Gary Shteyngart — author, essayist, friend of James Franco — is among our foremost satirists. His appearance on the New 
Yorker’s “20 under 40” list and essays in The New York Times Book Review have earned him serious literary street cred. And now he’s the doomsayer behind “Super Sad True Love Story,” a near-future dystopia that foretells the collapse of the American economy and the ruinous decline of literacy. It’s a bleak world, in which books are known primarily for their off-putting smell.
Photo: Brigitte Lacombe
Shteyngart’s own book, and its marketing campaign, have made him, in the parlance of his brave new world, “so Media.” You can find him online, on the air, on your iPhone, in your magazine of choice (don’t read Travel + Leisure? How about GQ?) and on any number of blogs and news aggregators, forecasting the gradual and inevitable collapse of what we quaintly refer to as “civilization.” The book is a darkly funny romp through a kooky, nightmarish America, where people are slaves to metrics and American expatriates are forced to divulge their most intimate details to the semi-authoritarian American Restoration Authority (“For statistical purposes only,” the regime’s sinister mascot, a cartoon otter, reassures).
Shteyngart is writing from experience: He was born and raised in the twilight years of the Soviet Union, and the authenticity of his dystopian vision is apparent. “I sort of know when an empire reaches its end,” he said in a recent interview.
And yet, Shteyngart also guards a secret, a quintessentially American affliction: He is an optimist.
