For as long as I’ve been aware that something called literature existed, people have been lamenting its demise. In Super Sad True Love Story, Gary Shteyngart’s new novel published this week by Random House, literature has already died what was, apparently, a rather quiet and unnoticed death. And, while the decline of print is one of the many subtly interwoven themes of the novel, I’ve never felt more hopeful about the future of literature than I did when I finished this book; the medium is safe, as long as novels like Super Sad True Love Story are being written.
     Set somewhere in what is often ominously and lazily referred to as the not-too-distant-future — which, of course, means that its true subject is the present — Super Sad True Love Story tracks the romance between Lenny Abramov and Eunice Park. The former is a middle-aged, balding depressive who is likely the last person on Earth who still owns, and for that matter reads, books. The latter is a 24-four-year-old recent graduate of Elderbird College (with a major in Images and a minor in Assertiveness), who is remarkably cute, often cruel, and ultimately sympathetic. Both are the children of immigrants, desperate to fulfill their parents expectations and desperate to overcome the insecurities that are the scars of their upbringing.