Andrew Keen is an Anglo-American entrepreneur, writer, broadcaster and public speaker. He is the author of the international hit “Cult of the Amateur: How the Internet is Killing our Culture” which has been published in 17 different languages and was short-listed for the Higham’s Business Technology Book of the Year award. As a pioneering Silicon Valley based Internet entrepreneur,... → Learn More
“Steal this book,” wrote Abbie Hoffman in 1970. So, today, why should we pay for our books – especially in a digital age where intellectual theft is both ubiquitous and pretty much risk free?
According to Gary Shteyngart, the best-selling author of novels like “Super Sad True Love Story” and “Absurdistan,” paying for his books means that he doesn’t have to work at a gas station or a car dealership. When we pay for one of his books, Shteyngart explained when we spoke earlier this week, it “allows me to produce more work.” Buying a book, he insists, represents an investment in creativity.
And creativity – real creativity – may be at a premium today – at least according to Shteyngart. As he argues, the Internet may be killing our eccentricity and transforming all of us into 140-character conformists. Thus, in today’s networked age, he says, there is an acute need for writers who can grab our attention and drag us away from broadcasting our boring selves on Facebook and Twitter.
This is the second in a two-part interview with Shteyngart. Yesterday, he explained why, in the not-too-distant future, everyone will know everything about everybody.
Don’t steal this book
Gary Steyngart the author of Super Sad True Love Story. Gary how long did the book take you to write?
I started writing and in 2006 and the idea I had then was the collapse of the hedge funds and the banks. And the decline of the auto industry in America. By 2008 all those things had sort of happened. So instead of presenting the book to my editor I had to back to the drawing board and make things much, much worse to the point where the whole country is taken over by a Norwegian hedge fund, and the Chinese of course.
So it's, it was one of those things Where again, keeping up with reality was very difficult. I thought that in my original version I was being too tough on the economy, but by the time two years after I started, I had to get back and make things a complete disaster.
So the book took several years of intense intellectual effort, right?
Yes several years.
What do you make of some digital radicals who argue that all creativity is a remake? And that supposedly people like you should share your work for no money with the public.
Well, let's look at it this way: I mean, in a very simple dollars and cents kind of way. I mean, if, if, it takes three years to produce a book like this, it takes another year, simply to market it. You know, I've been going all over the world. It's translated in about 20 languages. So I have to go all over the world and present a book.
In many countries.
Do you take Felix, by the way?
I wish. In many of the better countries he has to have a microchip installed, and I just can't do that to the poor beast. You know, but I miss him so much, what a sweetheart. But, in other words, it takes four year of hard work to produce a book like this. And if I'm not getting paid for it, if the content is free.
Well, I'm working at a gas station or a car dealership. or, or whatever it is. I'm just trying to survive you know. Being paid for this work, and hopefully it's worth it to some readers. Actually allows me to produce more work instead of saying, you know, I'm just going to try to survive in this economy by hook or by crook.
Now, many other writers of course throughout the course of history have survived. Worked full time jobs and has found the time to write. But why cut my output in half, why, why limit myself if If somebody is actually willing, somebody is actually crazy enough to spend 15 dollars on one of my books.
Are you familiar with the philosophical work of the science fiction writer Cory Doctorow, on free content, what do you think of that?
Well I've actually been on the stage with Cory before. I mean, I think you know It depends on what you're dealing with. You know, some content, I think, should be free. You know, if pet grooming manuals on long haired dachshunds, I think should be free. I mean, there's no reason why we can't share this knowledge with the rest of the world, and there's a part of us that should be as democratic as possible.
And trying to help as many people as possible. But also, you know, I don't, I've never stolen music off the internet Internet. I try to shop at local stores when I buy books, or produce for that matter. I want the money to go to a person who's actually worked hard to create something. And I think those people appreciate it and I think they produce something better because of that.
When I buy beets at my local farmers' market, there's going to better beets down the line. There's going to be better, a wider range of wonderful vegetables down the line, and I think what's true for beets is true for novels as well.
A couple of weeks ago I had Suzanne Vega, the singer-songwriter, on the show, and she was deeply upset by the decimation of the music industry by piracy. Do you fear that the book industry we make out the same way? I know that some of guilds, the authors' guild for example, are very concerned with what's going on.
You know, I think that if book piracy was a major issue in this country, it would at least signify that people actually want to read books. They want to read books enough to steal them. I think so far book piracy hasn't been an issue the way music piracy is because many of the people who read books...well, because first of all, the audience is so small.
I mean...
Well, your books aren't that... I mean, not that your books are small. But your audience isn't small. You've...I don't know the exact number, but my guess is that this book has sold several hundred thousand copies. Yes, but I think my audience, when I see them, they're, I mean, they're really nice, kind of adorable, people, you know.
When I go on book tour, they're just... there are kind of a small range of people who still read books. I'm not saying that the audience necessarily is, you know, under 500 people, but I'm saying they're not the kind of people that would, I think, steal things. Now the Kindle creates a different opportunity, because the book is not just a book, an object, it's now a word file that can be downloaded.
Will that create an incentive for people to steal books? I don't know. What's interesting to me, for example, is that certain countries where literacy is kind of on the upswing, like India, or many Asian countries, their book piracy is a real factor in terms of publishers being very worried about it.
I was both disheartened and kind of flattered when my friend was walking in Saigon in Vietnam and saw the Vietnamese version of my book lying on a...by the street being sold for...I don't know...whatever amount of dong the Vietnamese currency...and although I felt bad because obviously I'm not never gonna see any of that profits, I thought, "Wow, the Vietnamese care enough about my book to actually steal it."
How to get to William Gibson land
Gary Shteyngart the author of "Super Sad True Love Story." Gary, I read an interview in which you said in this new book that you ventured into what you called "William Gibson Land" how did you get there? Well, growing up I read a lot of science fiction I was a very dedicated subscriber to Isaac Asimov science fiction magazine.
Which was sort of the Holy Grail of the nerd. And actually I was a fairly early adapter in the 80s to technology. I remember getting that Commodore 64 the moment it came out. Really, you know, playing all those games, and then writing my own software. But then I went to a science high school, Stuyvesant High School in New York and it was to hard for me, so I kinda gave up on technology for a while.
And retreated into this very authorial kind of world where I just lived in my own mind and read books and watched movies. But so, sowing the seeds of that kind of uber dorkness, we're always there. and when I, to research this book I hired an intern. A young man who helped me figure out what the inter-tube was has you know, got me an I telephone and the whole nine yards.
And so, it was kind of a homecoming for me because I, I, always, I think all those Russian immigrant kids are obsessed the technology because it's so, it's such a haven away from the very difficult world outside.
I just read a series of essays by Jonathan Franz, one of which he, he took great pleasure in announcing that he'd thrown out his television.
He's clearly not a guy who's sympathetic to blackberries, or iPhones, or iPods. Do you think one can be a relevant writer these days and live without cutting edge digital technology? Well, I think one can definitely throw away one's television because it's... I mean I own several, but I don't watch them because everything is on my computer now.
So, yeah, the TV we can safely dispose of, I think. in fact the gentleman who installed my television cable said that you know, that, that this thing is gonna be just a computer monitor pretty soon. And, and all the channels will be streaming to my to my laptop. Is it possible to live without this stuff and still understand the world around us?
I would say no, I would say it's impossible. And you know, it's interesting, because I teach writing at Columbia University and I have many wonderful students who write with incredible eloquence but, what often I find is interesting in their stories and novels is that the action, even though it is supposed to be contemporary, is very pre-digital.
It's very rare for anyone to be texting someone or, or using you know, four square whatever is out there at the time. It's almost because, as if the writer senses that these things are in a way an existential threat to our livelihood and our future as writers. And you almost want to live in the world before this technology.
So I'm surprised there aren't more books you know. That I was one of the few sort of quote unquote literary authors that really ventured into this idea of technology. Because I guess in a sense we're all scared of it, but to try to write about the world as it is today and not mention technology is, I think a disservice to any kind of realism that we may want to portray in our books.
Perhaps the traffic though, in the future will come the other way. Literature will be reinvented by technologists, people passionate about digital. For members of our audience who might like to write, who are intimate with technology who inspired by what your saying. What advice would give them about picking up a pen or a keyboard and starting doing fiction?
Well, I think one of things First of all, you have to read tons more than you write. America is in a strange position where I think we have more writers now than we do readers It's a kind of supply and demand problem where we are a culture of incredible self-expression, so we'd rather create something ourselves than passively sit by and engage in another persons work.
But in order to become a good writer one has to read even more than one writes. And the second thing, which is also very hard to do is to find ours, 3, 4 hours during the day in which one is not engaged with the world in an electronic way. To turn off all the devices, of course except for one, I ran on a laptop as well.
And just to engage with what is happening in your own mind. To probe your own mind, to probe the things that interest you to try to understand other people as well as yourself. These are things that cannot be accomplished with any digital device. These are things you have to do yourself.
Do you use freedom the technology that cuts off the internet. No, I haven't got to that point yet. I do one thing though, I go upstate and I have a the biggest culprit in my life is my iPhone, and luckily AT&T is a company that, well, simply can't connect a cell phone to the outside world. So when I go up there, it doesn't work.
I don't get a signal. People are saying to switch to Verizon, but staying with AT&T is my version of that freedom program, because at least when I leave Manhattan for the country side, nothing works.
So AT&T is the best provider for writers, right?
It's the best provider for any creative person who doesn't want to constantly be connected.
Have words lost their power?
Gary Shteyngart, the author of "Super Sad True Love Story". Gary your book supposedly takes place in the future but of course it really takes place in the present. Your book is a polemic about contemporary American life. What are you saying about how people should change their lives in this book?
What is your polemic in this book?
I'm a little worried about offering advice for, as a writer to come out and say well I think you should live your life this way. Tolstoy was probably the best Russian writer when he wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina. There was nothing he couldn't do as a writer. And in his later years, he began writing these polemics about how life should be led he had his own brand of Christianity and he had many adherence who came to his estate outside of Moscow and tried to live the way that he lived.
But what happened with it is that writing actually became fairly insufferable and it's very hard to read stuff that was written in that period because it's all thou shalt and thou shalt not kind of commands and I really don't think a writer should do that. What I offer a reader who is interested in reading my works is more of a journalistic enterprise.
I mean, I'm very cognizant of the world around me, I hope, and of some of the people that live in it, and I want to convey that experience of what it's like to be alive right now, even I'm writing about the future, what it's like to be alive right now and to have the reader make her own decisions about what she thinks she can change in her life.
You know if a reader finishes my book and says, "Wow, I really don't spend enough time alone. I really don't spend enough time walking down the street without checking my email on my iPhone." Maybe that's good, but that's not necessarily what I need the reader to take away from my books. I let the reader find what they want and then hopefully use it to make their life better.
If not, then hopefully the book will just entertain them because I also believe that fiction, even when it's branded literary fiction should be enjoyable. Because I grew up reading books the way people play video games now. For me I couldn't believe the next turn of events in the books. I couldn't believe what these characters were doing.
And I was so excited to pick up a new book every every few days.
But the book must be designed to be shocking, particularly to a Facebook generation.
Well, you know, it's very hard to shock without using images. It's very hard to shock by just using words alone because I think words have in some ways have lost their power, and one of the ways they've lost their power is because everyone produces an endless torrent of information day and night, we are all in a sense producers of words and also images whenever we snap a photo you put it up online, so in a sense the language has been devalued because everyone is a practitioner of it, and endless practitioner of it, and so what I always urge is, and what I do myself is not to write or speak all the time, but rather to read or watch good films and just to take my mind away from the idea that I have to constantly be on, that I constantly have to be producing something for any kind of audience whether it's a book audience or a Facebook audience or anyone else, this is the tough part is to actually turn ones self off and to allow for this very strange introspection.
You actually enter the mind of another human being through a book, through a film and you develop a sense of empathy for a life that's very different from your own.
I 'm guessing that there's been a lot of interest in the movie industry about this book, turning it into a movie. Have the book rights been sold?
No, it's very hard to do a thing like this, because I think it requires many millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars to capture the future the way it's portrayed in the book. So people have been interested, but I think people are treading very gingerly toward turning it into a movie.
What's next, are you working on another book?
I'm working on another book. I'm also working on an HBO series about Queens which is set in the present day and involves a lot of the immigrant groups in Queens, and I'm working on a memoir. I'm going to be forty next year, so though the Russian life expectancy for men is 56, so I have another 16 years to make this happen, so I'm already starting to write down the old memoir.
And for people watching this, who want to contact you, should they follow you on Facebook? Should they email you?
Oh, yes. Yeah, follow me on Facebook, please. All the dachshund pictures you would ever want.
I want to thank you so much. This has been a wonderful interview, and I wish You brought Felix into the studio. Next time we do an interview maybe bring him in.
Gary Shteyngart was born in Leningrad in 1972 and came to the United States seven years later. His debut novel, The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, won the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. His second novel, Absurdistan, was named one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review, as well as a best book of the year by Time, The Washington Post Book World, the...
