How Gary Shteyngart beat the pandemic blues to write a novel in lockdown

nypost.com:

Super Sad True Love Story” pounded out “Our Country Friends” (Random House), a comic novel about a group of friends who gather in a country house to wait out the pandemic.

The Post recently met with the Leningrad-born, NYC-bred Shteyngart, who shared stories about his “busted schlong” and riding out COVID in his own pandemic pod at his Dutchess County “dacha.”Where did you spend your pandemic? Shteyngart:  Almost all of it was upstate, from March through almost all of 2020.

I don’t think I’ve ever spent such a Iong a stretch up there, but it was amazing. I wrote twice as fast as I do in the city.

I can’t get my thoughts together down here. When ambulances go by, it knocks me off my rhythm. I put in ear plugs, I use white noise machines, I.