Absurdistan
by Gary Shteyngart
Published by Random House
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Reviewed by Nick Capo, Assistant Professor of English, Illinois College
Misha Borisovich Vainberg is a man with insatiable appetites for food, sex, rap music, and brooding. He calls himself "an American impounded in a Russian's body" and "a puppy deposited in a den of wolves." But Misha is a 325-pound puppy with tens of millions of dollars in the bank and a helpful but maddening network of sophisticates, his father's criminal contacts, Russian Jews, and his manservant, Timofey.
At the beginning, Misha is trapped in St. Petersberg, Russia, because of "his father's recent murder of [a] precious Oklahoma businessman." The drama unfolds as Misha struggles to return to the United States. During his travels, Misha wrestles with his ambivalence toward his "Beloved Papa," an honorific simultaneously ironic and sincere, and his girlfriend Rouenna.
Readers who enjoy John Kennedy Toole, Don DeLillo, and Neal Stephenson should enjoy Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan. This novel deploys the abandon and knowledge that you find in the best satires. It mercilessly lampoons the people and institutions that are so easy to dislike--Russian prostitutes love the men of "Golly Burton" (Halliburton).
Yet this novel also displays sympathy toward Misha Vainberg's stubborn insistence that people are more than the sum of their ethnicity and nationality. Absurdistan asserts that a person's home is wherever the people and places that make him feel most alive are located.
Absurdistan contains countless examples of witty observations or effective description. Consider: "In addition to being bald, Alyosha-Bob has a pinched face ending in a reddish goatee, wet blue eyes that fool you with their near-tears, and enormous flounder lips cleansed hourly by vodka."
The novel's constant surprises offer ample entertainment, but Absurdistan's insistence that Misha Vainberg's story, the struggles of one person among chaos and war, matters most is the key. Absurdistan reminds us that we live in a world that often seems irrational and vindictive, yet many of us somehow stumble upon a mental and physical place where we can be happy.
Armchair Interviews says: Any particular instance of Shteyngart's humor or prose style might not suit a reader, but this novel is simply so rich that every reader can find something to appreciate.