On the evening of Tuesday 4 January 2011, the New York Review of Science Fiction Readings Series began the new year with a fresh twosome of readers: acclaimed, bestselling authors Gary Shteyngart [photo below] and Rick Moody [photo at right]. Guest-curated by author and editor Ron Hogan, the event was held at the Series’ current venue at the SoHo Gallery for Digital Art.
SGDA proprietor John Ordover briefly welcomed the crowd and plugged “Civil Rights/Civil Wrongs,” the Gallery’s upcoming four-day exhibition and sale of civil rights artwork from the World War II era (opening on January 14th) before turning the podium over to the Series’ executive curator Jim Freund, host of WBAI-FM’s Hour of the Wolf radio program on sf and fantasy (now broadcasting and streaming every Thursday morning from 1:30 to 3:00AM on WBAI, 99.5 FM). Freund greeted the audience, noted the presence of new faces, and gave a special shout-out to audience member David Hartwell, the editor of the magazine from which the Series takes its name (it was begun by NYRSF‘s then-managing editor, Gordon Van Gelder). One of Freund’s plans for 2011 is to bring in new guest curators and, with them, a coterie of new writers. He thanked Hogan for presenting “an eyebrow-raising pair of distinguished writers, whose most recent novels we are happy to embrace as speculative fiction… established writers,” he added jocularly, who had “crossed the Great Divide” into sf, were “slumming.”
Hogan, in his introductory remarks, continued that theme. Citing Moody and Shteyngart, along with Michael Chabon (whose The Yiddish Policemen’s Union won both the Hugo and the Nebula Awards), he noted the trend of “literary” writers turning to an sf “bend,” using the “tropes” of speculative fiction. Countering critics who demean genre writing, Hogan (who helped create the literary Internet by launching Beatrice.com in 1995) didn’t see genre conventions as “constraints,” but as “building blocks.” He observed that non-genre authors don’t “recreate the novel” every time they write.
The first reader on the program, Rick Moody, is the author of the novels Garden State, The Ice Storm, Purple America, and The Diviners, two collections of stories (The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven and Demonology), and a memoir, The Black Veil. After recounting a drive from Princeton with Shteyngart and their unofficial race to get their sf books into print first, he read from his latest novel, The Four Fingers of Death, which centers on the novelization of a 2025 remake of the titular (nonexistent in our reality) B-movie horror flick. His selected passage, set on a colonizing mission to Mars, was overtly an homage to the books that he liked as a kid. The audience was captivated and, as the astronaut conversed with the old and surprisingly-still-functioning Mars explorer/rover, occasional chuckles gave way to loud laughs.
Following a short break, Hogan opened the second half of the evening by commenting on the difficulties of writing near-future stories, as both readers had produced, and reflecting their times. (Arthur Clarke, he pointed out, had, of course, gotten 2010 wrong, imagining the Cold War continuing, and Frederik Pohl’s National Book Award-winning Jem had extrapolated a variation of its rivalries to a colony world.) Concluding that he hoped that the future wasn’t as “dire” as Moody’s and Shteyngart’s, he introduced the other reader of the night, Gary Shteyngart.
The Leningrad-born author has received awards and critical praise for his novels The Russian Debutante’s Handbook and Absurdistan. He too alluded to that ride from Princeton with Moody and their self-mocking that their sf books would “ruin their careers.” He read from the novel in question, Super Sad True Love Story, set slightly in the future, in an America that is nearly illiterate (even tv is gone, except for two patriotic Fox channels, replaced by streaming video) and in imminent fiscal collapse, and that is “about to fall apart—next Tuesday,” he quipped, and yet relates a charming love story. In the scene that he shared, and that kept the audience laughing unabatedly (for some reason, references to Stuyvesant High School, and the protagonist’s less-than-stellar GPA there, particularly resonated), the main character, a Jewish Russian-American in his late 30s (not too unlike Shteyngart), “like” accompanied by his Korean-American girlfriend, visits his not totally-assimilated immigrant parents on Long Island; their peculiar (though deeply genuine) demonstrations of love toward him were uproarious, even aside from accents and syntax (handled very smoothly by Steyngart). (Would that Brooklyn’s Little Odessa were as delightful!)
At the back of the room, the readers’ latest novels were being sold by The Corner Bookstore.
The audience of just about 80—the largest ever at the current venue—included Richard Bowes, Amy Goldschlager, Liz Gorinsky, David G. Hartwell, Ellen Kushner, Danny Lieberman, Gordon Linzner, E.C. Myers, Eddie Schneider, SFScope Editor Ian Randal Strock, and Genevieve Valentine. Afterward, Shteyngart, Hogan, and a number of audience members adjourned, as customary, to a nearby pub.
Note: While the Series’ retains its free admission policy, the suggested donation is now $7. (The funds cover the courtesy of treating its readers and curators to dinner, and help deflect expenses of running the Series.)
Happy New Year.