They Shall Not Grow Old Trumps America Movie Review Verge

Lake Success

past Gary Shteyngart

There'due south life in the sometime road trip saga yet. That'southward just 1 of the many things that Gary Shteyngart's spectacular, sprawling new novel, Lake Success, affirms.

Throughout his career, Shteyngart has proven himself a cheeky comic daredevil, but never more and so than in this novel. More than "merely" an artistic tour de strength, Lake Success aims — and succeeds — in maxim something large nigh America today.

Shteyngart, after all, emigrated with his parents to America as a child; beneath his trademark satire lies the earnestness of someone who became a citizen. By the terminate of Lake Success, Shteyngart should convince most of his readers of the enduring viability of the cliched "on the road" plot; he should also convince united states (if, indeed, we need convincing) of the enduring viability of our greatest national cliche: that is, the promise of America.

The anti-hero of this tale is Barry Cohen. You've met his like earlier, nearly notably in Tom Wolfe's iconic 1980s novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities. Barry, like Wolfe's Sherman McCoy, is a master of the universe who'southward discontented with the life he's worked then hard to attain.

Barry grew up in Queens, a social misfit who practiced "friend moves" in front of the mirror until he'd remade himself into a popular kid and went on to conquer Princeton and beyond. But, now, the feds are investigating Barry's financial deals at the same fourth dimension that his marriage is fracturing.

Adding to the stress is the fact that their young son, Shiva, has been diagnosed with severe autism. What's a Wall Street titan to exercise when the walls close in? Brand a run for information technology, of grade! Here'south the opening of Lake Success:

Barry Cohen, a man with 2.4 billion dollars of assets under management, staggered into the Port Potency Bus Terminal. He was visibly drunk and bleeding. There was a clean slice above his left forehead where the nanny'south fingernail had gouged him and, from his wife, a teardrop scratch below his eye. It was three:xx a.m.

Barry has just had a nasty tussle with his wife and nanny later he tried to force Shiva to speak. Now he'due south exiting his one-time life — via Port Dominance, not individual jet — considering he's impetuously made the decision that he wants to travel like he did in college, when he final rode Greyhound to visit his old girlfriend in Virginia. He wants to find her again. As much every bit this novel references Kerouac's On The Road, it also nods to The Great Gatsby — and we know how well that endeavour to "echo the past" turned out.

On his long bus odyssey, traveling from New York to Richmond to Atlanta to El Paso and, finally, to the promised land of California, Barry, in Lear-like fashion, sheds his cell phone, his coin and his suitcase filled with his beloved vintage watch drove; in return, he gains a giant rock of cleft cocaine and bragging rights to some deeper self-knowledge.

Shteyngart's writing rises to the challenge of seeing America by Greyhound, starting with the inside of the motorbus as information technology rumbles through the night from New York towards Trenton. Passengers, we're told, "were snoring like they had entire planets up their noses. ... The PA system didn't work, simply it emitted a staccato ghostly sound. ... Perhaps it came from the souls of former passengers who were still trapped aboard.

This isn't simply any misbegotten magical mystery bout that Barry is taking; this is a cross-land bus ride gear up during the summer of 2016. Trump and his vision of America are implicitly interrogated at every pit stop along the way.

Meanwhile, back in New York, his married woman Seema embarks on an affair with a neo- Guatemalan novelist named Luis who describes his books as "basically withal ... American colonialism, crimes against the indigenous, yada yada yada."

Shteyngart'southward have on America on the verge of a Trump presidency is anything but yada yada yada. His comic view of the country is, by turns, compassionate and mournful; wickedly satirical and ultimately, aspirational. He captures what one of his own favorite writers, Philip Roth, in one case called "the indigenous American berserk" merely he's non, in turn captured and disfigured by it. He imagines that there might yet exist another fork in the route, another highway rest cease, some other snoring American right beside y'all, dreaming their own great American dream.

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Source: https://www.npr.org/2018/09/04/644546989/lake-success-offers-a-roadside-view-of-america-on-the-verge-of-trump

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