Most stories about relationships in literature, TV, and film end one of two ways: The couple breaks up, or else they live happily ever after. But in a conversation for this series, Gary Shteyngart, the author of Lake Success, discussed a third possibility. He described how Anton Chekhov's “The Lady With the Dog” ends not with a breakup or a wedding, but with a cliff-hanger, a brilliant, muscular last sentence that assures us the characters will stay together, even though their troubles will only deepen. We talked about the story's stunning final moment, why Shteyngart feels it's one of the wisest sentences in literature, and what it has to do with the creative process—where the most difficult part is always just beginning.
Lake Success's protagonist is a hedge-fund manager named Barry Cohen, a clownish and hypocritical one-percenter who drowns his sorrows one $33,000 bottle of whiskey at a time.
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