Bookworm International Literary Festival 2012: Andrei Kurkov and Gary Shteyngart
Sunday afternoon I was at the Bookworm, without any children in my company. Tempting as it would have been to cut loose and drink all the bourbon, I wanted to be able to pay attention.
Andrei Kurkov and Gary Shteyngart were well-paired for this afternoon discussion titled "If You Didn’t Laugh, You’d Cry: Humour, Satire and the Absurd." Both men are extremely funny, almost opportunistic dark humorists. I did not catch the moderator's name, though more regular Bookworm-ers would recognize her immediately. She was incredibly up to the task, familiar with both authors' work enough that she was just as funny as they were.
I'll go on and on after the jump.
I had read Kurkov's Death and the Penguin and Penguin Lost only a few years ago. Nick Hornby wrote so glowingly about Death and the Penguin in his March 2006 Believer column (that I, of course, saw in the collection The Complete Polysyllabic Spree because I am not nearly literary enough to read The Believer). I have many reasons to love penguins anyway, but a book about Ukrainian organized crime and a penguin, and its sequel with more organized crime and Post-Soviet politics and the same penguin, were just too much to resist.
Gary Shteyngart has written several novels, though the only one I have read is Super Sad True Love Story which is also his most recent. My friend Sarah-the-ticket-getter had read it last year and lent it to me. I had been putting off reading it until I saw the Literary Festival announcement. I then finished it in a hurry. It's about a near-future dystopia that takes place just before the end of the United States. It is a darkly funny, unhopeful look at where we are headed, the suppositions preying on what I am sure are among our worst fears. Just as in Player Piano Vonnegut's future disaster of America was highly automated and run by engineers and managers, scary thoughts for the 1950s, Shteyngart's America is run by image-hyper-conscious retailers and media-types, and everyone lives online via their Äppärät, a small personal communication device that does everything, including connect a person to real-time ranking on his or her attractiveness and credit rating, for instance, and also broadcast them to every other Äppärät in the room.
A few scattered points from the Q&A with the moderator:
And of course, there was the book signing. I will treasure my own personal Misha.
I was really excited for the chance to see Andrei Kurkov since I enjoyed and recommended the two Penguin books to a few members of my family. I was unfamiliar with Gary Shteyngart prior to Sarah pressing this book into my hands. He also did not fail to entertain.
Andrei Kurkov and Gary Shteyngart were well-paired for this afternoon discussion titled "If You Didn’t Laugh, You’d Cry: Humour, Satire and the Absurd." Both men are extremely funny, almost opportunistic dark humorists. I did not catch the moderator's name, though more regular Bookworm-ers would recognize her immediately. She was incredibly up to the task, familiar with both authors' work enough that she was just as funny as they were.
I'll go on and on after the jump.
I had read Kurkov's Death and the Penguin and Penguin Lost only a few years ago. Nick Hornby wrote so glowingly about Death and the Penguin in his March 2006 Believer column (that I, of course, saw in the collection The Complete Polysyllabic Spree because I am not nearly literary enough to read The Believer). I have many reasons to love penguins anyway, but a book about Ukrainian organized crime and a penguin, and its sequel with more organized crime and Post-Soviet politics and the same penguin, were just too much to resist.
Gary Shteyngart has written several novels, though the only one I have read is Super Sad True Love Story which is also his most recent. My friend Sarah-the-ticket-getter had read it last year and lent it to me. I had been putting off reading it until I saw the Literary Festival announcement. I then finished it in a hurry. It's about a near-future dystopia that takes place just before the end of the United States. It is a darkly funny, unhopeful look at where we are headed, the suppositions preying on what I am sure are among our worst fears. Just as in Player Piano Vonnegut's future disaster of America was highly automated and run by engineers and managers, scary thoughts for the 1950s, Shteyngart's America is run by image-hyper-conscious retailers and media-types, and everyone lives online via their Äppärät, a small personal communication device that does everything, including connect a person to real-time ranking on his or her attractiveness and credit rating, for instance, and also broadcast them to every other Äppärät in the room.
A few scattered points from the Q&A with the moderator:
- Shteyngart refers to himself of the Nostradamus of two weeks from now. In an earlier draft of Super Sad True Love Story, several major investment houses and the automotive industry all collapse. His publisher had him re-write the book because they happened, so he had to consider even more extreme circumstances.
- After being asked why politics and comedy are such good bedfellows, Kurkov replied with a great metaphor. Politicians are like children, he said, and we get to tell them what to do, but they still won't do what we tell them. Shteyngart noted that satire works best as the collision of comedy and evil. He added, "Yes, the future is terrifying, but the present isn't so hot either."
- On a funny side note about the reception of Death and the Penguin outside of the former Soviet Union, Kurkov related an Icelandic reader's confusing reaction. The reader asked him why he had written such an erotic novel about a penguin. Kurkov did not understand. Several of the penguin's gestures the reader insisted were incredibly intimate. Only then did Kurkov learn that in Icelandic, Misha is a female name and penguin is a feminine noun.
- Both writers were invited to discuss a few of their influences. Not surprisingly, Kurkov listed his exposure to books that had been banned in the Soviet Union, including the Bible in Old Church Slavonic and Gogol. He self-described himself as being something of a magical realist, though in post-Soviet world it is much more stripped down and less florid than American magical realism. Shteyngart gave the obvious nod to Philip Roth among his mentions, as well as Chang Rae-Lee.
And of course, there was the book signing. I will treasure my own personal Misha.
I was really excited for the chance to see Andrei Kurkov since I enjoyed and recommended the two Penguin books to a few members of my family. I was unfamiliar with Gary Shteyngart prior to Sarah pressing this book into my hands. He also did not fail to entertain.
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