For make benefit writer of remarkable satiric novel

Of all the horrific apocalyptic outcomes predicted for the Cold War, the Soviets becoming our comic buffoons probably didn’t seem likely to observers on either side of the Iron Curtain. But—all forecasts be damned—popular culture has lately anointed the Eastern European nudnik as the go-to guy for giggles.

What a novel! Gary Shteyngart’s Absurdistan made the 2006 Best Books lists of The New York Times, Time magazine and The Washington Post.

Americans apparently find a rolled ‘r’—and a caricatured ursine physique—the height of sidesplitting humor. In a nation that takes a meditative pause before discussing someone’s race or religion, the slanted worldview and sexual proclivities of Ivan Ivanovich still strike audiences as funny. As former Andrew Dice Clay roommate and Soviet-American comedic sensation Yakov Smirnoff would say: “What a country!”

The best artists have figured out how to use the Eastern European stereotype to subtly critique the U.S., as the millions of moviegoers who saw Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat learned—or at least the critics who cringed at its boisterous bigotry hoped they did. Author Gary Shteyngart takes a similar approach in his remarkable satiric novel Absurdistan, the story of 325-pound Misha Vainberg, a sweaty member of Russia’s oil-soaked oligarchy who downs his Ativans with alcohol and quotes Zagats reviews like love poems.

Vainberg has a degree in multicultural studies from a small liberal-arts college in the Midwest, but—thanks to his late father’s seemingly thoughtless offing of an Oklahoma businessman—can’t obtain the necessary visa to return to his beloved adopted homeland, with its vending machines stocked with Moon Pies, high-priced psychotherapists and trash-talking streetwise women wearing low-slung jeans. Vainberg’s quest to get back to his ghetto girlfriend—the book’s familiar narrative arc doesn’t dim its brilliance—leads him to Absurdsvani, a penny-sized corrupt former Soviet republic on the Caspian Sea, where the resident rebel group hooks him up with a Belgian passport and names him Minister of Multicultural Affairs.

All the political intrigue is secondary to the cuddly character of Vainberg (Shteyngart never misses a chance to pimp a pun), a conflicted Jew who swamps his storytelling with stereotypes. Nicknamed “Snack Daddy” by his cadre of pot-smoking college buddies, Vainberg is a relentless consumer of booze, hookers and Buffalo wings.

“I use Misha to show what America is like,” says Shteyngart in a phone interview. “I wanted to write about someone who was quite wealthy, who was a giant consumer.”

Shteyngart believes America, with its ever-shrinking middle-class, is bound to go the way of Russia. Born in Leningrad in 1972, he describes modern-day Moscow as both an exposition of tremendous poverty and a billionaires’ haven, with BMWs and Mercedes clogging the streets.

“America reminds me of a country with large extremes of wealth,” says Shteyngart, who has seen more of the country than most native-born Americans. He has read from Absurdistan in hundreds of bookstores since its release last year. “And now let us sing of the book tour—when a writer, invariably a small, balding man living on the margins of New York City, is released from his cage into the wilds of America to gorge on distant hotel minibars and be petted by his kinder fans,” Shteyngart wrote in a short round-up of his tour published by Esquire last September. According to the essay, Shteyngart has encountered hostile bookstore managers, aggrieved Russians and anti-Semitic deejays on the road. But, he says, they almost all get the jokes.

“Most of them have an inkling of what I’m talking about,” says Shteyngart, admitting he feared his audience at a recent Houston reading would side with the evil oil hounds depicted in the book, or flinch when he read Absurdistan‘s infamous adult-circumcision scene.

“I thought it would be a Halliburton-loving crowd,” admits the author. “But it was very diverse.”

The diversity is at least partly attributable to the tendency of displaced New Yorkers and fellow Oberlin College alumni to congregate at Shteyngart’s appearances. Shteyngart says his dedicated fans don’t mind when his humor veers toward cynicism.

“You’re always on that line,” he says. “You’re looking for funny ways to talk about things that aren’t very funny. It’s very Russian, turning sadness into humor.”

Shteyngart is a laugher. He chuckles throughout his interviews—“My next book is about the death of language. It’s a cheerful topic!”—and betrays none of the world-weariness a reader might expect from a serious Russian writer. He likes to tell jokes about old Communist leaders and eat greasy food. Was Dostoevsky so much fun?

“I love pork!” says Shteyngart, who last visited North Carolina in the company of a college girlfriend who lived in Raleigh. “Collard greens, hush puppies. I’m constantly eating. There are a few places here in Queens that have pork, but it’s easier to go to North Carolina.”

Shteyngart also likes slapstick:

“I loved Borat,” he says. “For that wrestling scene alone, how could you not?”

Gary Shteyngart reads from Absurdistan at Malaprop’s Bookstore (55 Haywood St.) at 7 p.m. on Friday, April 13. 254-6734.