The best-laid plans often go astray. Ask the Shteyngarts, who fled Leningrad in 1972 for America, with dreams of Harvard Law School for their only child, little asthmatic Gary. But Gary had plans of his
own. “What kind of profession is this, writer?” his mom asked him. “You want to be this?” He did —and the law’s loss is our gain.
He’s given us three great novels —“Absurdistan,” “The Russian Debutante’s Handbook” and “Super Sad True Love Story” —and now an unforgettable memoir: Out Tuesday, “Little Failure”—one of his father’s fond nicknames for him, the other was “Snotty” —is a hilarious, occasionally heartbreaking account of immigrant angst and ambition.
Here are four other memoirs from Shteyngart’s library.
Angela’s Ashes
by Frank McCourt
When I read “Angela’s Ashes,” I thought: I wished I had taken Frank McCourt’s classes at Stuyvesant. Maybe I would have learned to look at the world through kinder, more hopeful eyes. That man lived through everything and he ended up, oddly enough, in the same Manhattan apartment building where I now live.
Speak, Memory
by Vladimir Nabokov
When I read “Speak, Memory,” I thought: I wish I left Russia at a less tender age, like Nabokov did. I wish I had better known the snows of my own country. Learning English from your governess and then transforming the English language as an adult seems like the way to go.
This Boy’s Life
by Tobias Wolff
When I read “This Boy’s Life,” I thought: The pain of the immigrant can be eclipsed by the pain of the native-born. All it takes is being born in the wrong circumstances. Wolff also captures the American mid-century with prose that feels spare and just right.
The Liars’ Club
by Mary Karr
When I read “The Liars’ Club” I thought: One can take a difficult childhood, one can study it, think about it, react to it — and then one can sit down and make art of it. That’s what Mary Karr did. I still think of this as my favorite contemporary memoir, because it goes back to places most people would spend a lifetime escaping, and it does so with wit and wisdom and warmth.