Gary Shteyngart’s fiction “A Love Letter” in this week’s New Yorker begins with this paean to the Immigration and Naturalization Service:

First, I would like to fall on my knees in front of the I.N.S. headquarters in Washington, D.C., and thank the organization for its successful work on behalf of foreigners everywhere. I’ve been welcomed by I.N.S. representatives several times upon arrival at John F. Kennedy Airport, and each time was better than the last. Once, a jolly man in a turban stamped my passport after saying something incomprehensible. Another time, a pleasant black lady nearly as large as myself looked appreciatively at my stomach and gave me the thumbs-up. What can I say? The I.N.S. people are just and fair. They are true gatekeepers of America.

Can anyone but recent immigrants to the English language whip up such passion, faked or otherwise, not only for the I.N.S., but also for uninhibited speech? Gary Shteyngart is the new avatar, in the age of globalization, of Saul Bellow’s Augie March. The relentless over-the-top-humor might become a bit taxing, and lose a bit of its critical purchase on reality, however bizzare such reality might be, but this is definitely a very engaging voice and also a voice that can be as global as McDonald’s and Halliburton. I understand that the New Yorker’s offering this week is a part of the forthcoming novel, Absurdistan. Gary Shteyngart was born in Leningrad in 1972 and now lives in New York. In addition to his earlier novels, a non-fiction piece by him had appeared in the Granta special issue on America.

Gary Shteyngart