The Russian Debutante's Handbook

Homeless In The United States And Russia

The Library of America's anthology, "Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing" offers moving testimony to the contributions of American immigrants to American literature and to life in the United States over the past four centuries. Among the many writers included in the book is Gary Shteyngart (b. 1972). At the age of seven, Shteyngart immigrated to the United States with his family from Leningrad. His essay "The Mother Tongue between Two Slices of Rye" appears in the Library of America anthology and shows a writer with some nostalgia for the Soviet Russia of his childhood, especially for the Russian language. The LOA introduction to the essay quotes Shteyngart as saying that childhood in Soviet Leningrad "only became horrible once you were an adult."

Shteyngart's first novel, "The Russian Debutante's Handbook" (2002) predates the short essay discussed above. In the essay, Shteyngart notes the partially autobiographical character of the novel, especially as it involves the main character's, Vladimir Girshkin, thinking, dreaming, fearing, and counting money in his native Russian. "The Russian Debutante's Handbook" includes many witty turns of phrase, funny scenes, and perceptive observations. It is in its entirety iconoclastic, irreverent, caustic, and debunking in tone. The book is far too long and the scenes and characters tend toward both the stereotyped and implausible. It is manically written, on overdrive or on loud almost without pause. I grew impatient with this book. More, I disliked it.

The characters in the book and the conflicting cultures, American and Russian, with which it deals are portrayed as amoral with everyone in search only of material success and the main chance. The novel tells the story of the young Vladimir Girshkin who immigrated from Russia with his parents, a successful doctor and lawyer, in 1972 as part of a Carter administration initiative to allow Russian Jews to immigrate in exchange for American grain to alleviate a severe food shortage. Vladimir was awkward, out of place, and uncomfortable with people both in his native Russia and in the United States. He is the quintessential and stereotyped outsider. Vladimir's mother is overprotective and wants her son to succeed as a lawyer. After a time at a liberal midwest college, Vladimir works as a struggling clerk in New York City for the "Emma Lazarus Immigrant Absorbtion Society." He meets a strange Russian man who, for some reason is enamored of fans and who has had his application for U.S. Citizenship rejected. He wants Vladimir to help him get citizenship. At the time, Vladimir is living with a young overweight dominatrix named Challa. He jettisons Challa for an upscale New York woman, the daughter of two prominent academics. Vladimir hopes his relationship with this woman will help ease his loneliness and pervasive alienation and help him find his place in American life. In search of money, Vladimir engages in a pair of highly questionable schemes and most flee the United States for his life.

The novel is in two parts. The first part, sketched above in the briefest terms, takes place in New York while the second takes place in Prada (Prague) in its days as a cultural mecca and as a home for American and European young people. When Vladimir flees, he takes a job in the Russian mafia arranged by the fan-man whom Vladimir has defrauded by arranging for him a phony naturalization ceremony. Ultimately, of course, the truth will out. The enterprising Vladimir plans a Ponzi scheme -- a term and technique used by a relative and related to him by his mother -- on the wealthy and superficial Americans lounging about Prada pretending to be writers and bohemians. Prada remains under the shadow of the Soviet Union as shown by a large statue of Stalin and his feet. Vladimir falls in love with a woman named Morgan, from a small town in Ohio. At first blush, Morgan appears to be the wholesome American girl, well-to-do, happy with her life, a basketball player, and spending a brief time in Prada before going home to settle down. Vladimir sees in her the acceptance as an American and the home that he craves. The Russian mafioso boss ultimately discovers how Vladimir cheated his father. Beaten within an inch of his life, Vladimir escapes from Russia to return to Ohio and America and the stereotypical American life of success that has been mocked, ridiculed, and envied throughout the book.

The book tells the story of the archetypical loner or schlemel who does not fit anywhere well. The tone towards the character is a mix of mockery and sympathy. Through Vladimir's perspective, the book offers a sharp, negative view of late 20th Century life, both in the communist world and in America. Far from glorifying the Russian mob or communism, Vladimir still seems to feel for most of the novel more at home in Prada than in America. Although Vladimir seeks success in the United States, under pressure from his mother, he never seems to like the country or its people or to see much value in what it offers beyond the opportunity to get rich.

I thought the book grossly overdone, its tone sharp, its characters stereotypical, and its portrayal of the United States unconvincing. There is much to be said about the difficulties of moving between different cultures: the culture of the United States and one's native land. Many of the writers in the Library of America collection insightfully address this issue. For readers searching for varying perspectives on the immigrant experience, this book might be of interest. Taken for itself, the book is a disappointment.

Robin Friedman