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PowellsBooks.Blog
Authors, readers, critics, media − and booksellers.

Q&As

Powell's Q&A: Gary Shteyngart, Author of 'Lake Success'

by Gary Shteyngart, August 31, 2018 9:37 AM
Lake Success by Gary Shteyngart
Photo credit: Brigitte Lacombe

Describe your latest work.
Lake Success
is the story of Barry Cohen, a hedge fund guy whose fund is being investigated by the SEC, and who flees his failing marriage, autistic son, and imploding career on a Greyhound bus, searching for his college sweetheart across America. Meanwhile, the year is 2016, so some, um, interesting things are about to happen electorally.

What was your favorite book as a child?
I grew up in Leningrad and I loved the Russian-language Tom Sawyer with an introduction by one of Stalin’s henchmen: “Tom Sawyer very bad boy, he want to control means of production.”

When did you know you were a writer?
When I was five I wrote my first novel, Lenin and His Magical Goose. My grandma paid me in cheese for it. 

What does your writing workspace look like?
I write in bed next to an espresso maker. At times a dachshund comes to visit me and I use him as a pillow for a brief nap.

What do you care about more than most people around you?

I want espresso beans, duvet covers, and dachshunds of the finest quality. 

Share an interesting experience you've had with one of your readers.
A reader just had me sign his two-week-old baby. I’m sure there are laws against this, but apparently not in Seattle.

Tell us something you're embarrassed to admit.
I often wear no clothes during the writing process. Sorry. Think about something else! 

Introduce one other author you think people should read, and suggest a good book with which to start.
Paul La Farge is the freaking best. Read Night Ocean and then everything else.

Besides your personal library, do you have any beloved collections? 
I love the cute little library in my Upstate village. They have tons of great books for my four-year-old. Strong Mo Willems collection. 

What's the strangest job you've ever had?
I was a janitor in a nuclear power plant when I was a teenager. And that’s where the baldness began.

Have you ever made a literary pilgrimage? 
Only to my bathroom.

What scares you the most as a writer?
People don’t read books that much anymore, so I make book trailers. Check ‘em out on YouTube!

If someone were to write your biography, what would be the title and subtitle?
Little Failure II: Revenge of the Soviet Jew

Offer a favorite sentence or passage from another writer.
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” — Orwell, 1984

Describe a recurring nightmare.

I wake up to discover that my dachshund has become my biographer. And he knows where all the bones are buried and he’s going to dig them up and everyone will know. Everyone will know.

Do you have any phobias?
Fear of heights, enclosed spaces, outdoor spaces, social situations, asocial situations, feral mongooses, dachshund biographers, the cosmos.

Name a guilty pleasure you partake in regularly.
I collect and read about watches. I’m sorry.

What's the best advice you’ve ever received?

“That’s not where that goes.”

Share a Top Five book list of your choice. 
I like dystopias, books about immigrants, and Russian crap.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
Any short story collection by Chekhov that includes "Lady With Lapdog."  
÷ ÷ ÷
Gary Shteyngart is the New York Times bestselling author of the memoir Little Failure (a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist) and the novels Super Sad True Love Story (winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize), Absurdistan, and The Russian Debutante’s Handbook (winner of the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction). His books regularly appear on best-of lists around the world and have been published in 30 countries. Lake Success is his most recent book.



Books mentioned in this post

The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood

1984

George Orwell

Fathers and Sons (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

Little Failure A Memoir

Gary Shteyngart

White Teeth

Zadie Smith

Pnin

Nabokov, Vladimir

Absurdistan

Gary Shteyngart

Super Sad True Love Story

Shteyngart, Gary

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Mark Twain

The Night Ocean

Paul La Farge

Lake Success

Gary Shteyngart
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