Wow, and wow again

Yesterday I biked over the Brooklyn Bridge. This was in part to get my bike from my parents' apartment to my own, but in part because biking over the Brooklyn Bridge is awesome. You're above the cars! I'm sure I'm the last New Yorker to realize this--anyone who's walked over the bridge was quite aware--but...wow.

Also deserving of a wow: Gary Shteyngart's latest book, Absurdistan. I didn't want to like it--wasn't crazy about his last book, and I'd always lumped him in with Jonathan Safran Foer and all the other young, overachieving but hardly amazing literary types--but this one seems like the next Portnoy's Complaint. And by a Stuyvesant grad, no less. Once I finish it, I may have more to say, but for now, I leave you with the following: "tsimmes tov, mazel tov." If you're intrigued, by all means read the thing.

And relatedly, Tricia Romano of the Village Voice sure misses the point:

"They say Jews and Italians are basically the same, but with different food. I think it's really Russians and Italians who are the same—or rather, one Russian in particular, writer Gary Shteyngart."

Read like five minutes worth of Absurdistan and you'll realize this is a Jewish author. While Shteyngart is immensely talented, this would be like Portnoy having been written by a Gentile. Possible, but unlikely, and as it happens, untrue.