Wednesday, June 20, 2007
July Book: Absurdistan by Shteyngart
A "sophisticate and a melancholic," Misha is an obese 30-year-old Russian heir to a post-Soviet fortune. After living in the Midwest and New York City for 12 years, he considers himself "an American impounded in a Russian body." But his father in St. Petersburg has killed an Oklahoma businessman and then turned up dead himself, and Misha, trying to leave Petersburg after the funeral, is denied a visa to the United States. The novel is written as his appeal, "a love letter and also a plea," to the Immigration and Naturalization Service to allow him to return to the States, which lovingly and hilariously follows Misha's attempt to secure a bogus Belgian passport in the tiny post-Soviet country of Absurdistan. Along the way, Shteyngart's graphic, slapstick satire portrays the American dream as experienced by hungry newborn democracies, and covers everything from crony capitalism to multiculturalism. It's also a love story. Misha is in love with New York City and with Rouenna Sales, his "giant multicultural swallow" from the South Bronx, despite the pain they have caused him: a botched bris performed on Misha at age 18 by New York City's Hasid-run Mitzvah Mobile, and Rouenna running off with his stateside rival (and Shteyngart's doppelganger), Jerry Shteynfarb (author of "The Russian Arriviste's Hand Job") while Misha is stuck in Russia. The ruling class of Absurdistan is in love with the corrupt American company Halliburton, which is helping the rulers in a civil war in order to defraud the U.S. government. Halliburton, in turn, is in love with Absurdistan for the money it plans to make rebuilding Absurdistan's "inferstructure" and for the plentiful hookers who spend their nights and days by hotel pools looking for "Golly Burton" employees to service. And everyone is in love with America—or at least its money.
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I was prodded to recall, however, when I myself was headed off to St. Leninburg, although at the time it was saintless, and a grad, to boot. There was an orientation for those of us arriving for summer schooling from beyond the Iron Curtain, and nicely enough it was in Paris, a screaming contrast to the cluelessness of the Soyuz. On the first day of orientation, I found myself seated between James Rosenberg, now a DC scribe for McCrotchy Newspapers, and the unfortunately named Dina Hui, a stunning Italian-Korean mixture of hair and eyes and protruding buttocks.
"You're shitting me," I squeaked.
"I'm not, asshole," she sputtered in reply. "I can live with it."
If you've been reading Absurdistan, you'll probably have surmised the "Khui" is the Russian for peniss, and to make matters worse for our Koralian friend, the imperative "go to" is "Idi na," so her mere introduction to her new world was going to set off all kinds of ejaculations.
"Think of the babushkas, pierdushka," I said.
"I've thought of them," she said, "and they can go to your hui."
"Goodness," I thought to myself, "an Itorean minx!"
It turned out Rosenberg and myself were both alighting from Berkeley, that banal bastion of left-leaning laughingstocks, and that Ms. Hui hailed from none other than Accidental College.
"Surely, you know Shteyngart," said James.
"Surely," said Dina. "Sure as I'm the only female of any schpeshies that hasch yet to schtup Scheñor Shteyngart."
"You didn't schtup Shteyngart?" I queried queerly.
"Neither did I boink the bejeebers out of him."
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