I’m a native New Yorker, but my fate has been entwined with Cleveland since 2008, when I went there to canvas for Barack Obama, mostly because Sarah Palin scared the bejesus out of me. As you may know, Ohio tends to be a swing state, and I don’t think it’s entirely coincidental that the state itself is shaped like a hanging chad.
I’m back to sell locals on Hillary Clinton, this time with a new sidekick: the best-selling novelist Gary Shteyngart, a friend of mine from high school. He’s here for research purposes—he’s basing a character in an upcoming novel on my Bengali in-laws, who happen to live in Cleveland—but is joining me for a day to help “stave off the apocalypse,” as he puts it. He went to Oberlin for college, so he has hazy memories of Cleveland. They mostly involve sports bars, Marxism, and long hair (his). When locals are out of earshot, he calls the city “The Mistake by the Lake” and pokes fun at its diminutive skyline, though I think there’s a secret fondness for the city that undercuts his jokes.