Gary Shteyngart / Features / Untitled Books

"Note to self: must write a novel about America’s decline."

Gary Shteyngart

Gary Shteyngart, author of the brilliant Super Sad True Love Story and recently named as one of the New Yorker's Twenty Under Forty, vanquishes his hangover, crashes East Egg and remembers that beautiful first kiss.

Friday

Woke up hungover. What the hell happened the other night? All I had was one 214-ounce rum-based drink and the next morning - disaster. Went to the coffee shop and had a macchiato but they ran out of the green tea and lemon cookie that I enjoy so much and which I falsely believe restores me to good health. Met a local television crew for a jaunt around Stuyvesant Park, right outside of where I went to high school. Showed them the bench where I had my first drunken kiss at a very late age and then this other bench where we kiddies drank 16-ounce tallboys of bad American beer while trying not to get busted by the cop we called Officer McDonut. They filmed everything. I love the interviewer. He joked about starting a band called Sex Night With Challah, which is a reference to something in my first novel The Russian Debutante's Handjob (or whatever the hell it was called). Went home and cried myself to sleep. Did some telephone interviews about how I feel about technology. More sleep. Why didn't they have that green tea cookie? Bastards! It's all a mess.

Saturday

Weekend here. Okay, got to regroup. They had the green tea cookie, but when I gave them a $50 bill to pay for it, it was like whoa! They had to run some kind of special scanning pen across the surface to make sure my lousy $50 was legit. We're talking about £37.50 here, people! What the hell has happened to this country? Note to self: must write a novel about America's decline. Took a walk around Manhattan. On the whole, people have remained reasonably rich. At the farmer's market in Union Square many $50 bills exchanged for small amounts of locavore produce from Upstate New York. You want how much for parsley??? Considered getting a free massage from this strange-looking dude in the park. Thought better of it.

Sunday

Goddamn global warming! It was fine when it wasn't happening to me, but now it is. Probably 150 degrees today. People had this angry melted look in their eyes. Figured I'd milk the last days of summer by going to Governor's Island. The ferry was mad hot, no air conditioning. The island was overrun with hipsters dressed like flappers and whatnot because they were having some kind of 1920s theme party. Everyone looked way more sober than Zelda or F. Scott would ever have been on a weekend. Or a weekday, come to think of it. On the way home some transport snafu, ferries delayed, fire trucks everywhere. It's all falling apart, I tell you. Met some friends for a dozen drinks. Big problem in my new neighborhood - complete lack of normal bars. This one dude at this tricked-out yuppie joint told me he was "a V.C." and I thought "wow, a real Viet Cong!" But what he meant was Venture Capitalist.

Monday

Ugh, not feeling so hot. They had the green tea cookie again but the macchiato went down kind of funny. It's really too hot to do any work today. Went home and watched my favorite BBC movie of all time. Threads by Barry Hines, circa 1984. It's about how Sheffield gets blown to smithereens and the protagonists end up eating irradiated sheep. Actually cheered me up quite a bit! Smacked my laptop on my tummy and wrote some brilliant prose. Took a long nap. Ordered some spicy dan dan noodles from the Grand Sichuan. Okay. Life's not too shabby.

Tuesday

Um, it's really best if we do not discuss this day at all.

Wednesday

Busy publicity day. Choked on my cookie and the macchiato scalded my shirt. Had to run home and change. Off to Reuters. Nice interview, but I was kind of famished without my cookie and had to run to this Uzbek joint in Midtown to get their first order of rice plov and manty dumplings. Then some videotaping about my life for this non-profit place my mom used to work for. Then the CBC! Did I ever mention how much I love Canadians? They are my favorite people in the whole world. I once spent an entire week in Montreal trying to live like one of my most beloved writers Mordecai Richler. The constant intake of smoked meat, cognac and Cohibas nearly killed me, but it was worth it. That's the thing about all this locavore parsley and V.C. bars - it all kind of sucks. People used to live better (and die sooner).

Thursday

I've been sad all summer because my Best Friend Forever has been away to Chicago. But he's coming back soon!!! My BFF is a dachshund named Felix, but he's something of a genius. We shot a short trailer for my Super Sad book together in May. Quiet day, lots of napping, but things got better in the evening when some friends of mine showed up from LA and we went to this great Korean place on 35th Street called Madangsui and ate the most delicious micro-brisket and rib eye. Then we went back to the Lower East Side to my favorite bar Clandestino and I ran into all these people I know. God, I miss that bar. I'm going to have to apply for a taxi allowance grant so I can go back every night. Otherwise it's a 40-minute walk and I'm barely alive.

Friday

Spoke to the BBC World Service in a recording studio. Very nice talk about technology, how I hate it, what it's doing to me, please make it stop already. Can someone explain to me what the BBC is? It seems so God-like, it's everywhere and everything at once. World Service. Is there, like, Localized Service? So all in all, a pretty decent week there (except for Tuesday, which let's just forget about right now). The green tea cookie is back, my dachshund is on his way, Sheffield remains reasonably intact, and I did a lot of interviews in which I got to talk about myself quite a bit. In the year 2010 could one ask for anything more? I'm Gary Shteyngart and I love humanity. Mwah!