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Living Section of the San Bernardino SUN July 23, 2006 
Absurdistan By Gary Shteyngart Random House, 2006 
Where is this country called Absurdistan? Although theatre of the absurd may have died with the death of its creator Samuel Beckett, writer-of-the-moment Gary Shteyngart picks up the thread of the absurd and takes it to the extreme in his new novel - "Absurdistan." Whereas Beckett portrayed the absurdities of life through minimalism, Shteyngart chronicles those with excessive language frequently too raunchy for some mainstream readers. The book is narrated by its anti-hero - rotund, thirty-year old Misha Borisovich Vainberg, son of the 1,238th richest man in Russia. A secular Jew with a brooding Slavic soul, Misha has come of age in the last decade of the existence of the Soviet Union. After the fall of communism, Misha's father - Beloved Papa, a former dissident in search of his Jewish identity, makes "his first million off a Leningrad car dealership that sold many wretched things but thankfully no cars." Newly rich Beloved Papa sends his son to be educated in America at the Midwestern Accidental College. But before 18-year-old Misha gets to his college he must stop at a New York Hasidic community to be circumcised - to please Beloved Papa. The botched-up circumcision haunts Misha for the rest of his life. In the early months of 2001 Misha finds himself trapped in Leninsburg (St. Petersburg) living in the malignant luxury of the new Russian rich. He longs to return to New York and Rouenna, his South Bronx love, but the INS will not allow him in the U.S. because Beloved Papa has killed an Oklahoma businessman. After Beloved Papa is blown up by Mafia rivals and 35 million USD are transferred into Misha's offshore accounts to keep him quiet, he leaves for Absurdistan where he hopes to buy a Belgian passport - his ticket out of this godforsaken part of the world. Absurdistan is an oil rich former Soviet Republic on the Caspian Sea. Most likely it represents an amalgam of the Caucasus - Eurasian republics of Georgia and Azerbaijan, pieces of history of that region and a doze of the author's imagination. Skyscrapers of glass and chrome and designer boutiques, compliments of Halliburton and other oil-hungry companies, line the main street of the Absurdi capital. But within a few days of Misha's arrival, civil war breaks out between Absurdistan's two Christian factions over a ridiculous age-long dispute about the direction of the footrest on the traditional Eastern Orthodox cross. The borders are closed and once again Misha is trapped in the world he yearns to escape. While love Rouenna is lured into an affair with Misha's Soviet compatriot and Accidental College classmate, professor Jerry Shteynfarb (shades of the author?), he is seduced by a swarthy Absurdi girl, a student at NYU and the daughter of one of the richest charlatans, I mean, men in Absurdistan. With excessive flattery, convoluted lies and huge portions of delectable food, Misha is tricked into believing that he can really make a positive difference for Jews as well as for the Absurdis. Ultimately he realizes that he's been had. That he's been swindled, sucked into the whirlpool of corporate greed and political corruption that permeate not only the former Soviet Union and the new democratic Russia, but also America and all those new democracies like Absurdistan. There is no oil and the civil war has been created for the sole reason to bring the U.S. Army to Absurdistan. "The Absurdis and their friends at Golly Burton (Halliburton) had a better idea," an Israeli man tells Misha. "Let's get a massive U.S. Army presence in here. We'll do support services, build marble outhouses, overcharge the hell out of the Department of Defense, "0cost plus" all the way, and all we have to do is get our oil services staff out and replace them with our military support people." "Absurdistan" is so densely packed with information on politics, life-styles, cultural differences and similarities, ethnic identity, history, art, architecture, literary references, metaphors and every other imaginable thing, that at the end the reader wonders what exactly is the book about. Of course, in very general terms, it is about political and corporate corruption in the world. "This is also a book about too much love," writes the author in the Prologue. And also about politics, money and sex, I might add - the things that are supposed to make the World go around. Absurdistan is here, there and everywhere, it is our entire planet. Ophelia Georgiev Roop Library Director San Bernardino Public Library |
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