The Club: How the English Premier League Took Over the World

Wearing a Premier League jersey turned into a way to tell your friends that you were sophisticated, curious and sometimes drunk in the morning.

That’s me!

The Club tells the story of how the English Premier League transformed a grim, violent, working-class sport into a slick, family-friendly TV spectacle seen around the world.

The EPL was formed in 1992, motivated equally by greed and duress. English soccer was a primitive backwater in a modern nation, a holdover to when football matches were semi-organized riots between neighboring villages.

And it was deadly, with Victorian-era parks stuffed to capacity and beyond. After the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, in which 96 Liverpool fans were crushed to death in overcrowded stands, the Taylor Report mandated comprehensive changes, including replacing standing terraces with all-seater stadiums.

This meant fewer tickets sold and financial distress for clubs. Out of desperation, the top teams in the country broke away from the existing league to form the English Premier League.

Making a fortune off television rights for a sport rarely broadcast seemed unlikely. Yet, the big clubs – Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea – had inspiration from across the pond, where the NFL sold their rights for billions of dollars.

The league was born. And once it was seen around the world, it was flooded with cash. Every plutocrat wanted an EPL team for his portfolio. It was a way to show that they were not just about the money.

Unlike the NFL, there are no guarantees. Spend as much as you want on your team! But if you don’t win enough games, you could be relegated. The three lowest teams get bounced down to the lower division.

Filled with wild dreams and outsized personalities, The Club is, at its core, about money. An infusion of international cash saved the game and broadcast it to the world, where it is now seen more than ever, including by me at home (or in a bar) in Washington, DC.

One of the last chapters in the book is about the deal where NBC Sports bought the rights to the EPL in America. NBC does the coverage perfectly. Show lots of games on lots of channels, including free ones. Use English commentators with just enough American flavor to remind you that you’re in the States. And reach out with local fan fests and social media.

I love watching the English Premier League for the reasons described in the book – it’s international, the games are exciting and they’re 90 minutes long. Plus, the concept of relegation means that no games are meaningless.

It’s hard for me not to contrast the league I grew up with – the NFL – and the one the I’ve adopted – the EPL. The NFL has grown incomprehensible, even for Americans. What is a catch? What is a football move? You’ll get a dozen answers to these questions.

Also, in light of what we know now about concussions, watching the NFL gives me an uneasy feeling, as if I’m seeing men damage their brains for our entertainment.

And why can’t we get rid of a team like the Washington Redskins? Mediocre, with a racist name and an evil owner, they persist in a league without the gift of relegation. America claims to be capitalist but no team is ever allowed to fail in the NFL.

I’ll watch men chase a ball around a field instead, tuning in on Saturday and Sunday mornings to listen to English accents wax poetic over the beautiful game. Maybe I’ll do so over a pint. More likely, a cup of coffee. Give me the swashbuckling drama of The Club.


Bus to Work Day DC: A Story in Four Lines

Busses stuck on 16th St

Today is Bus to Work Day DC.

Before the age of Uber, riding the bus was a rite of passage in DC. It is now a lost art, which is a shame. Riding a bus teaches you patience, math skills and geography.

Plus, you get to overhear fascinating conversations! Taking the bus is the best way to learn about Washington beyond the monuments.

My transit experience helped me write several novels about the city, providing ideas and inspiration for my writing.

Here’s my public transit story. A story of four bus lines.

Patience: The N Bus

As a student at American University, my introduction to the city was through Metrobus.

That bus was the N2/N4/N6 bus which stopped at the edge of campus. Running down Massachusetts Avenue, it took you to internships in downtown DC.

It was a bus line that taught you patience. You’d get to the stop, check the schedule and then the bus wouldn’t appear. Or the bus would be pulling away as you arrived.

The random quality of the Metrobus experience taught me patience. Unlike Uber, there was no countdown to your ride. No estimated arrival time.

So, I’d sit down and wait, with only my thoughts for company in this pre-iPhone age. There’s a quote in the novel Less: Boredom is essential for writers.

If you want to be creative, take the bus. Plenty of time to let your mind wander.

Math Skills: The 96 Bus

It’s 6:32. The 96 bus to Adams Morgan will be across the street at Wisconsin and Woodley at 6:58. Do you have enough time to finish your plate of spaghetti?

That and other dramas were part of my life when I lived off campus in an apartment building. My home was well-served by the 30s bus, which ran constantly along Wisconsin Avenue and the 96, which ran infrequently to Adams Morgan.

My roommates and I liked to take the bus to the 18th St bars of Adams Morgan. But the 96 bus didn’t run that often, particularly on weekends.

So, we became adept at math problems like the one above, adding and subtracting, factoring in walk times, the probability of the bus being late and the speed at which a plate of pasta could be shoveled down.

We even counted money, in this era before SmartTrip cards. There’s a pile of nickels and dimes on the kitchen table – is that enough for the bus?

There was something really satisfying about running for the 96, jumping aboard with no time to spare and then feeding loose change into the fare box as the bus rolls away.

Geography: The H2

One of my first jobs after graduation was a temporary job at the National Rehabilitation Hospital.

Located across the city, it required me to take the H2 bus west to east from Tenleytown to Washington Hospital Center.

This was pre-gentrification DC. Marion Barry DC. Murder capital of the country DC.

The bus would chug from leafy Northwest, through tony Cleveland Park and then cross Rock Creek Park, the barrier between good and bad in DC at the time. The bus would go down Irving Street, where the Target is now, past boarded-up buildings and one of the largest open-air drug markets on the East Coast.

The bus is different from taking an Uber. An Uber will take you directly to your destination. Bus routes wind their through cities, picking up passengers here and there, as they go from neighborhood to neighborhood. By taking the bus you learn the place.

It was an education, revealing a whole other city beyond the world I knew west of the park. A city full of stories. This experience, of seeing DC at its roughest, eventually ended up in Murder on U Street, which is set in many of these same neighborhoods.

Conversations: The X2

I’ve lived in DC forever. There’s only one bus that scares me: the X2. Running down H St, from the White House to Benning Road, it’s the Jerry Springer show on wheels.

Everyone has their X2 story. The craziness doesn’t just happen inside the bus – a teen was caught holding on outside to the back of the bus.

The line uses articulated buses that are twice as long as normal buses. Miscreants congregate in the back, far from the driver and engage in all sorts of illicit trade. The bus attracts even more crazy people than normal – the babblers, the shouters, the recently released.

Sit there and listen to people on their phones discussing court cases, relationship problems and family issues, like a George Pelecanos novel set on public transit.

As a writer, it’s great. Buses are ideal for hearing other people’s stories. Remove your earbuds and listen to the drama around you.

Take the bus! It’s easy – get a SmartTrip card and the NextBus app to navigate your way around Washington. Learn patience, math and geography while you’re entertained by overheard stories from city residents.

Switchers: A Guide to Changing Careers

Switchers by Dawn Graham

When I was looking for a job, Switchers by Dr. Dawn Graham was the most helpful book I read.

You don’t have to stay in the same position forever. Nor do you need to remain in the same industry. You can change to something new. Your skills are transferable, no matter where you are in your career.

While a career switch can seem like an impossible chasm to cross. Graham breaks it down into small, achievable steps.

The first task is to figure out where you are now. What is your role? What is your industry? What do you like to do? And what do you want to do next?

Switchers can get you to that next place by showing how to translate your experience into something new. The book is filled with real-world stories of people who have successfully switched jobs and industries in search of meaningful work.

What kind of switch do you want to make? Do you like your industry but want a different role? Do you want to do the same job in a different industry? Or do you want to swap your current job and industry for something completely different?

The secret is to design your resume around what you want to do – not what you’ve done in the past. Focus on where you’re going, not where you’ve been.

Apply for fewer jobs. When I was job-searching, I followed the traditional “spray and pray” approach. I’d apply for everything, even jobs I knew weren’t suited for me.

It’s more productive to aim for a specific job title and industry. Spend your time on quality jobs that you want to do rather than the temptation of clicking “submit” on endless job postings.

Try to stay out of the resume pile, Graham advises. While everyone seems to recognize that the hiring system is broken, with managers overwhelmed by resumes and applicants ghosted by employers, I don’t see an alternative, at the moment. It would be nice to think that you can network your way to something new but most people I know find new jobs through old-fashioned applying.

Graham also includes helpful tactics to convince skeptical employers to shelve their assumptions about career switchers. This is the biggest barrier for switchers but, as a hiring manager, wouldn’t you want someone enthusiastic about joining a new field?

In my job search, I ultimately ended up in the same role and same industry. I’m a digital communicator for government agencies. Thanks to Switchers, however, I know that my experience is transferable.

Life is too short for a job you hate. Use Switchers to make a daring career move into something more satisfying.

My Photos in Song Protesting Child Separation Policy

Hard to believe that we’re a nation that puts children in cages. But we do every day at the border.

The Trump administration tried to hide the child separation policy from the public, knowing that it was cruel even for this cruel age. Despite statements from the Department of Homeland Security, families are still being separated.

Americans have hit the streets in protest. With my camera, I’ve documented those protests in Washington, DC, from the White House to DHS headquarters. I want future generations to know that we protested this crime against humanity.

Now, my photos have been put to music in a new song called Cages by Flo Anito and Seth Kibel.

A rough version of this song received an Honorable Mention from the Mid Atlantic Song Contest. This version was recorded at American University and Asparagus Media and will be released on an upcoming EP of original protest music.

Flo Anito has toured Europe and appeared on DC’s biggest stages: Strathmore, Wolf Trap, Merriweather Post Pavilion, the Birchmere, Blues Alley, the Fillmore, Hamilton Live, and Bethesda Blues & Jazz. She’s a clever songwriter with a unique voice and a sense of social mission.

Seth Kibel has been wowing audiences on saxophone, clarinet, and flute for more than a decade. Winner of 28 Washington Area Music Awards (Wammies), his most recent recording, Seth Kibel Presents: Songs of Snark & Despair, features an all-star cast of vocalists and instrumentalists from throughout the Mid-Atlantic region.

I first met Flo playing soccer. When she asked to use my photos for Cages, I was glad to help. It’s a beautifully moving song written to protest an inhumane policy, one that was done but can be undone. As the chorus goes:

Children and hearts in cages
One by choice, and the other by force
You’ve locked up what’s left of your conscience
You’ve jailed all regrets and remorse
Children and hearts in cages
One of these is an easy fix
Fling open the doors to these prisons
Let parents be with their kids

Letter from Washington: The Cruelty is the Point

Nathan Phillips leads a dance at the Indigenous Peoples March
Nathan Phillips leads a dance at the Indigenous Peoples March before the MAGA teens showed up.

When video surfaced of Covington Catholic teens mocking a Native American at the Lincoln Memorial, I realized that I had missed the encounter by just a few minutes.

After work on Friday, I biked to the Lincoln Memorial desperate to see some sun after days of gloom.

At the memorial, I saw Native Americans (including Nathan Phillips) leading everyone in a giant dance with people holding hands in an ever-expanding circle. Pictured above, it was a beautiful moment seeing how everyone came together.

And a respectful one. Non-natives watched the dance from a few feet away. When invited to join, they did so, the dance expanding outward to accommodate newcomers on the plaza in front of the Lincoln Memorial. A drum played and Phillips sang as I watched this impromptu community demonstrate how we are all one people. Lincoln would be proud.

With all the museums closed due to the Trump Shutdown, there’s not a lot to do in Washington. The outdoor monuments and memorials are some of the few things that are open. The tourists who took part in the Native American dance circle were happy to have this unique experience of a different culture in an iconic setting.

After I left, the Covington Catholic kids came along. While there are innumerable videos and Rashoman-like confusion, one thing is clear: the MAGA teens mocked Phillips. You can see and hear them laughing at him and doing tomahawk chants while surrounding him on the steps of the Lincoln. He’s one elderly man faced off against a sea of youths in Trump gear.

Ironically, they were in Washington for the March for Life. But rather than showing respect for the lives of others, they mocked a Native American elder.

Where were the parents? Supporting them. In the video, you can see the chaperones on the sidelines enjoying the humiliation.

The cruelty is the point is the theme of a great essay by Adam Serwer on the Trump movement. A party that believed in limited government now operates a gulag system across the Southwest for immigrant children.

The Covington Catholic kids chose to wear Trump hats to the March for Life. The purpose of the march was secondary. If any of these callow youth got a girl pregnant, their beliefs would change pretty quickly.

Rather, the march was an opportunity to show the power of the Trump movement in the nation’s capital. With their uniforms and crowds, it was meant to intimidate.

But Nathan Phillips didn’t back down, even as he was jeered. He stood up to hate.

Their behavior exposed, the Covington kids face online humiliation. It won’t last. Like other wealthy men, they won’t suffer for their transgressions.

Ironic that this confrontation occurred under the watchful eyes of Abraham Lincoln. He did more than just free the slaves. He freed all of us from an evil system that poisoned this country, crushing an earlier version of Make America Great Again.

But he is just marble now, his faith and goodness forgotten by a Republican Party that has embraced cruelty.

Trip Report: Orlando Urban Trail

Orlando Urban Trail

Only three miles long, the Orlando Urban Trail packs in art, history and food  as it navigates a city few tourists see.

The trail starts at the edge of downtown Orlando, just off Magnolia Avenue and Lake Ivanhoe.

From there, it follows the path of an old railway, the Dinky Line, which used to ferry students to Rollins College in Winter Park. This green corridor is preserved because the line was used into the 1980s, not by students, but by businesses, including a lumber yard on Mills Avenue.

After going by a brewery, the trail parallels Mills, which is Orlando’s hipster district, home to the once-and-future dive bar Wally’s and the excellent Pig Floyd’s, where I had a pork bento box for lunch.

Pork bento box at Pig Floyd's

Around mile 1.5, the trail reaches Loch Haven Park, home to museums including the Orlando Science Center and the Mennello Museum of American Art.

You cross Mills Avenue, ride along the sidewalk a bit, and then there’s a brief section on neighborhood streets where you wind your way between lakes and by some expensive real estate. Lots of signage – it’s impossible to get lost.

Mead Garden bike sign

The trail ends at Mead Garden, a green spot in Winter Park which offers walking paths and a range of programs, including yoga.

With nearly the entire trail protected from traffic, the Orlando Urban Trail is  ideal for people of all ages. And with museums, parks and restaurants along the route, it makes a great urban adventure.

An Invincible Summer: Books Read and Unread in 2018

beer and a book at Frog Level

What books did I read and not read in 2018? In a year of political turmoil, it was a time to find inspiration in novels.

Books Read

A book that stayed with me throughout the year was The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. No one writes better about the Greek gods than she does, presenting them as flesh-and-blood figures that are also undeniably strange, for they are immortal and we are not. Achilles is doomed to die, something even his divine mother cannot prevent. We see the hero struggle with his fate, as told by his lover Patroclus. Set against the backdrop of The Iliad, it’s a novel about embracing your destiny.

If I had to sum up the way we live now, I’d refer people to Lake Success by Gary Shteyngart. In this tragicomic novel, a hedge fund manager flees his problems on a Greyhound bus across America. It’s about wealth, inequality and the souring of the American dream. I think  his earlier novel, Super Sad True Love Story, is a better book but no novel does a better job at describing our times than Lake Success

What if we had a civil war and other countries intervened in it to prolong the agony? What if they picked sides and supplied them with arms like we do overseas? That’s the story of American War, set in the not-to-distant future, in which the country is consumed by war and environmental collapse.

The Hunger was a surprise, a book I picked up at Carpe Librum, a great used bookstore in Union Station. For the Donner Party, the horror began long before they reached the mountains.

Everyone Brave is Forgiven is another novel about overcoming difficult times, this time the Blitz in London during World War Two. A moving book that highlights the sacrifices Londoners made during the darkest hours, when they carried on with no prospect of relief.

A novel about resilience is In The Midst of Winter by Isabel Allende. It’s about people caring for one another despite the cruelty of governments.

The Man Who Came Uptown is an ode to books set in Washington, DC. It’s also a crime story and a tale of personal redemption. Should be required reading for everyone who lives in DC.

Another ode to books is The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders, a fascinating exploration of mankind’s best invention.

War on Peace was a rare contemporary read for me. This account by Ronan Farrow of the hollowing-out of the State Department highlights the fact that the rot in American governance started well before the Trump administration. We’ve become a nation of perpetual war, with billions for bombs but little for diplomacy.

Books Unread

Fire and Fury, the Michael Wolff gossip-fest released in January – remember that? Kramerbooks had it on sale at midnight and people lined up for it. Not me.

Trump has been good for booksellers. There was the Bob Woodward tome. The Omarosa book. And then all the nonfiction works about Russian collusion, as well as a separate pro-Trump category for aspiring fascists.

I did not read any books about the nascent dictator, rebelling against the idea of spending sacred reading time immersed in the horror.

Instead, I took inspiration from fiction with tales of people finding strength in difficult times. Achilles embracing his destiny. The Donner Party surviving the unimaginable. An ex-con “going uptown” and leaving crime behind.

Amid the daily chaos of the news, I found consolation in novels.

Isabel Allende took the title for her book from Camus. A fitting summary for all I read and didn’t read in 2018:

In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

—Albert Camus

Free Library Find: Cicero

Cicero at the Free Library

Little Free Libraries are little boxes of bookish surprises scattered around the world, like a real-life Pokemon Go, but for readers.

Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician was a serendipitous find, a biography I was interested in, but then forgot, until I saw it in the Little Free Library on N St.

The last defender of democracy, Cicero used his oratory and wits in a face off against Caesar and the forces of dictatorship. While he ultimately failed, his true legacy was that, in the words of Voltaire, “He taught us how to think.”

Trump Would Not Surprise Cicero

With its marble-columned temples and soaring public spaces, Washington is a Roman city, one that Cicero would instantly recognize and feel at home in. He argued cases in the courts, led marches against the government and gave passionate speeches before the Senate. Our three branches of government, with its checks and balances, would be familiar to him, for they stem from Roman antecedents, our founding fathers inspired by Cicero’s failure to create something more resilient.

An aspiring dictator like Donald Trump would not surprise him. Cicero famously uncovered the Cataline Conspiracy, a plot by a bankrupt aristocrat to overthrow the government and burn Rome to the ground. He said:

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.

He had the traitor executed.

Democracy in Rome, as limited as it was, could not manage a rapidly expanding empire beset by financial problems and a military quagmire in the Mideast. Our troubles in the region would be depressingly familiar to Cicero. After uncovering the Cataline conspiracy, he was appointed governor of Cilicia, where he suppressed rebellious tribes in Syria.

Ultimately, however, Cicero was just an orator. As Rome slid toward autocracy, first through the self-dealing Triumvirate and then the rule of Julius Caesar, he was warned to stay out of politics,  a tale told in the interesting novel Dictator.

But Cicero couldn’t stay out of the Senatorial limelight. While not part of the plot against Caesar, it was he who Brutus hailed as the dictator bled to death. Once Caesar was gone, Cicero tried to unify the Senate against Mark Antony and the Julian faction.

A bloody civil war took place across the Mediterranean world of the Roman Empire, from Spain to Cleopatra’s Egypt.

When it was done, Rome had an emperor: Augustus.

A list was drawn up of enemies of the state. If you were proscribed, you could be put to death and your properties seized. Cicero was hunted across Italy. When soldiers caught him, he bared his throat so they could slash it properly, the gesture of a gladiator who meets his end nobly in the arena.

Democracy was dead but Cicero’s legacy lived on. Much of what we know from the Roman world comes from the voluminous letters of the orator, many of which survived. He also was a key transmitter of Greek and Roman ideas and philosophy, which were rediscovered during the Renaissance.

Natural Law

From him, we have the concept of natural law, the belief that there is a moral order beyond the rules enacted by governments. As he said,

For there is but one essential justice which cements society, and one law which establishes this justice. This law is right reason, which is the true rule of all commandments and prohibitions.

Our Founding Fathers were inspired by his life and writing.  John Adams said, “As all the ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher united than Cicero, his authority should have great weight.”

And weighing the lessons of Cicero, they produced the republic of checks and balances that we have today. Thanks to the ancient Roman orator, we have the means to resist a dictator.

Instagram is a Lie Factory

urban vultures

On my way to brunch, I saw a pair of vultures.

They were in the middle of the street, fighting over a rat carcass. A car honked but they did not move, consumed by their struggle.

I’m a compulsive photographer. Not a day goes by where I don’t take a photo of something and share it on Instagram.

I loved Instagram when it first began. While there were similar photo apps, Instagram was a community, allowing me a look into the lives and visions of people around the world.

It was more than just an online app. I met great friends through InstagramDC, local photographers like me who share a passion for mobile photography.

It felt real. Excited by this new medium, people created images of things that meant something to them. They experimented. They grew.

You were excited when people you respected liked your photo, the heart providing a bit of virtual recognition.

The other apps fell away and Instagram exploded. Suddenly, it was not a niche tool used by insta-photographers but something that everyone had on their iPhone.

There were top ten lists in magazines. Who were the best Instagrammers in DC? Find out!

Companies ran contests. Take a photo, share it, and you could win a trip!

 

View this post on Instagram

 

The Poutinerie is open! Get a taste of Canada at Dupont Circle @aircanada #aircanadafliesthere #contest #poutine #canada

A post shared by Joe Flood (@joeflood) on

Marketing firms put together lists of influencers. Want to get the word out about your new restaurant? Reach out to these food photographers. Give them drinks and they’ll post photos of your place online.

I’m guilty. I went to those meals, bewitched by the chance to be cool.

The fun photo app that was Instagram became a marketing tool for big brands, a new way to get advertisements in front of eyeballs, a digital method to drive conspicuous consumption.

But this one was sneaky. We know how to ignore banner ads on web sites, glossy ads in magazines, commercials blaring during timeouts. But how do you ignore marketing messages that look like Instagram posts?

Is that travel photographer you follow being paid for her fabulous adventures? She gushed about a hotel. Is her post a paid ad or an uncompensated review?

Everyone got in on it, even me. I was a Brand Ambassador, paid to take day trips around the DC region. I loved it. Would do it again.

Enterprise CarShare followed the FTC’s Endorsement Guides, which required that I put #ad #sponsored on my post. Not every company is so scrupulous.

And would you notice a #sponsored in a hundred other hashtags? Social media marketing is virtually unregulated, with the difference between legitimate post and a compensated one nearly impossible for consumers to determine.

But that’s not the only deceit.

You see a beautiful plate of pasta on Instagram, bolognese bright against a white plate. What you don’t see is the time carefully arranging the noodles, wiping off the mess, setting up the tripod for the DSLR, softening the scene with a lightbox and then editing the photos in Photoshop.

Instagram is all about the likes now, an online popularity contest, the hell of high school duplicated in cyberspace.

In response to virtual rewards, we lie and present curated lives, our fears hidden by bright images of an idealized life.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

The LEGO takeover has begun #lego #bikedc #lincolnmemorial

A post shared by Joe Flood (@joeflood) on

“You have what I want,” someone told me. “You just ride bikes and drink beer.”

But that’s not true. Like much of America, I’ve had a lousy couple of years, a fact that I’ve largely kept to myself (I’m from the Midwest), my social media feed showing little evidence of crushing anxiety and depression.

One of the creators of Instagram quit the app, after seeing what Facebook did after purchasing the online photo service. Instagram become a celebrity-driven marketplace engineered to sap users’ time and attention at the cost of their well-being. The community she nourished from birth become merely another profit center for the online leviathan.

Facebook scaled Instagram and monetized it, filling it with ads and content that looks like ads, while committing unknowable violations of privacy and decency along the way, anything, even treason, to keep the Silicon Valley machine growing.

Instagram is a lie factory. The photos aren’t real, the users aren’t honest and the company deceitful.

Yet, I still use it and love it. Is this due to my passion for photography or the virtual rewards I receive? Is it about the photos or the likes?

I took a photo of a pair of vultures fighting over a rat carcass. I did not share it on Instagram. It did not fit my brand, my carefully curated life of bikes and beer.

The answer is there. Like millions of other Americans, Instagram to me is not about photography, it’s about the likes.

Lake Success: A Novel of Our Times

Lake SuccessHow do you write a novel in a time that’s stranger than fiction?

Gary Shteyngart demonstrates how in his funny new novel, Lake Success.

Shteyngart is a novelist of decline, previously aiming his lens at the former Soviet Union in Absurdistan. He writes of societies in collapse, his characters powerless to stop the farcical sweep of history.

The rot that began in the East has now come here, personified by Donald Trump, who loiters on the periphery of this book set in the summer of 2016. He’s the disaster that won’t happen, the New Yorkers in the book assure themselves. We, of course, know better.

Shteyngart doesn’t typically write about winners. But he does so in Lake Success, the book centered on a pair of the 1%, a hedge fund manager and his wife. Despite their astronomical wealth, and all the luxuries it can buy, they are unhappy. Their son is autistic, a diagnosis that they refuse to admit to themselves or their families. All the money in the world can’t fix their boy, a situation that sends them both spiraling out of control.

Barry breaks first, making a run for it, with his $2.4 billion hedge fund collapsing and the SEC on his trail. Throwing away his iPhone and going off the grid, he takes a nostalgic journey – on Greyhound – in search of an ex-girlfriend and the path not taken.

New York, New York

Shteyngart is a New York novelist. No one writes better of the delights and terrors of the city. There’s a great passage at the beginning of the book where Barry stumbles into the Port Authority Bus Terminal at 4 AM, drunk, bleeding and incoherent. To the cops stationed there, “he looked just like another New Yorker.”

The bulk of the novel is Barry traveling by bus across the country, meeting a very different world from his hedge fund manager associates. These chapters are not as strong as the New York sections, lacking the detail and emotional connection of his Gotham work. While there are funny vignettes of dead downtowns (Germans on a tour of “The Wire” locations in Baltimore), they seem rushed and superficial.

While Barry goes in search of his past, his wife Seema is left to clean up the mess. After engaging in an affair with a poseur novelist, she’s forced to be truthful with her striving Indian family about her son’s condition. She also must confront the truth of her own life. Is she more than a rich man’s wife?

In Lake Success, Shteyngart writes about Trump without writing about Trump. Barry has benefited enormously from our leveraged economy, memorably described as a man who goes like a thief in the night, stealing a little bit from every house he visits. And, like Trump, he makes and loses immense sums, with little consequence to himself, but enormous consequences to the country as a whole.

Super Sad True Love Story

Despite the topical theme, Lake Success is not his best book about our stranger-than-fiction era.

Super Sad True Love Story is a better novel. Without the burden of the present, Shteyngart creates a New York and a country gone mad, teetering on the edge of financial collapse, and the deluded, dream-like worlds of Americans who don’t realize that their world is about to end. Brilliant, hilarious and heart-breaking, it’s a love letter to a good country that’s about to disappear.

Everything by Shteyngart is worth reading but if I was new to the author, I’d start with Super Sad True Love Story, his masterpiece.