Gary Shteyngart

There's a section in the book where Lenny is reading from The Unbearable Lightness of Being to Eunice.

And book by Milan Kundera.

And you write, or he says, he writes in the book, I felt that Kundera had put too many words around the fetish for her to gain what her generation required from any form of content.

A ready surge of excitement, a temporary lease on satisfaction.

I mean, now you hear everybody talking about how kids can't follow a long book anymore.

Everything is too long.

I mean, that's all really there in that book.

So somebody writes books.

Somebody has thought about this a lot.

How do you think about what it is doing to us as a country, as a collective, as a world, when we get sort of trained to expect that the things we see will immediately create a reaction, a sensation?

Oh, absolutely.

As opposed to something we have to follow along and interpret ourselves.

I have now started...

I realized that if I post something on Instagram, at Steingart, if I post something on Instagram, and then I start reading something, it's impossible.

Because I will, every two pages, even if I'm reading the most incredible, I was reading this incredible New Yorker article about Ukraine.

Ukraine, obviously, is a subject that I'm very involved with.

And I couldn't every three, five minutes.

Well, who liked that?

Oh, look at that.

I thought this person never liked me, but I guess they like me.