Poured Over: Gary Shteyngart on Our Country Friends

“I’m here to have a dialogue with a person. And if I’m just gonna sit there and look down at my lap, well, speaking profoundly into my lap. That’s not enough for me, I need to speak out–and entertain.” Gary Shteyngart’s new novel, Our Country Friends, is our November B&N Book Club pick, and it’s a charming (and provocative) story of friendship and the family we make. Gary joins us on the show to talk about how friendships evolve (or don’t), societal scorecards and lost paradises, why he wrote a memoir in his late thirties, the writers who’ve influenced him, from Chekhov to Chang-rae Lee, and more. Featured books: Our Country Friends, The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, Absurdistan and Little Failure by Gary Shteyngart. Produced/hosted by Miwa Messer and engineered by Harry Liang.
Poured Over is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher. New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays.

From this episode:
B&N: So it’s obvious that Chekhov has a huge hold on this book for multiple characters, for tone, for lots of different reasons. But can we talk about who some of your other influences have been over time, and some of those books?
Gary Shteyngart: Well, my mentor in grad school–and he helped me publish my first book (The Russian Debutante’s Handbook—eds.) was Chang-rae Lee, he’s an amazing, amazing person in general; a great writer who just had another brilliant book out recently (My Year Abroad—eds.). Yeah, he was, in some ways, the biggest influence because when I went to his program, he’s teaching at Hunter College after around that time, he said, you know, the humor, everything’s in there, but it needs a little bit more of the blood and guts of the immigrant relationships. And, and it’s funny, because over the years, I think he’s gotten funnier, right. And for me, was quite the opposite. It was all humor all the time. Right. So, he helped me modulate that….I’m trying to think of more contemporary novelists. I mean, there’s so many great books being written today….Luster was wonderful — by Raven Leilani – it is a really great book. I love the outsider’s perspective…obviously, said from a young African American woman’s perspective, but very kind of cool and sly, but also very vulnerable.
I also teach at Columbia, at the MFA program, and I want to start teaching a course on humor, how to get humor across and how to make sure that when you’re doing humor, you’re also doing tragedy as well. Because humor without tragedy or tragedy without humor, to me is really an unsatisfactory package. I’m sorry to say that if you give me a book that is deep and meaningful, but completely lacks humor, ah, I may read it and learn something, but I am not going to put it on my greatest of greatest hits list.
B&N: Humor gives readers a chance to breathe, and I think it’s impossibly important to have. I feel like you do if there’s not some humor somewhere, I get a little itchy.
GS: Yeah, I do as well. And if I’m just gonna sit there and look down at my lap, well, speaking profoundly into my lap. That’s not enough for me, I need to speak out–and entertain.
B&N: Who are some of the authors that would be on that syllabus? I realize you haven’t totally figured it out yet but are there a couple that you would automatically say, Oh, right.
GS: Yeah, I think it would want to combine old and young, which I tried to do in my seminars on craft. So, I would probably throw in from the old school I would put in Nabokov, who is hilarious. A lot of it is very acidic humor, but it’s still wonderful, and a master craftsperson. Of course, I would throw in the much-deceased and much-maligned Philip Roth in there. I know these days, there’s a controversy, especially about his biographer, but I think Portnoy’s…I’ve taught Portnoy’s in other classes. It’s a great, it’s a very performative book, I knew Roth when he was alive, and I don’t think he would ever think of that as his favorite book. In fact, I think it both gave him you know, this incredible fame, but also kind of restricted everything he wrote afterwards. But I mean, you could, you know, imagine Dustin Hoffman reading that book aloud. It would be brilliant, right? It’s, it’s great. And a lot of people now are writing very performative things. So, I put that in. And then from younger people, yeah, actually, I was thinking Luster would maybe make it on the list. White Teeth, Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, which is incredibly funny, I would put that in there. I think, oh, Fleishman is in Trouble would be very good and kind of ruffian in its own way. I hope humor’s gonna make a comeback soon. Because I’ve always been, I’ve always been a huge proponent, as you know…Even Dostoevsky can be funny, and he is, you know, one of the most depressed persons who’s ever wielded a pen, but Russia kind of inspires humor, because the whole thing is so outlandish, the whole country is was and will be so outlandish.