Irina Peris. Stories of new immigrants

Stories of new immigrants
Irina Peris

Date of publication: October 4, 2002

And the stories of new immigrants are one of the most “originally American” themes in US literature. The immigrant experience is part of the collective myth of modern America. In terms of popularity, this theme can only be rivaled by one more - that of a person resisting the elements of wild nature. From " Moby Dick " written by Melville at the end of the last century to three years ago "The Perfect Storm" by Sebastian Junger - the list of bestsellers in this direction is also growing uncontrollably.

Those American readers who would like to test their strength against the elements have to rely on established authors this year, but for readers interested in immigrant stories, a certain unknown quantity has arisen. The name of the new author is Gary Shteyngart, and his first novel is “Russian Debutante's Handbook”. The book was published by Riverhead Books, was very favorably received by critics, the Sunday New York Times published an article about the author with a full-page photograph, a recent issue of the famous literary and journalistic magazine The New Yorker published a new story by the author, and his reviews began to appear in the US mainstream press. Success? Success.

This success, absolutely necessary according to the laws of the genre, is the crown of the immigrant story. In this case, the success of the immigrant hero of the novel on the pages of books echoes the today's success of the author himself, whom his parents brought to the United States from Leningrad at the age of seven. Educated at Oberlen College, he lived in Eastern Europe and traveled throughout the former Soviet Union. As an article in the New York Times tells us, he began writing “on the table”, for himself, and the contract to publish the novel was almost a happy accident.

American criticism described the main conflict of the novel as follows: at its center is the character of the so-called “beta immigrant.” Unlike “alpha immigrants,” who are endowed with an abundance of vitality, character, tenacity, and the will to succeed in the most American sense of the word, “beta immigrants” do not possess these qualities. But they have to exist in conditions where, in Shteyngart’s words, they cannot afford the “luxury of failure.” They need to succeed no less than the “alpha immigrants,” no matter what the gap with their internal ambitions the notorious success may be.

It would seem like a wonderful premise for a good book. One that destroys stereotypes and expands the boundaries of the reader’s understanding of possible options for circumstances, characters, situations, etc. Indeed, in many ways, the image of an immigrant who started from scratch and, through an effort of will, carved out a place in the sun for himself in a new land, has already become a kind of cliché in American literature. Why not now look at those who are less likely to survive immigration?

It was with these thoughts that I sat down to write the novel. But meeting his hero, Vladimir Girshkin, alas, was not a revelation for me. On the contrary, great disappointment awaited me after reading the book. All of the above wonderfully formulated problems in the novel, if touched upon, are so superficial that it makes no sense to talk about any destruction of the framework of habitual images.

We are offered the story of the transformation of a typical outsider into a successful fraudster. From a hero with an impressive list of individual shortcomings that make him a “creature of flesh and blood” at the beginning of the novel, by the end of the novel the character turns into an empty caricature, lost among the same caricatures. It would be good if the novel could be classified as a satirical work - then, as they say, bribes from it are smooth. But no, his main character craves the reader’s sympathy, his torments cry out for sympathy, his inner world is highlighted just enough to let us understand: Vladimir aims to be a positive hero. However, having secured this very sympathy from the reader, the author does not know what to do with it next, and begins to uncontrollably entertain us, erecting phantasmagoric castles in the place where the seemingly solid ground of reality originally lay.

The first part of the book takes place in New York , where the twenty-five-year-old son - a “beta immigrant” of a successful mother - an “alpha immigrant” works in the field of helping newcomers to America. This work has neither meaning nor financial prospects for him. He is poor. He's lonely. He's disappointed. His personal life is limited to communication with two beings - his friend Shala, who earns her living in a sex club by not entirely appetizing activities with the clientele, and his college friend Baobab, who, in the Russian version of the book, in accordance with his mental abilities, would be called, undoubtedly, "oak". They live in the bohemian-shabby neighborhoods of the East Village.

Having met Francesca by chance, the intelligent and well-settled daughter of a professorial couple, Vladimir, without hesitation, rushes into the arms of a new friend, the friendly attention of her parents and their cozy apartment. His new love and adoptive family give him what he could only dream of - a sense of worth, self-confidence, and belonging to the “mainstream”. The only trouble is that Vladimir cannot afford all this... Trying to get out of the financial crisis into which he was plunged by the costs of maintaining the lifestyle of his new entourage, he finds himself in a mess that threatens him with major troubles. In a hurry, leaving New York, the hero flies to a certain encrypted and recognizable city called “Prava” (Prague).

As the action moves from real to fictional space, the novel becomes more and more flat. The plot outline interweaves the phantasmagoric leg of a statue of Stalin towering over part of the city, a gang of Russian mafiosi whom Vladimir temporarily charms, conquers, subjugates, a group of American expatriates indulging in the pleasures of artistic daring in the newly opened Eastern Europe to Western eyes. The characters appearing on the pages become outright clichés. Russian God-fearing bandits in training suits with Kalashnikovs at the ready and gold crosses on their necks; their beloved, whom - how could it be otherwise? - they meet for the first time in brothels; talk about how cruel Vladimir, this well-bred Jewish youth from a liberal American college, can be.

But there is no need to wait with bated breath for the moment when he will have to actually prove his cruelty to them. In Shteyngart's novel there is nothing similar to Babel's "Goose". Why the psychological truth of brutal realism in the fantastic Law? It is enough for the author to make the bandit open his mouth and say: “I am cruel,” and the reader will believe it, because this remark perfectly confirms the truth learned from childhood - bandits are cruel. And the hero, in order to be accepted by the “cruel” as one of his own, can only sing along with them in unison. Everything is very simple - and psychologically as believable as fairy tales for seven-year-old children are believable.

In general, it should be noted that the novel is filled with stereotypes. It contains everyone and everything that populates the American pop consciousness. There is fat, weak-willed Shala, there is a confrontational poet - the spoiled heir of a successful businessman father, there is a lustful Hungarian, an artist and a rogue who seduces young girls, there is a Russian doctor involved in defrauding insurance companies, there is a young American woman with an athletic figure and an innate sense of morality. rightness, exploding Stalin's insane leg with dynamite at the end of the novel... What, if not another stereotype, turns into the hero himself at the end of the book, calmly reasoning that even if not he, but his child will be the best thing ever 100% American on American soil?

The undeniable advantage of the novel is its humor and lively form of presentation. If the author had removed the hero from the reader at a relatively greater distance, to some extent, probably, the book would have been read as a work of the school of Ilf and Petrov . But alas - four hundred and fifty pages of text are diluted with a syrup of ersatz psychologism, with a description of some semblance of the “movements of the soul” of Vladimir Girshkin and others like him. The author was unable to sit on both literature chairs, both entertaining and serious. One is amazed when reading the reviews of American critics who compare Shteyngart’s novel with the prose of Nabokov and Dostoevsky (!!!), obviously pulling out from the memory stores the names of either never read or well forgotten Russian classics. If Shteyngart's book can be compared to anything in spirit, it is to American comedy television series. She has about the same amount of profundity and verbal panache.

Without reproaching the author for his vision of the world - this is a purely individual thing, I would like to note that he demonstrates this vision using predominantly Russian material, where he is entitled to be an “expert” by right. In this regard, his recently published story “Shylock on the Banks of the Neva” in The New Yorker is significant. The picture presented in it could be a preparation for the second part of “Russian Debutant”. The same motives come into focus: criminal characters and their morally degraded environment. The well-paced narrative offers the reader nothing more than a list of hackneyed truths: Russia is a wild country. It is ruled by bandits. Human dignity can be bought with money. The Russian soul is a mystery.

For some American readers, I hope all this will seem superficial and useless. But for most, the story will confirm their own beliefs from the list above. The reader is comfortable with the familiar picture of the world. He feels that he was always right, that intuitively, without trying too hard, he grasped the essence of Russia. Maestro Shteyngart seems to be becoming a great master of the stereotype. In this case, his literary delights very conveniently overlap with the geocultural stereotype.

Will the author decide to change tactics in the future and leave the safe territory of the realm of templates and predictable conflicts? In this case, with his gift as a storyteller and stylist, he would certainly have made a good book. Maybe even the Great American Novel. Like every new immigrant and concerned reader, I can only wish for the fulfillment of this prospect. How can we wish the author real success - not commercial, but according to the Hamburg account, literary success, which, having crowned another immigrant, would again establish in real life the eternal theme of American literature.