Gary Shteyngart Little Failure Analysis

Gary Shteyngart’s memoir “Little Failure” retraces the journey of an immigrant from Soviet Russia to the United States, at a time characterized by the ideological, economical and political power struggle between the two countries. This immigrant experience, as with many, is rich with historical stories and cultural contradictions, giving the reader insight on where the author comes from and his new surroundings. However, as Shteyngart’s tale progresses, the real Gary is gradually exposed, enabling us to understand him beyond his immigrant status. Though Shteyngart’s permanent move from Leningrad, Russia to the United States plays a crucial role in the definition of his identity, the author is more than your typical immigrant split between

two conflicting cultures; he is a “lifelong misfit” (RandomHouse.com) struggling against his weaknesses and failures to find his place in this world.
In his autobiographical novel, Shteyngart recounts his experience as a Jew in Soviet Russia and as a Soviet immigrant in the United States, along with the many adventures and relationships that have shaped him throughout his life. So, who is Igor Shteyngart? According to his birth certificate, Shteyngart is “a citizen of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic and a member of the future Communist Society” (Ch. 2), and in fact, Gary will remain a “loyal compatriot of [his] great motherland” (Ch. 2) many years after he and his family move to the “enemy” (Ch. 7). However, in spite of his greatest convictions about the Soviet Union, Gary and his family are out of place as Jewish devotees in Soviet Russia, a country where their relatives were ostracized and sentenced to death for their religious beliefs during World War II. Consequently, the Shteyngarts will become “Grain Jews, brought from the Soviet Union to America by Jimmy Carter in exchange for so many tons of grain and a touch of advanced technology.” (Ch. 8) Upon their arrival in the United States in 1979, similarly to many immigrants throughout the years and still today, Gary and his family’s primary desire is to find their place, to find a home. And so, they pursue their wish. They pursue the American dream: the ownership of a home in a middle-class neighborhood with a television and a bookcase. A space big enough to welcome family and friends for a Thanksgiving dinner. In school, reluctantly relinquishing his “Russianness” (Ch. 11) and embracing the American pop culture, Gary will also strive to become an American, to identify with his fellow classmates and to fit in.
With this part of Shteyngart’s biography in mind, the author could very simply be described as one of the stereotypical figures of the Cold War period.

In fact, Shteyngart’s behavior as developed previously is predominant in numerous immigration and twentieth century tales. For example, in the movie adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated, the audience follows the journey of a young Jewish American in Ukraine, helped by two locals, for the woman who saved his grandfather during World War II. Though Everything is Illuminated’s three protagonists are captivating, they do not seem to be fully developed beyond their ‘rigid search’. Jonathan Safran Foer is a young Jewish of Soviet/Ukrainian descent, living in America, dedicated to retracing his defining heritage, to understand where he comes from. We know little more about his life in the United States. Alex Petrov, Jonathan’s guide and translator on this trip, is an uncensored, attention-craving Americanized Russian who will grow as he uncovers and embraces his family background. Baruch, Alex’s grandfather, though portrayed as an advocate of the former Soviet Union and its anti-Semitism, will reveal to have been the victim of its ideology. A Jewish, faced with the guns of Nazi soldiers, who will deny his ethnicity and religion to survive and who will eventually forget where he comes from. It is only once he revisits and comes to term with his past that Baruch finds peace. In a way, these ‘uncomplicated’ characters offer delineations of three key individuals of the post-World War II world and conveniently, the multiple facets of Gary the

immigrant.
However, there is more to Gary than his ‘dual-nationality’. In fact, as he shares his childhood in Leningrad, his arrival and adaptation to the United States, his American aspirations and his relationship wit his family and his classmates, we discover that Shteyngart’s need to belong, his struggle to find a real home, isn’t exclusively linked to his permanent move to this “pool of pure Technicolor” after a childhood in the “monochromatic” Soviet Union (Ch. 7). In fact, it is only by the sixth chapter of the novel that the author describes his family’s migration from Leningrad to East Berlin, to Vienna, to Rome and finally to the John F. Kennedy International Airport.
In his first few chapters, Shteyngart concentrates on setting the scene for the reader, introducing his present life in the United States as a liberal college graduate and an aspiring writer working as a paralegal, with a ponytail but - or therefore - without a love life. He also explains his asthmatic condition and his relationship with his mother and father. Gary will then dedicate the greater half of his novel to detailing his growth throughout the years, from SSSQ and Stuyvesant High School to Oberlin College, from his drunken years to his eventual visit to Russia.
Why are these chapters so revealing? As Shteyngart shares his childhood memories, college disasters and adulthood mishaps, he adopts a very self-deprecating tone. In fact, from the very opening sentence of his autobiography, the reader is introduced to the ‘little’ Gary- despite him being an adult- hiding out “in the immense shadows of the World Trade Center” (Ch. 1) . This is one of the many comments Shteyngart will make in attempt to belittle himself. He seems to believe that he is doomed for failure. “I’m still operating on the theory that I fail at everything I try” (Ch. 1). At every opportunity, Shteyngart will hint to his smallness, putting emphasis on the characteristics that have brought on his nickname, and the title for his memoir, Failurchka or “Little Failure”. His physical description, his sickness, his unsuccessful writing attempts, his loveless life, the liberal arts college career his parents don’t approve of, their “tough love” (Ch. 1) and their “looming razvod” (Ch. 18) are all evidence of his lack of ability, his lack of success.
When he arrives in the United States, he isn’t just another Soviet Jew child, another “Grain Jew” (Ch. 8). No, he is an asthmatic, “pale and helpless” (Ch. 9) boy, safeguarded by his parents from everything. He is incessantly battling for their love and his classmates’s approval, “working ridiculously hard at becoming an American” (Ch. 18) and at satisfying the hopes for his successful future. Throughout his years in the United States, he will also come to regret many failed relationships - both romantic and platonic- dedicating entire chapters to Nadine, Jennifer and John. He will lose himself to his addictions to drugs, attention and money.
Nonetheless, beyond Shteyngart’s satirical self-deprecating humor and dramatic tales, this life account reveals within the author a more profound psychological human struggle: the desire and need to belong, to fit into a community, and accordingly to be loved by others. As Shteyngart puts it upon his entry into Stuyvesant High School, “friendship is almost as important to me as the acquisition of prime outer-borough real estate” (Ch. 15). However, no matter where Shteyngart finds himself, he feels like he doesn’t belong, like he’s out of place: as a Jew in the Soviet Union, as a Russian in the United States, as a weak asthmatic boy in Hebrew School, as a “terrible student” (Ch. 16) at Stuyvesant High School. Upon his enrollment at Oberlin College more than a decade after his arrival in the United States, Shteyngart eventually seems to find what he has been looking for: “The five of us […] together we are what I’ve always wanted out of life, a community among whom I do not have to feel second-rate” (Ch. 20). Similarly, he will find himself a place in this world through his writing, one of his few successes.
In all, Gary Shteyngart… “Swinging between a Soviet home life and American aspirations, Shteyngart found himself living in two contradictory worlds, all the while wishing that, [despite his failures and weaknesses], he could find a real home in one. And somebody to love him.” (RandomHouse.com)