Summary: In his new comic memoir, Little Failure, Gary Shteyngart recounts his family’s life in the Soviet Union and their eventual move to New York in 1979. Shteyngart joins us with a Pick Three playlist of songs with connections to Leningrad, Queens and, of all things, ABBA. ABBA, "Money, Money, Money" The Iron Curtain was a serious iron curtain: You couldn’t get anything through from the West. But for some reason, ABBA, which was based in nearby Sweden, did make it through. Actually, it was Russian cover bands doing ABBA. So you’d hear things like … [does impression of Russian lounge singer singing “Money, Money, Money”]. What a great song for somebody who’s preparing to leave Soviet Russia for the United States, with its turbo capitalism: "So I must leave / I’ll have to go / To Las Vegas or Monaco / And win a fortune in a game / My life will never be the same." Our English wasn’t quite good enough to crack open the nut of what Las Vegas or Monaco represented, but this song was perfect. I think every immigrant to America should get an MP3 recording of “Money, Money, Money.” "Pust Vsegda Budet Solntse" (May There Always Be Sunshine) This is a song that all Russian schoolchildren learned to sing. The lyrics are very simple: “May there always be sunshine / May there always be blue skies / May there always be mama / May there always be me.” So, four-point program of good stuff that kids love: sunshine, which we never had in Leningrad because it was frozen 24/7. Blue skies, which we never had for similar reasons. But we did have mama, and we loved our mamas. “May there always be me” is a really interesting, kind of existential kind of lyric. This was sung by Young Pioneers, a proto-communist group that I was dying to get into when I was a kid because you got to wear this red scarf around your neck and sing songs like “May There Always Be Sunshine.” Later, [the song] was taken up by the American Left. "Afn Pripetchek" (written by M. Warshavsky) After they emigrated to the United States, the Shteyngart family received support from an orthodox synagogue in Kew Gardens, Queens. In return, young Gary and his parents were asked to perform a program in the synagogue’s basement: They decided, here’s this musical family and the little boykid is supposed to be a genius at naming the capitals of the world. So we had this whole thing where my mother played piano in the synagogue basement, my father sang some Russian classics like Dark Eyes and this very sentimental Yiddish song "Afn Pripetchek." I love some of these lyrics, like “Learn children / Don’t be afraid / Every beginning is hard.” Which was perfect for a family that had moved to Kew Gardens from Leningrad. Afterwards, I was quizzed and I got I think four world capitals right, but then I had to name the capital of Chad – and I failed to do it. More: Gary Shteyngart took a stroll around his old neighborhood in Queens with WNYC reporter Mythili Rao.
