Thomas Mann, near the beginning of his book Death in Venice, presents a figure of a man on a boat who, though old, is dressed as if he is young. Mann uses the most grotesque terms to describe him. The narrator tells us that Aschenbach, the main character, is appalled by the juxtaposition of youth and old age. And this evokes an experience of what the German philosopher Martin Heidegger might call an experience of angst or what Freud would call the uncanny. At first, he sees a man in a “bright yellow summer suit of ultra-fashionable cut, with a red necktie, and a rakishly tilted Panama, surpassed all the others in his crowing good humor.” But when he looks closer the “good humor” and gay-candor become terrifying:

But as soon as Aschenbach looked at him more carefully, he discovered with a kind of horror that the youth was a cheat. He was old, that was unquestionable. There were wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. The faint crimson of the cheeks was paint, the hair under his brilliantly decorated straw hat was a wig; his neck was hollow and stringy, his turned-up mustache and imperial on his chin were dyed; the full set of yellow teeth which he displayed when he laughed, a cheap artificial plate…Fascinated with loathing, Aschenbach watched him intercourse with his friends….He felt as thought everything were not quite the same as usual, as though some dreamlike estrangement, some peculiar distortion of the world were beginning to take possession of him.

What I love about Gary Shteyngart’s novel Super Sad True Love Story is the fact that, unlike Mann’s Aschenbach, we are given an opportunity to chuckle about the juxtaposition of age and youth (that is middle-age and youth). Instead of pulling back in horror and anxiety, Shteyngart gives a kind of sad-charm to the juxtaposition.  

At the outset of the novel, entitled “Do not go Gentle,” we read a diary entry by the main character, Larry Abramov. He is a middle aged man who tells us that he has made a “major decision: I am never going to die.”   His description of how he is going to live on beyond his body is comical. He tells us, with a faux confidence, that “others will die around me. They will be nullified. Nothing of their personality will remain.”

In pop-cultural confidence, Abramov tells himself (after all, it’s his diary) to stop “them” from telling us that “life’s a journey” where you end up somewhere. He assures himself that they are going nowhere, while he is going somewhere:

When I beg the pilot of the rickety UnitedContinentalDeltamerican plane currently trembling its way across the Atlantic to turn around and head straight back to Rome and into Eunice Park’s fickle arms, that’s a journey.(3)

But he won’t beg him. He’s a schlemiel. And this is his fictional attempt at romantic heroism.  Yes, he will return to the woman he is in love with: Eunice Park. But how?  After writing this, he can’t keep his mind on the romantic mission.  He’s a distracted anti-hero.  He changes the subject in what  seems a sudden revelation. And that revelation is not about returning to her on a romantic journey, but the meaning of a line in a popular Whitney Houston song.  It speaks to his obsession with “living on.”

But wait. There’s more, isn’t there? There’s our legacy. We don’t die because our progeny lives on! The ritual passing of the DNA, Mama’s corkscrew curls, his granddaddy’s lower lip, au buh-lieve thuh chil’ren ah our future. I’m quoting here from “The Greatest Love All,” by 1980s pop diva Whitney Houston, track nine of her eponymous first LP. Utter nonsense. The children are our future only in the most narrow, transitive sense. They are our future until they too perish. The song’s next line, “Teach them well and let them lead the way,” encourages adult’s relinquishing of selfhood in favor of future generations. (4)

He thinks this self-negation (for the children and their future) is foolish. But when he reflects on the meaning of Whitney Houston’s line about “ah chil’ren” this brings him to reflect, once again, on Eunice Park.  And in this reflection, we see why he charmed by her: she is young and innocent.  The two, taken together, bring out a comical juxtaposition of youth and middle age:

Lovely and fresh in their youth; blind to mortality; rolling around, Eunice Park-like, in the tall grass with their alabaster legs; fawns, sweet fawns, all of them, gleaming in their plasticisty; at one with the simple nature of their world. (4)

As one can see, he is drawn in by Eunice Park who is “blind to mortality” while he, apparently, is not. He sees her as an “innocent” schlemiel. And he seems to want that for himself because he is thinking about death and immortality. But, and this is the catch, he is also a schlemiel because he dreams of escaping mortality by way of technology. He has been swayed by what Dostoevsky would call the “miracle” of science. 

But unlike Thomas Mann’s narrator, we don’t see a character who is horrified of this juxtaposition of youth and age. This covering over of death evokes a different mood and has a charm that is missing in Mann’s novel.

….to be continued….