Little Failure

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Little Failure: A Memoir
1a-Shteyngart - Little failure 2014.jpg
Random House 2014 book jacket
AuthorGary Shteyngart
Audio read byJonathan Todd Ross
SubjectAutobiographies, memoirs
GenreNarrative non-fiction
Published2014
PublisherRandom House
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint, eBook, Audio
Pages349
ISBN 9780679643753 9780812982497
OCLC 841557764

Little Failure is a 2014 memoir by American writer Gary Shteyngart, which was published by Random House [1] [2] [3]

Contents

Brief book summary

Gary Shteyngart was a young asthmatic immigrant when he was brought to the United States from Russia by parents who knew little about American culture. To help him fit in, they changed his name from Igor to Gary, hoping it would spare him from some of the bullying he'd face. [1]

And the story follows Shteyngart's life through different stages: from his childhood obsession with sci-fi and computer games on his Commodore 64 to his teenage years at Stuyvesant High School, where he traded games for drugs and alcohol. He went to Oberlin College, hoping to finally find love, and he did, meeting his first serious girlfriend. In an attempt to impress her, he crashed her car into a restaurant. [1]

After college, he moved to New York and fell for a woman named Pamela, who was in a relationship with someone else. Shteyngart wrote about his love for her as a form of self-abasement, a chance to beg for love he knew he wouldn't get. Pamela later went to jail for assaulting a man with a hammer. [1]

Shteyngart realized he had a drinking problem as he approached his 30s. For this reason he started therapy, and successfully sold his first novel. [1]

About the book

Panic attack

According to a review in The Guardian by J. Robert Lennon, the book is framed by a panic attack Shteyngart suffered in 1996 after seeing a picture of the Chesme Church in a New York City bookshop. [4]

Book trailer

A comedic book trailer for the memoir featured Rashida Jones, James Franco, Jonathan Franzen, and Alex Karpovsky. [5]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Andy Borowitz (January 2, 2014). "Mr. Shteyngart's Planet". The New York Times . Retrieved 20 August 2015.
  2. Furman, Yelena (2015). "Telling Their Hybrid Stories: Three Recent Works of Russian-American Fiction". The Slavic and East European Journal. 59 (1): 116–124. doi:10.30851/59.1.007. JSTOR   44739585.
  3. Hamilton, Geoff (2017). "Little Failure". Understanding Gary Shteyngart. University of South Carolina Press. pp. 77–94. doi:10.2307/j.ctv6sj85n.9. ISBN   978-1-61117-764-0. JSTOR   j.ctv6sj85n.9.
  4. J. Robert Lennon (February 21, 2014). "Little Failure by Gary Shteyngart – review". The Guardian . Retrieved 20 August 2015.
  5. Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine : Little Failure by Gary Shteyngart | Book Trailer. YouTube .