngart’s new novel Super Sad True Love Story. Readers will remember him from the 2002 publication of Russian Debutante’s Handbook and the 2007 release Absurdistan, both of which Lemuria readers liked, according to our computer files. I’m predicting that Super Sad True Love Story will be a big hit as well.
Since the review on MPB had already piqued my interest, I wasted no time in opening this novel. At the start, the protagonist, a thirty-nine year old Russian immigrant to America, is playing out his last days of a year long sojourn back in his home land, where he has been unsuccessfully trying to recruit clients for his business, “Post Human Services, which specializes in immortality. Yes, I did say, “Immortality!” So, I have let the cat out of the bag. Yes, this is a dystopian novel, but not like Margaret Atwood’s. Perhaps think of the impression you, reader, had of the near future as you once read George Orwell’s 1984, or maybe Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.
Back to Super Sad True Love Story………The business which Lenny Abramov tries to market and recruit for only wants those best specimens of human beings who have not only the intellectual, but also the physical attributes, to endure forever. A one night stand with a 22-year-old gorgeous Asian girl named Eunice Parks, a selfish, totally contemporary global prototype, throws Lenny into a helpless state of love. The word itself “love” rarely exists in this almost apocalyptic America. Once back in New York, Lenny texts and emails Eunice, whose luck is running out in Russia, and who feels compelled to return to help her physically abused mother and sister, offering Eunice a place to stay.
This austere novel could be seen as a satire on technology taken to its ultimate extreme, depleting and horrific. All human beings wear “apparrats” which hang from their necks, constantly recording multiple amounts of data of everyone walking by, even their cholesterol and triglyceride levels. Equally shocking is the fact that their sexual desirability, personality attributes, and all sorts of physical sustainability quotients are also projected for the entire wireless connected world to view. So, actual human contact, or even normal conversation, rarely occurs since basically everything one wants to know about another human being is literally at his or her finger tips. Actual love between one person and another, a dying art, rarely occurs; however, Lenny sees the possibility with Eunice and actively pursues her.
As the novel progresses, New York deteriorates and National Guard tanks clutter the streets. Lenny, desperate to keep his job, worries about his credit score, which can be seen on every corner of the city on credit towers, along with other passerbys who also have equally troublesome scores. Eunice, who is staying for free at Lenny’s apartment and ultimately using him to her ultimate advantage, worries about her raging father who is abusing her mother and sister. Her powerful assertiveness, in which she “minored” in college, threatens to squash Lenny, who has the “savior complex.” An old fashioned book lover, Lenny hopes futilely to have a relationship in which he actually reads literature and poetry to his beloved. He treasures his first edition Chekhov collection of short stories, which a young international traveler noted “smelled bad”.
As far as predictability, Super Sad True Love Story, may take the prize; yet, I will keep reading to see how Shteyngart plays it out. As far a contemporary language and futuristic devices, the author excels. The colorful jacket says it all graphically: the multicolored “buttons”, a symbol of the high tech world of mobile devices, are all bright colors, except for the one circling the word “sad”, which is stark black. The irony is inescapable. The title would have read, “Super True Love Story”—how sad! -Nan
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