A wild read, my first attempt at Shteyngart's fiction and I found it interesting and imaginative, a bit like 1984, but recognizable, with his take on now degraded USA, no longer admired, mired in debt, governed by fear and Big Brother, as China and India take over the world. The hero Lenny Abramov works for a ridiculous company called Post Human Services, a group that attempts to sell immortality to the super-rich. The thought police, called the American Restorative Authority, generally hassles the poor, the 'other,' any immigrant, thought there are not many who want to come to the US anymore. The story opens with Lenny in Italy, selling his goods, and just before heads back to the US, he falls in love with a young Korean girl named Eunice Park. We learn about Lenny through his diary, about Eunice by his emails home to a friend, her mother, and sister. There are certainly anti Republican touches, as the major new channel is Fox Liberty Prime and Fox Liberty-Ultra. The country is run by Rubenstein, a martinet, and every carries an apparat box, a small computer which gathers information of the wearer, I think, and also allows the wearer to search. Everyone carries one, as books are frowned upon, though Lenny has a huge library. Eunice ends up coming back to New York, with its empty buildings, mobs of poor, Central Park filled with vagrants, doctors on the dole because Medicare is bankrupt, as is the government, a one party dictatorship calling itself the Bipartisans, it's a wonder she returns, and to Lenny. I enjoy the texting between Eunice and her friend Grillbitch, totally uncensored and pragmatic, with little sense of conventional morality, just consuming, the latest sexy clothes from AssLuxury. It's a dismal look at at the future, but unfortunately, with my pessimism, believable. Still, the major characters, like the upper middle class, somehow manage to overlook the 'other', live, and consume. By the way, the military has been involved in an excursion into Venezuela, and the returning soldiers, denied their combat pay, are marching on the capital, for their money, which the government no longer has because of the dwindling dollar. The word they use for getting rid of the undesirables, is Harm Reduction. And everywhere one moves, their are National Guard, checking apparats, making sure one is not part of the Harm Reduction. As Lenny and Eunice hit Cervix, the hot club, helicopters descend on Central Park, killing blacks and hispanics, or "low net worth individuals," which makes those who are not one of them feel pretty dam good. When China's Central Bank comes to the US, he describes the country as 'an unstable, barely governable country presenting grave risk to the international system of corporate governance and exchange mechanisms,", in other words, a third world country, run by a racism one party system, call the bipartisans, with mottos like "a flag featuring a tiger pawing at a miniature globe and athe words 'America is back! Grrr...Dont' write us off. Ain't no stopping on now. Together we will surprise the world."
As the novel progresses, Lenny and all the elderly are thrown out of their apartment, as the undesirables are shuffled off to various low rent areas, as high rises will be built in their old areas for the wealthy, the Chinese, Norwegian, and Indian...Americans as such have become second or third world citizens, nothing works, the roads, services, everything is in shambles. And what's worst, Lenny's boss, Joshie Goldman, cuckholds Lenny, gradually wooing away Eunice, with promises of taking care of her parents, bringing them into safe desirable apartments in the city, and taking care of her sister. Lenny finally finds his parents after the Rampage, when the National Guard and police wiped out any of the undesirables who dared to challenge the status quo. His parents are barely surviving, practically starving, so Lenny takes care of them, buys them food, and generally empathizes finally with their predictment, growing up so to speak, when he realizes his parents life is 'not all about him." After Eunice leaves Lenny, we find he leaves the US, moves to Canada, then Italy, and becomes famous, as his Diary is published, and becomes a hit world-wide, mostly because it's a novelty, a BOOK. Even Eunice becomes well known, runs off with a younger man. leaving Joshie behind, and his business, Post Human Services, proves to be a charade, as all kinds of unexpected consequences follow their supposed 'miracle cure,' bankrupting the company, as it becomes a high class spa. The novel ends with a whimper, with Lenny, not Larry Abraham, in Italy, living out his life, in a rural, environment, as it becomes clear, that because of humans, the world as they know will come to an end in a generation or two, because of pollution, like of care of the environment, global warming, all the ideas that the right makes fun of. Lenny's last scene is to meet two young women, who are playing the Italian roles of his Diary. He can hardly stand them, literally shuts them off, and the novel ends in quietness and darkness,'black and complete.'
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