Throughout, we also discovered they’d body-searched each other (Keret, “we didn’t find anything but it was fun”) and that they are, in fact, each other’s doppelgangers. These included a question about first impressions (it seems they liked each other), how much of their work is autobiographical (some) and how many edits do they do (a lot). Alex Karpovskyīetween the two acts, Wong picked out questions that people had sent via twitter and facebook and blogging, casting most aside (“no, I don’t like this one”).

I wondered if this was familiar to him, Karpovsky’s parents, too, Russian immigrants (and at least according to my reading) stayed tied to their Russian heritage even after they moved to the US. Continuing the parade of stars, Alex Karpovsky (Ray on Girls) walked on stage and told the story, swallowing words just a little but delivering Shteyngart parent imitations to a T (“Okht Hyzer” for “Oh, hi there!”). The essay tells the story of his early teenage self, lover of McDonald’s halo of glory and tormented by his parents’ Russianness and insistence to do it their way (like eating homemade hard-boiled eggs at a McDonald’s in Georgia). Shteyngart’s first story, “Sixty-Nine Cents”, which Shteyngart introduced by explaining that, in researching for it, he’d eaten 400 McDonald’s hamburgers and “developed an ass type thing,” was next. She read Keret’s story of a young girl so obsessed with glitter she dressed up as a fairy godmother and threw glitter on friends then wished very hard for glittery eyes like that dirty boy in kindergarten had. Then Parker Posey (of Christopher Guest films you know and love, House of Yes, Louie, and many-other-films fame) walked on stage, glowing even from afar.

Then he went on to explain the story we were about to hear, “Glittery Eyes”, inspired by young Etgar who wanted something so, so bad but didn’t know what it was. Keret, was then given three words to describe his own collected works, and they were, “Yearning, burning, hemorrhoids”. I write books.” then explained that he sometimes also writes long essays about being Russian and an immigrant.

Shteyngart was given 30 seconds to describe himself and his work in which he said, “I’m a writer. He then invited the authors on stage two slightly shabby (like a little shabby) men who happen to be two of the most creative minds in literature. The evening began with our host, BD Wong of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit fame, introducing the readers and their “delicious” stories of the evening. That’s what I learned last Thursday night’s installment of Selected Shorts at Symphony Space, where famous actors read the work of the two authors, as attentive audience packed the room. Etgar Keret and Gary Shteyngart love each other.

Symphony space selected shorts