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"   In his new novel Super Sad True Love Story, satirist and vodka enthusiast Gary Shteyngart imagines a future in which plastic surgery is de rigueur, all eyes are glued to mobile devices, and corporate continental drift has yanked the world inward \u2014 in other words, like the present, only more so. Familiar, too, are the functions of alcohol in this dystopian world: imperious high-net-worth individuals turn into bullying drunks, and awkward sex transpires after too much wine.  Raised in Leningrad before immigrating to New York City at age seven, Shteynagart, 37, remains very much a Soviet at heart. Which means he can drink quite a bit. We talked to him about his favorite vodka, how to knock one back like a Bolshevik, and Homer Simpson.  ESQUIRE: With so many intoxicants out there, why vodka? GARY SHTEYNGART: Vodka is a wonderful drink. You can drink so much of it without being as hung over as you would if you were drinking one of the brown liquors \u2014 the whiskeys and such. It&amp;#039;s a great drink to go with appetizers. The Russian kitchen has high points and low points, but I think the best are appetizers like herring or marinated mushrooms, which is one of my favorite things to sop up a good vodka drink. Russia recently tried to introduce beer as kind of the new vodka \u2014 and it&amp;#039;s working with younger people in major cities \u2014 but you can have ten shots of vodka and be perfectly okay. If I had ten beers, I would be liquidated. I would be a giant beer. ESQ: How should one enjoy vodka like an authentic Russian? GS: It&amp;#039;s traditionally done only in shot form. So a typical thing is to get together at a table \u2014 usually about five men, each one has their own bottle of vodka and consumes the whole thing \u2014 and you just sit there, pounding away shots while eating a lot of tasty fish and mushrooms and black bread. The toasts will get more and more funny and maudlin as the night goes on. That made perfect sense [in the USSR] because the state was out there surveying you and, being at home, there was a feeling of being away from society. ESQ: Can you handle a bottle by yourself these days? GS: I think I can do it. I&amp;#039;m out of practice, but I&amp;#039;m going to Russia in October for a month. By the end of it, I&amp;#039;ll be completely Russia-fied. ESQ: It almost seems like vodka has ancestral significance. Did it play a role in your family&amp;#039;s household? GS: You can&amp;#039;t have a Russian household without vodka. It&amp;#039;s just something to wash everything down with. I can&amp;#039;t remember a time when I didn&amp;#039;t drink vodka, either in Russia or here. I don&amp;#039;t think there&amp;#039;s ever a wrong time to start drinking it. My ancestors drank it, and if I ever have any children, they&amp;#039;ll be drinking it. It&amp;#039;s a very healthy thing when done in moderation. If you limit yourself to five or six drinks a day, you&amp;#039;re fine. ESQ: In Absurdistan, you wrote about these feasts of food and alcohol that become orgies of consumption. Was that a commentary on new Russian wealth or a nod to tradition? GS: Well, vodka has a huge history in Russia, in that it&amp;#039;s almost like a currency. It&amp;#039;s the one thing that keeps the country in the dark ages and having a rollicking good time. At one point, I believe Homer Simpson said, &amp;quot;To alcohol, the cause of and solution to all of our problems.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s that kind of circular thinking that&amp;#039;s absolutely perfect. Alcohol causes a lot of problems, and then to solve these problems, you drink more. What other culture can consume that much alcohol and be around the next day? ESQ: What&amp;#039;s your brand of choice? GS: My favorite vodka is Russian Standard, and it&amp;#039;s now available in the United States. It&amp;#039;s actually made in my hometown of St. Petersburg. What I like is the purity; it goes right into your gullet without any undue acrobatics. There are probably finer vodkas, but they&amp;#039;re very expensive. I don&amp;#039;t think men should pay more than $25 for a bottle. Stoli is fine, as long as you don&amp;#039;t get the vanilla or any of those egregious drinks. I don&amp;#039;t know if they have Flagship in America, but it&amp;#039;s very good. Oh, a nice summer drink is \u017Bubr\u00F3wka, the Polish vodka with the bison grass, combined with apple juice and ice cubes. I was in Warsaw a few years ago, and it was absolutely delicious. ESQ: What do you think of infused vodkas?  GS: Now some people frown on flavored vodkas \u2014 they think the best kind of vodka is only natural and clear. But if I&amp;#039;m going to have something savory, I like a savory drink with it: horseradish or garlic or pepper, which is very hardcore. I wouldn&amp;#039;t recommend it on an empty stomach. The owner of [Manhattan restaurant] Russian Samovar, this cat named Roman Kaplan, he prefers cranberry vodka and always gives me free carafes of it. I like that a lot, but it has a kind of tartness to it. I like it more as a dessert vodka.  ESQ: Last thing, any comment on the fratty &amp;quot;Bros Icing Bros&amp;quot; meme, in which guys force each other to chug Smirnoff Ice?  GS: I&amp;#039;m not even going to touch Smirnoff. Why do people torture themselves? Alcohol should be fun. FURTHER READING: Our Drinking Expert on Drinking Vodka Like a Russian "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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