absurdistan
A typical male Russian sadness descended upon us. "Speaking on the subject of women," I said, "I fear my Bronx girl, Rouenna, may be the quarry of the emigre writer Jerry Shteynfarb."
"I remember that weasel," Alyosha-Bog said. "I saw him in New York once after he wrote that Russian Arriviste's Hand Job. He thinks he's the Jewish Nabokov."
(...) A man-sized industrial fan tiwrled its mighty propeller by the window, creating an unnatural breeze that tempered the suffocating dormitory heat. Pieces of paper and cardboard were being sprayed out of the fan, like the bits of potato salad trying to escape my mouth at a Women's Studies picnic. Alyosha-Bob, naked save for a pair of cotton boxers, was feeding a hardcover book into the giant fan, its remainders flying out the window,and onto the snow-covered quadrangle.
"Die, Pasternak, die!" he was shouting.
"Hey, Bob," Jerry Stheynfarb said, "what do I do with the toaster oven?"
"Toss it!" Alyosha-Bob shouted. "The fuck I gonna use it for? I'm never eating again. Hey, look at this, guys. Fucking Ada. Take that, Nabokov! You sixteen-karat bore!"
"Right on," said Shteynfarb and, without any compunction, hurled the toaster oven out the window, his weak literary arm straining under the metallic load.
- More information on Gary Shteyngart
- Shteyngart in Studio 360.
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