Little Failure

Little Failure is a 2014 memoir by Gary Shteyngart, the author of three acclaimed novels: The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, Absurdistan, and Super Sad True Love Story. Little Failure is his first attempt at non-fiction as he delves into a deeply poignant yet humorous account of his own life and experiences as a Russian-Jewish immigrant in America.

The narrative moves back and forth through time and is rife with self-deprecating humor, fascinating insights, and Shteyngart’s noteworthy literary prowess. Shteyngart delivers a book that encompasses a story of family and the desire to belong, topics that have certainly been tackled before but he manages to make them feel unique through a story that is all his own.

The author was born Igor Shteyngart in 1972 in Leningrad, Russia, during the twilight era of the Soviet Union. His parents had a troubled marriage; his father was a working-class mechanical engineer, while his mother was a rather cultured piano teacher. From an early age, Shteyngart sensed his parents’ own bewilderment at having brought into the world such a scrawny and sickly creature, as he was plagued with terrible asthma, and this at a time when inhalers were not yet commonplace. His father affectionately referred to him as “Snotty,” while his mother dubbed him “Failurchka,” or “Little Failure.” They struggled to deal with his illness by holding his mouth open with a tablespoon to allow him to draw breath, and administering a terrifying pseudo-medical remedy known as “cupping,” which leaves Shteyngart with a line of burn marks up and down his spine.



The novelist recalls growing up with a persistent sense of yearning, for food, knowledge, and for acceptance, both from his parents and the world around him. These desires persisted into adulthood and laid the framework for some of his writerly pursuits. By the time he was five years old, Shteyngart knew he wanted to be a writer. His grandmother would reward him with a slice of cheese for every page he turned out. It was in this way that he completed his first novel, Lenin and His Magical Goose.

In the late 1970s, a wave of political change had a direct effect on the direction of Shteyngart’s life. Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev exchanged tankers of grain for the safe passage of Soviet Jews to America—a country Shteyngart had been raised to view as the enemy. As Shteyngart muses, “Russia gets the grain it needs to run; America gets the Jews it needs to run: all in all, an excellent trade deal.” Along the way, Igor became Gary so that he would suffer one or two fewer beatings from other kids. This was the first of many moments documented throughout the book in which Shteyngart felt the pressure to assimilate into North American culture.

Shteyngart goes on to describe the often hilarious moments of culture shock experienced by his family, and his parents’ struggle to adapt to life in a place they had for so long deemed enemy territory. In one example in a series of epic misunderstandings, Shteyngart’s father unwittingly takes little Gary to the X-rated “Emmanuelle: The Joys of a Woman.” Shteyngart senior covers his son’s eyes throughout the film, but, as the author remembers, “Despite my father’s best efforts I see about seven vaginas on the big screen that day, seven more than I will see for a very long time.”



The book follows Shteyngart through his days in Solomon Schechter Hebrew School, where he develops an obsession with science fiction as well as computer games. Then, on to Stuyvesant High School, where those obsessions give way to booze and pot; and Oberlin College, where he hopes he will experience love. Sure enough, he meets a woman from North Carolina who becomes his first real girlfriend. Shteyngart recalls how, in an attempt to impress her with his manliness during a visit to the South, he drives her Oldsmobile 88 into the wall of a Shoney’s restaurant.

After graduating from Oberlin, Shteyngart moves to New York, where he meets Pamela and falls in love with her. He believes that she is the woman he has been waiting for his entire life. Unfortunately, she is already betrothed to someone else. Approaching thirty, Shteyngart senses he is drinking too much, goes into therapy, and sells his first novel.

Shteyngart describes his relationship with writing as a burden that he will carry for the rest of his life, but also something that he does as a way to connect with people around him. Little Failure reveals a deeper vein of emotion in Gary Shteyngart’s work. 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.