News Summary

• But it looked like the Marriott, in a way, which—I like Marriotts—I’m just saying.Rosin: So it’s just a plain—it’s like a hotel room.Shteyngart: It’s like a hotel room.Rosin: With a window.Shteyngart: And I had two bathrooms.Rosin: For yourself?Shteyngart: Just for myself, I know.
• And it’s interesting because a lot of the passengers, they would say, Wow, these people work so hard, with a kind of like, Oh, I wish everybody back home would work so hard, or something like that.
• Like, exactly, if I was to write a novel character with, you know, Jason Liberty, people would be like, Oh, he’s being pretentious.
• And I feel like the cruising life, because these people are so obsessed with the cruises that they wear these—half the people or more were wearing T-shirts somehow commemorating this voyage on the first day of the cruise.
• And I think a couple of people, especially older people—I mean, 62 isn’t that old—but a couple of the older people were trying to summarize their lives through their cruising experiences, including, for one woman, realizing that she wanted to divorce her husband.
• All these things happened on cruises.It’s like the cruise is the time when they’re—the way people say when you’re off land, it’s the rules of the sea.