When I Got Sober, I Thought Giving

Gary Shteyngart Has Written A Memoir For The Ages. I Spat Laughter On The First Page And Closed The Last With Wet Eyes. Un-put-down-able In The Day And A Half I Spent Reading It, Little Failure Is A Window Into Immigrant Agony And Ambition, Jewish Angst, And Anybody's Desperate Need For A Tribe. Readers Who've Fallen For Shteyngart's Antics On The Page Will Relish The Trademark Humor. But Here It's Laden And Leavened With A Deep, Consequential, Psychological Journey. Brave And Unflinching, Little Failure Is His Best Book To Date

There's A Space At The Bottom Of An Exhale, A Little Hitch Between Taking In And Letting Out That's A Perfect Zero You Can Go Into. There's A Rest Point Between The Heart Muscle's Close And Open - An Instant Of Keenest Living When You're Momentarily Dead. You Can Rest There.

I Don't Think I Look Like The Pope's Favorite Catholic - At Least Not Under Close Scrutiny.

The Words And Sentences You Take Into Your Body From Books Are No Less Sacred And Healing Than Communion. Surely At Least One Such Person Lives In Your Zip Code.

No Road Offers More Mystery Than That First One You Mount From The Town You Were Born To, The First Time You Mount It Of Your Own Volition, On A Trip Funded By Your Own Coffee Tin Of Wrinkled Up Dollars - Bills You've Saved And Scrounged For, Worked The All-night Switchboard For, Missed The Rolling Stones For, Sold Fragrant Pot With Smashed Flowers Going Brown Inside Twist-tie Plastic Baggies For. In Fact, To Disembark From Your Origins, You've Done Everything You Can Think To Scrounge Money Save Selling Your Spanking Young Pussy.