Gary Shteyngart Revisits 2010 Novel as November Essay Collection Nears

1 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Jun 19

Gary Shteyngart’s 2010 novel “Super Sad True Love Story” is recast in a New York Times opinion podcast as a striking guide to the feel of 2026’s screen-saturated, anxious culture.
Sixteen years after publication, host Ezra Klein argues the book anticipated constant device use, hypervisual life, wellness obsession and a sense of national decline.
Shteyngart’s newer work also figures in the discussion: his essays on travel, cruise ships, martinis, suits and watches will be collected in “The Sensualist,” due in November.
The conversation frames that forthcoming book as part of Shteyngart’s broader project of exploring how to live well amid the kind of dystopian atmosphere his fiction foresaw.

Sources

Do dystopian novels merely predict our future, or do they actually help create it?

Can embracing 'sensualism' offer a real escape from our hyper-digital, wellness-obsessed reality?

When AI makes most human jobs obsolete, what will give our lives purpose?

1 total