By Michael H. Miller 11/27/12 4:35pm

books

Gary Shteyngart. (Photo by Elisabetta A. Villa/Getty Images)

Leninglad! Celebrating 10 Years of Gary Shteyngart, Contemporary Literature’s Hairiest, Funniest Author

Early on in Gary Shteyngart’s first novel, The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, which celebrated its 10th anniversary this year, the fickle protagonist, Vladimir Girshkin, a 25-year-old employee at the fictional Emma Lazarus Immigrant Absorption Society in New York, has gone to Westchester to receive his perennial guilt trip and a free meal from his parents. Vladimir’s mother has become a moderately successful businesswoman in the U.S. after the family’s departure from their native Leningrad, the city from which Mr. Shteyngart himself emigrated when he was 7. When Vladimir attempts escape to catch the 4:51 train back to the city, his mother, drunk on rum, detains him and makes him pace the house’s master bedroom.

“You walk like a Jew,” she tells him. “I’ve been keeping my eyes on you for years, but it just hit me today, your little Jew-walk. Come here, I’ll teach you to walk like a normal person.” Vladimir braces himself for a long afternoon. Read More

By Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke 11/09/12 9:58am

It's a dog's life

felix 3

A Letter From Gary Shteyngart’s Dog

Author Gary Shteyngart’s dachshund wrote to BAM to express his canine concern about his owner at the upcoming Gary Shtenygart Roast, a “Friar’s Club style” roast where Mr. Shtenygart’s friends will take shots at the writer to mark the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the publication of The Russian Debutante’s Handbook.

“Last night, while my favorite human Gary Shteyngart was dripping gherkin juice and pickled cod balls onto his green polyester shirt, I noticed a tear trickling down his face,” wrote Felix the dachsund, in remarkably similar prose to his human owner. “I peered over his slumped shoulder and saw on the interwebs that in a couple weeks, some famous people are gathering at BAM to make fun of him.” Read More

By Emily Witt 10/05/11 3:08pm

Book Parties

lafarge

Paul LaFarge’s Luminous Book Party

Paul LaFarge’s new novel, Luminous Airplanes, is both a regularly formatted novel and an online “hyperromance” (for more on what that means read the history he just wrote over at Salon). For his book party then, he decided he couldn’t just have cheese cubes, wine and the usual sidelong glances and gossip. Instead he organized a participatory experience of his work that was something between a haunted house and a contemporary art installation. Read More

By Emily Witt 7/12/11 7:30pm

Working Vacations

(Illustration by Joe Wilson)

In the Colonies, It's Write Mischief

They summer in the colonies, the writers of New York, scattering forth to the hills as the days grow more sultry: to Yaddo, to MacDowell, to Millay and Ledig House! They go to work, of course, to work uninterruptedly and produce literary classics, and then, after all that exhaustive working, to play Ping-Pong and drink. Read More