Gary Shteyngart

They write wonderfully.

The craftsmanship keeps getting better and better.

But the things they'd write about have changed so drastically.

You know, 20 years ago in the aughts, there was this kind of...

John Cheever bisexual energy going on.

Explain what a John Cheever bisexual energy is.

You can't move that fast.

Sorry, well, you know, the Cheever, Updike, Roth era, and I know that skews very masculine, right?

There was, you know, people wrote about sex nonstop.

I mentioned Cheever because at least he had a lot of, you know, he was bisexual himself and there was an appreciation of

both hetero and homosexuality.

But what I'm trying to say in general is that sex was appreciated as a major life force.

When I read the wonderful things that my students submit now, there almost is no sex and love, no love, and almost no pleasure.

You know, I have a collection of essays coming out in November called The Sensualist, which is all about my love of sex.

Pleasure, but in millions of contexts.

There's sex in there.

There's food.

There's, I mean, you know, life is an endless buffet of pleasure.

And this clavicular generation just says, nah, we don't want that.

You know, you might as well be an algorithm.