An Interview with Gary Shteyngart
LEAH PRICE: When I asked other authors whether they read e-books, they often justified a negative answer by invoking nonvisual senses: in particular, smell, the pleasure they take in the whiff of paper and glue. Your latest novel turns this logic on its head, picturing a future (or present) in which people glued to machines that bear a suspicious resemblance to iPhones hold their noses when confronted with a book, let alone a bookshelf. One character compares the smell of books to the smell of wet socks. So: how do the senses play into your experience of reading? Does the physicality of books matter to you, for good or for bad?
GARY SHTEYNGART: Yes, I’m big on sniffing books. The old Soviet ones really have this strong smell, reminding me, for some reason, of tomato soup in a cheap Soviet cafeteria.
How far back does your book collection stretch?
The oldest book in my collection is one of the first books I read as a four- or five-year-old. A Swedish children’s book, in Russian, the title of which translates as The Adventures of Nils and the Wild Geese. The book rapidly began to fall apart from many readings and is lovingly wrapped up in layers upon layers of Soviet masking tape.
Could you say something about the books you selected for our top ten?
Nabokov’s Pnin is very important. A work that is so humane and at the same time hilarious. But let’s not forget my full collection of Sopranos DVDs. This is storytelling for the new century.
The bookshelf, literally: what are your shelves made of? How did you acquire them?
Oh, they’re just from Design Within Reach. The Index Four and Index Three bookshelves. Taken together and filled with colorful books, I think they add a sense of drama to the living room.
How do you arrange, or attempt to arrange, your books?
Actually they’re just all over the place! Some books are so good they’re slightly lumped together, the Nabokovs and Roths, for example, but mostly I want to be surprised every time I look at the shelves. Who knows where anything is?
What books are not on the shelves you allowed us to photograph? Are there kinds of books you keep in places other than the bookshelf—cookbooks, phone books?
Travel books are relegated to a second bedroom. Cookbooks? I don’t know how to cook. Phone books no longer exist, I believe.
Unlike most people’s, your bookshelves contain only … books. (And a boxed set of Sopranos DVDs.) Do you object to interfiling books with knickknacks, tchotchkes, photographs?
Death to tchotchkes!
Do you listen to audiobooks? Do you prefer reading aloud or being read aloud to?
I’m so old-fashioned that I still like to read bound, printed media artifacts like books. You read, then you write, then you read some more, then more writing, and so on in an endless wordy loop.
Do you read books or magazines on your famous iPhone?
I read the New York Times online sometimes, and Russian papers, too. I get the New Yorker delivered in the mail.
Do you have any taboo against throwing away books when you’re done reading them, or replacing books when they fall apart from wear and tear?
Some books are just crap and have to be thrown out. But some crappy books remind you of certain times in your life and have to be kept. In the closet.
Mordecai Richler Barney’s Version
Anton Chekhov Collected Works
Salman Rushdie Midnight’s Children
Chang-rae Lee Native Speaker
Vladimir Nabokov Pnin
Philip Roth Portnoy’s Complaint
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx
The Sopranos (season 1)
Mary Gaitskill Veronica
Sergei Dovlatov We Met, Talked
