The author talks about growing up in Russia and New York city, nicknames, and his new memoir, Little Failure .
On the Life Stories podcast (available on iTunes), memoir writers talk about their lives and the art of writing memoir. Recently, Gary Shteyngart came on to talk about Little Failure, where the acclaimed novelist writes candidly about his Russian childhood, emigrating to New York City in the 1980s and becoming a Reaganite youth, then a stoner whose college nickname, based on the depth and breadth of his substance consumption, was "Scary Gary," until a close friend finally convinced him to clean up his act in his late twenties.
Below are some highlights from that conversation — the entirety of which you can listen to right here:
Life Stories: Gary Shteyngart, author of Little Failure
Via beatrice.com
On the title:
"'Little Failure' was my mother's nickname for me. It's really a combination of English and Russian, "Failurchka" — failure is the English part, -chka is a diminutive meaning little. I had just graduated from Oberlin College, I was writing my first book and my mother was pressuring me to go to law school. I was living in this little studio apartment with many friendly roaches and, you know, not much in the way of savings, so to emphasize how she felt about my life to date, my mother nicknamed me 'Little Failure.' And it kind of stuck; I felt very much a failure for a very long time."
Random House
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