Gary Shteyngart

I think this is like an interesting bridge to this book of essays you have coming up called The Sensualist.

And, you know, you could really see this in Lenny.

You could see this in some of your characters over the years.

It feels to me like one of the arguments you've quietly been making and then making more loudly in your nonfiction is that it is a radical act.

to, in a bodily, physical way, just enjoy this life.

So first thing, what is sensualism to you?

Well, first of all, it's not even just about the senses.

It is, in a more Buddhist or meditative way, if you want to take it that way, it is enjoying what's happening in the present moment.

Thank you for pandering.

I am, right?

Very nice pander.

But also I know that there's some probably Buddhist listeners out there and I love all of you.

I do a little headspace here and there when life requires it.

But I do, I was walking here today and mostly I'm in the summer upstate, but I came down for this interview and I'm walking down Broadway and I looked up and I'm just noticing these beautiful mansard roofs of some of these buildings.

Now I spent half of my year in New York

I forgot all about these mansard roofs.

I'm like, damn, somebody did something right architecturally.

New York is such a hodgepodge of good and bad architecture.

Maybe that's one of the things that makes it such a cool city is that it's not beautiful, beautiful.

It's just this.