AI Summary
5 min readIn 2010, Gary Shteyngart published Super Sad True Love Story, a novel set in a near-future America where everyone carries a device called the Apparat that constantly ranks them—on looks, finances, social worth—everywhere they go. The main character, Lenny Abramov, walks into a bar and is immediately told he is the 23rd ugliest man in the room. Shteyngart thought he was writing about a world 30 years out. It arrived in about 14. On The Ezra Klein Show, Shteyngart and Klein traced how the novel’s speculative dystopia has become a lived reality, and what it means to resist it.
The Ranking Society and the Death of Interiority
The central mechanism of Super Sad True Love Story is the Apparat, a device that ranks people constantly—on looks, finances, and social worth. Shteyngart described the germ of the idea: the main character Lenny Abramov walks into a bar and is immediately ranked the 23rd ugliest man in the room. At one point, he becomes the second ugliest, and the ugliest man leaves because he cannot bear it. Shteyngart said he thought this future might be 30 years away when he wrote the book in the mid-aughts. It arrived in about 14.
Continue reading the full summary in the app — free to try.
Read Full Summary →Free • No credit card required
Never miss an episode of The Ezra Klein Show
Get every new episode summarized in your inbox — free, ~5 minutes to read.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
What you'll learn
- 1 (01:20) **Why Ezra Keeps Saying We Live in "Super Sad True Love Story"** - Ezra introduces the 2010 novel by Gary Shteyngart as the most prescient dystopia for today's screen-obsessed, ranking-obsessed, looks-maxing culture.
- 2 (05:24) **Shteyngart on How Fast the Dystopia Arrived** - He thought the future he wrote about was 30 years away; it arrived in 10-15.
- 3 (08:55) **The Paradox of Living Forever Without Enjoying Life** - The simultaneous obsession with longevity and the complete severing of desire from its natural ends.
- 4 (13:57) **From Horny to Nervous: The Shift in Literary and Cultural Mood** - Shteyngart traces the move from the "horny" mid-20th-century male writing to the "nervous" sad-girl novel of today.
- 5 (16:37) **Joshie and the Anti-Aging Trap** - Lenny's boss, Joshie, uses every anti-aging technique because he feels he hasn't really lived yet.
- 6 (18:20) **"Verbling" vs. Screens: The Corporate Capture of Attention** - The novel's term for talking ("verbaling") highlights how screens, designed by corporations, are the enemy of enjoyment.
- 7 (21:14) **The War on Interiority** - Silicon Valley types (e.g., Marc Andreessen) openly reject introspection; Shteyngart connects this to neurodivergence and terrible parenting (e.g., Elon Musk).
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
A hypervisual, looks-obsessed, wellness-crazed, postliterate society where we’re constantly staring at screens and evaluating one another based on metrics, as the country around us feels like it’s falling apart: That sounds like the world we live in. It’s also the world Gary Shteyngart created in his 2010 novel, “Super Sad True Love Story.”
I’ve been thinking about the book a lot recently, especially with the rise of the “looksmaxxing” influencer Clavicular and the longevity guru Bryan Johnson, and this feeling that people are upset and agitated but grabbing at the wrong things to fix it. It feels uncannily like the experience of living inside Shteyngart’s novel.
But Shteyngart isn’t just a dystopian prophet, he’s also an expert at living well amid the world’s darkness. His forthcoming book, “The Sensualist: Adventures in Pure Pleasure,” is an essay collection about his efforts to do exactly that. So I wanted to have Shteyngart on the show to understand how he predicted so many of the grimmer aspects of our present, but also how we might delight in the world’s “endless buffet of pleasure” in spite of them.
This episode contains strong language.
Note: We’re recording an "Ask Me Anything" episode soon. If you have a question, please email [email protected] using the subject like "AMA." We'd love to hear from you.
Mentioned:
“The End Point Of Viral Content” by Ryan Broderick
“How Jokes Won the Election” by Emily Nussbaum
“A Visit to Seoul Brings Our Writer Face-to-Face With the Future of Robots” by Gary Shteyngart
The Intimate City by Michael Kimmelman
“Don’t Just Take the Slow Road; Design It,” Commencement address at Wesleyan’s 194th Commencement Ceremony, Chris Murphy
Book Recommendations:
Men Like Ours by Bindu Bansinath