The 39 Year Old Octogenarian

In Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story, the main character, Lenny Abramov works in the industry of Post-Human Services. In simpler terms, he helps make people immortal. His boss, Joshie, is portrayed as a sort of father figure, and is close to becoming immortal himself. Throughout the book he becomes progressively younger and younger, and at the end he looks like a twenty year old, when he is really seventy years old.

Joshie's quest for immortality peaked at the end of the book, when he wrote to Eunice, Lenny's girlfriend, "I have to pace myself for my heart, because genetically I've really been dealt a poor hand there...in the next two years I'm going to have my heart removed completely. Useless muscle. Idiotically designed," (Shteyngart, 295). After reading this, I wanted to slap Joshie across the face, for being so arrogant and ignorant. The heart is the most important muscle and organ in the body, and in no way can be called useless or idiotic. Sure your lungs bring in oxygen, but there's no way that that oxygen can get to your blood without your heart. Not only does Joshie talk about getting his heart removed, but seems to have no debate about it. The two short sentences at the end suggest that his decision to eventually get rid of his heart was quick and easy. I wondered what sort of a society could possibly lead someone to think that the heart is a useless muscle. Then I realized that technology had become such a big part of society in this book that people started to overlook the wonders of the human body and take the human body for granted.

In the end of the book, Lenny gives a short little epilogue, where he talks about what happened to the industry that he used to work for. Lenny saw his former boss, and commented that Joshie's, "face, initially contorted into a serious academic expression, quickly fell apart, and he began to twitch from the recently discovered Kapasian tremors associated with the reversal of dechronification. Drooling magnificently over his interpreter, he told us...'We were wrong.'" (329) Shteyngart shows the consequences of becoming narrow minded with regard to life and science, and admonishes his readers to not make same mistakes as Joshie did. By giving an image of Joshie, and going into detail about how handicapped he now is, he gives the reader an impression of just how big of a failure the search for immortality was.

Sure, the idea of immortality is cool, but it makes life meaningless. It enables procrastination because it gives people an endless supply of tomorrows. Shteyngart reminds his readers of the downsides of immortality and demonstrates the consequences of obsession with his novel Super Sad True Love Story.