Little Failure

A Memoir

De: Gary Shteyngart

Narrado por: Jonathan Todd Ross

After three acclaimed novels - The Russian Debutante's Handbook, Absurdistan, and Super Sad True Love Story - Gary Shteyngart turns to memoir in a candid, witty, deeply poignant account of his life so far.

Shteyngart shares his American immigrant experience, moving back and forth through time and memory with self-deprecating humor, moving insights, and literary bravado. The result is a resonant story of family and belonging that feels epic and intimate and distinctly his own. Provocative, hilarious, and inventive, Little Failure reveals a deeper vein of emotion in Gary Shteyngart' s prose. It is a memoir of an immigrant family coming to America, as told by a lifelong misfit who forged from his imagination an essential literary voice and, against all odds, a place in the world.

©2014 Gary Shteyngart (P)2014 Recorded Books

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Jonathan Todd Ross had to meet quite a challenge while narrating Shteyngart's memoir filled with humor, sarcasm, self-deprecation, and personal triumphs - and succeed he does in representing the author with pizzazz." ( AudioFile)

Great story, wonderful narration!

The narration complements the text wonderfully. I am not sure the author could have done better himself. The narrator has different voices for the author as adult, as child, for his father etc. It is a wonderful performance and you will not want to stop listening. Absolutely worth it. I can see myself listening to this at another time, and perhaps even reading Shteyngart's books.

I loved it!

What made the experience of listening to Little Failure the most enjoyable?

The narrator has a calm, clear voice. He is able to shift from an English accent to Russian accent to Russian to Hebrew in a smooth and natural way. He really captured the emotion in the words he read.

What did you like best about this story?

The author's ability to laugh at himself and his keen satire on a number of topics.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

yes

Witty and funny

You have to be from eastern Europe to fully enjoy this and empathize with his experience.

Good memoir... Good story...

Great performance.. Could do without the effort for fake Russian accents. Would have been better straight up English, without the poor attempts at foreign accents. They all sound like bad variations of Dracula.

got more disappointing

I am a big Shteyngart fan and was fun in the early going but got much less so as he got into adolescence - most adolescents aren't that interesting and neither is he. Too bad. Go back to novels.

Still laughing and weeping

Really, a great immigrant story. G. Shteyngart can coax a laugh and a sigh from the same sentence. He can place you right in the room with him, self deprecating and darling, and his perplexed, quasi lost but not helpless parents who just love him so much and, simultaneously, damage him terribly, and get you to see the moment he is describing from all sides. Particularly in scenes with G and his parents, you simultaneously feel for both of them.
Everyone in this story of life in the new world is trying his/her best, and making mistakes that scar deeply. When GS spoke the book's last lines I wanted more. I wanted to know what came next.

well written narrative of the immigrant experience

What did you love best about Little Failure?

lots of self depracating humor ala woody allen

What did you like best about this story?

everyone was very real--felt like you knew the characters

Which character – as performed by Jonathan Todd Ross – was your favorite?

why Gary, of course!

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

His description of trying to fit in to his new high school, recognizing diversity in backgrounds but less diversity in intellectual abilities

Funny in doses

Any additional comments?

This amusing, frequently hilarious memoir chronicles Shteyngart journey from Soviet era childhood in Leningrad, to his family’s emigration in the late 70”s to New York, to his college years and first time book deal. Shteyngart indisputably has a gift for storytelling and turn of phrase and the narrative breezes along. His experiences are heavily dosed with self-deprecating humor and one liners that sometimes border on shtick. Though the book is often funny, I found that if I listened too long, it tended to lose its charm and grate a bit. I found I liked it much better when I listened to it in small, measured doses. The narration is spot on, capturing Shteyngart’s angst ridden persona. The mimicry of his parent’s Russian accents humorously (and without insult) enlivens what they are saying. If you haven’t read any of Shteyngart’s fiction (I hadn’t), don’t let that deter you from Little Failure. In the end, this is a lighthearted, breezy read that won’t change your life but will distract you from it.

IMMIGRATION

"Little Failure: may seem like a humorous anecdote to some but it is also about the angst and hardship of immigration. At the age of 38, Gary Shteyngart’s “…Memoir” seems hubristic. "Little Failure" is a case in point, but the author shows more self-loathing than excessive self-pride in his story of coming from Russia to New York at the age of six to become an American.

Shteyngart’s first book (not "Little Failure") is published with good reviews. The best that can be said about "Little Failure" is that it tells a story of growing to manhood in 20th century America. "Little Failure: is as its title says, a memoir, but it seems more like displaced hubris than any revelation about growing up; or a teaser to read one of Shteyngart’s novels. Aside from the immigrant parts of Shteyngart’s life, little new coming-of-age' ground is broken; i.e. few teaching-moments are harvested.

Is it Stone Garden, Stone Horn, or Shitgart?

A much heralded memoir of the NY Times best-selling novelist, Gary Shteyngart. Shteyngart lovingly, but oh-so painfully (particularly when it comes to girls), describes his childhood as a Russian immigrant to the US. Born in Leningrad during Soviet times, the only child of Jewish parents, he grows up with relative poverty and the strict, demanding, and demeaning oversight of parents lost in a strange land equipped only with the societal norms of another culture. Gary is haunted by panic attacks and asthmatic spasms. Although, living the life of an outcast at his first school in the US (Queens, NY), referred to as the SSSQ, Gary manages to qualify for the legendary Stuyvesant High School, but his substance abuse problems result in academic difficulties that preclude his entry into the Ivy League (his parents goal for him). He is admitted to Oberlin the description of which is among the very funniest parts of the memoir. Although ostensibly following a path to law school, Gary has always wanted to be a writer (the admission of which leads to his mother calling him little failure). Oberlin and the years immediately following are taken up with drugs, sex, and a little writing. Gary manages to pull himself together after returning to NYC, finding a father figure sugar daddy, being admitted to an MFA writing program at Hunter College, getting a first book deal, and entering psychoanalysis (I would rather you told me that you were homosexual, says his father who, it is later revealed, was hospitalized in a Soviet mental institution in his early 20's after experiencing what must have been a single grand mal seizure). After being estranged from his parents, he undergoes a remarkable transformation and revelatory experience on a return trip to St. Petersburg with his parents as he approaches forty years of age. Gary comes to love, respect, and forgive his parents - Who shall dwell upon the holy mountain? He that walketh uprightly and walketh righteously and speaks with truth in his heart. . . He that does those things shall never be moved. . . . . Let us say, Amen.