Gary Shteyngart wrote his first successful novel, The Russian Debutante's Handbook, during his senior year at Oberlin, and again embraced his Russian immigrant status with a second, Absurdistan. Only in his thirties, he's now an adjunct professor in the MFA Writing Program. Dena Yago tracked him down to chat.

So how has your class been this semester?

Its great, I mean...I've never seen such a wonderful range of stories. One's written from the perspective of a mental patient, another is tracing back the history of his family for several generations, there are stories about a woman obsessed with Indian religion...the kind of things you'll find only at Columbia. These guys are very committed and already have very grand schemes for themselves. When I started writing I thought "man, [I'm] 23, what do I have to say", my students seem to have a very good grasp of what they have to say despite being very young.

Russian Debutante's Handbook came out when you were very young though, and you seemed to have something to say then...

When I was in college, I was in Oberlin in Ohio, and I started writing in, I guess during my senior year, and I wrote a great deal then and thought "oh man this really is not good." I started to realize there weren't many novels written by Russian immigrants — Russian Jewish or Soviet Jewish immigrants. There were a lot of novels written by Korean, Chinese, Indian, Dominican, all down the line, but nobody from my generation had written anything by that point. And so when I was writing Russian Debutante's Handbook, I wrote it in my early twenties and then I put it away for five years did some revisions. Chang-Rae Lee, a Korean American writer, friend and mentor, really saw the potential for this, told me that it could get published — and it did.

The Spectator hits newsstands every weekday morning, and it's easy to forget that actual people work around the clock making it happen. Last Thursday Bwog caught up with the News Editors, Josh Hirschland and Erin Durkin, to talk about riots, skipping class, and what makes it all worth it.

I know it's kind of a strange request, but I thought the campus would appreciate knowing a little about how the news is made.

Josh: We're happy to help Bwog.

Erin: [Laughs]

So, why would you want this job?

Josh: I, for one, love the organization. I think that Spectator is an incredible thing. I know that when I came into Columbia, I was a very different person than I am now, and it's because of this organization. I've met some incredible people who have shaped me and helped me to become a better person. I believe that this organization can do some wonderful things and make for a wonderful college experience. And the opportunity to help a new group of reporters to do that was just a breathtaking opportunity. That's what gets me excited every day.

Erin: I agree with what Josh said, and to me it's really a privilege to be able to decide and shape what goes on a front page that the campus and the neighborhood is going to get their info from every day. It's an important responsibility and it's hard and I like that it's hard, but to me it's something that has to be done because I love the opportunity to find out something that no one knows and to tell them. And especially when it something that's really important to their day-to-day lives, I like being able to do that on a larger scale by being in charge of a news section. I like intensity, I like things that are challenging and difficult, I need something to do. I like the feeling that I'm—I'm so inarticulate, I knew this was going to happen! Something that my training editor told me that I never realized how true it was until now was even if you didn't want to be a reporter, even if you didn't really like Spectator that much, it's just a great way to be a students at Columbia University and a great way to be a resident of New York City because you're so much more engaged with what's going on around you.

A gadfly, according to Billy Goldstein (CC' 09), is "some big-ass fly," and also the only non-defunct undergraduate philosophy magazine at Columbia University.

The Gadfly has so far printed one issue with a medley of contributions: a letter of explanation, a few art pieces, a fictional work, a quasi-Socratic dialogue, a lecture review, and--as a centerpiece--interviews with Columbia professors David Albert and Brian Greene. As a magazine rather than a journal, its founders say, it focuses less on academic theses and more on anything that can provoke thought. "It's not a formal magazine, it's mostly just thought-provoking," Goldstein said.

Basically, the magazine stays true to form. It usually provokes thought rather than positing specific opinions, and a couple of the pieces present multiple views without really advocating any in particular. In general, even if you don't find yourself agreeing with it, it raises interesting discussion points, and the articles are long enough to develop the authors' ideas but not so long as to get dragging.

Goldstein's description of the Gadfly's function as "a forum for ideas that people otherwise only talk about with their friends, or when they're stoned" fits perfectly with the fiction piece, by Maddie Boucher (CC '09), which includes the journal of a wandering philosopher/outlaw from which the veracity and meaning of any entry, whether ultimately true or not, is ample fodder for discussion. The interviews with Albert and Greene, while much more formal and scientific, become accessible to the humanities-minded among us through a somewhat meta-philosophical letter. Roberto and Gadfly VP Adam Waksman, who interviewed Greene and Albert, respectively, are as much physics nerds as they are philosophy geeks, and hope to draw in some of both.

Interview with the editors after the jump!

Cold season is fast approaching and Bwog doesn't want you catching one. For advice on how to stay healthy this winter, correspondent Kate Linthicum sought out Roman, the cryptic, clever shoe repairman who works at Paul's Shoe Repair on 111^th and Broadway. The 55-year-old with a shy smile but a hearty, rumbling laugh says he learned the tricks in his native Ukraine. He freely gives counsel to shoppers at the store, his words masked by an accent as thick as his shoe-polish stained fingers. "You follow this advice you're going to feel much better," he promises. "Your stress is going to melt away."

On pain in the body:

First, pray to God and ask him for strength. Then sit in a chair and relax all of your muscles. You have to think about your right hand and nothing else for ten minutes. Keep your mind concentrating on that hand, and then you'll be cured.

On eye irritation:

Spit ten times out your mouth and whatever is bothering your eye will come out. Sometimes, if it's bad, you must spit eleven times.

On anxiety:

Imagine your right hand is really warm, you'll feel completely relaxed.

On headaches:

Headaches happen when you eat something with toxins. Nighttime it's no good to eat canned food because there are too many chemicals. Go natural, like we do in Ukraine.

On stress:

Take it easy and don't be rushed. Life is dangerous, a lot of people get hit by cars.

Fatigue:

Some people take your energy away. Don't let them do that.

P.S. Ladies, he says he's looking for a second wife . . .