Author Speaks on Life and Works at Currier

Gary Shteyngart—the author of critically acclaimed novels “The Russian Debutante’s Handbook” and “Absurdistan”—came to Currier House yesterday afternoon to discuss his heritage, his writing process, and his latest book, “Super Sad True Love Story.”

With the immigrant experience a major theme in his latest novel, Shteyngart explained the literary and cultural influences behind its two main characters—Lenny Abramov, the 39-year-old Russian-Jewish son of a janitor, and Eunice Park, a 24-year-old Korean woman who majors in “Images” and minors in “Assertiveness.”

Though all of Shteyngart’s novels prominently display certain autobiographical aspects of his experiences as a Russian-Jewish immigrant in the United States, he explained that the character of Eunice emerged out of his fascination with Korean culture.

While attending New York City’s Stuyvesant High School, Shteyngart said, he was surrounded by Korean students. Today, he still counts many Koreans as his friends and the award-winning Korean author Chang Rae Lee as his mentor.

But what ultimately draws Lenny and Eunice together, Shteyngart said, are the odd similarities between the Korean and Soviet Jewish cultures.

“Koreans were colonized by Japan, and Soviet Jews also often perceive themselves as surrounded by enemies, real or imagined,” he said. “And then there’s also the shared love of cabbage. Koreans, though, have taken it to the ultimate level by adding garlic and chili peppers.”

Shteyngart told the audience that three separate literary traditions have shaped his work—the Russian tradition of Turgenev and Chekov, the American Jewish tradition of Bellow and Roth, and the immigrant tradition of Chang Rae Lee and Junot Diaz.

Shteyngart said he was “thrust into Hebrew School in Queens in 1980 when being a Russian was the worst thing you could be.”

“In Hebrew School, I pretended I was born in East Berlin,” he said. “I had to pretend to be a German in Hebrew School to give you an idea about how bad it was to be a Russian in 1980.”

From the “pressure cooker” of Stuyvesant, Shteyngart attended Oberlin College, where, he said, he “had the biggest bong on campus—Big Blue, we called it.”

Shteyngart said that each of his novels is “like a giant cuckoo clock with all these gears,” referring to the many elements—political, historical, or, in the case of “Super Sad True Love Story,” scientific—that appear in nearly all of his fiction.

“The key is just to concentrate on the characters,” he said, “on the idea that there are two or three human beings whose lives are at stake.”

Jacky Kwong ’11, who attended the event, said that the event might prompt him to read Shteyngart’s latest book.

“I’m always interested in reading immigrant fiction,” Kwong said, “as a child that grew up in an immigrant family.”

—Staff writer James K. McAuley can be reached at mcauley@fas.harvard.edu.