Once a week, Black Balloon's editorial assistant Kate Gavino chooses the best Q and the best A from one of New York's literary in-store events. Here, she draws from Gary Shteyngart and Jonathan Safran Foer's discussion at the New Yorker Festival on October 5.

Do you plan to teach your children your native tongue?

Gary Shteyngart: I don't have children but I have a dachshund, and he's sort of Croatian … But if I did have a child, I don't think I would teach him or her Russian. I would put it on the menu. My wife is from a different culture as well; she's Korean. We could put some cabbage and some kimchi on the table and say, “What would you like to eat?” These things happen much later in life, too, which is interesting. I spent so much of my childhood when I was in Hebrew school trying to repress the fact that I was Russian, and I'd tell kids that I was German. Better to be German than being Russian during the evil Ronald Reagan empire. But then I went to this Marxist college in Ohio, Oberlin, and all of a sudden, being Russian was the best thing you can do … That's how it happens. A child rediscovers his or her roots, but it can never be forced. You should never tell a child, “You must learn the Cyrillic alphabet.”

Jonathan Safran Foer: I actually disagree. I think you won't learn [another language] unless you're forced to learn it. It's nice, the idea, to take a trip every now and then and learn three words. But I have two kids, and in my experience, if he chooses that he wants to play piano but never plays piano, then he won't be a young person who has any kind of musical proficiency ... I went to Hebrew school as well, but this one was really informal and there was no chance of learning language. But now we have Hebrew speaking baby sitters, and [the kids] take lessons as well. Do they always like it? Not really, but the goal of a parent isn't to give a life that the kid likes all of the time. You hope that can be the case, but it's not the only incentive. Otherwise they wouldn't go to school. They would eat mac and cheese all day long.

Gary Shteyngart: A child should be taught, but in my case, it's accounting or Excel. Something useful.

Image: Kate Gavino

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If brevity is truly the soul of wit, then your Twitter feed is the Algonquin round table of today's digital Dorothy Parkers and Ogden Nashes. Here's our favorite tweets from the week; nominate yours by submitting to @blackballoonpub with #twitwit.

A bit of advice: always return borrowed books, unless you want to be threatened to a sword duel.

Then again, that kind of incident would make for a good Stephen King sequel, if you replace the sword with a killer dog.

When you're writing the manuscript, just make sure Auto-Correct doesn't replace "dog" with "blog."

But a killer blog? That would make for quite a difficult book, and those kind of things are highly praised these days.

You may even get a blurb from Gary Shteyngart if it's quirky enough.

Who knows? It could be adapted into a movie, and next thing you know, you're beating out Vertigo for greatest film of all time.

So knock back a glass of whiskey and start writing. Or reading. Either one goes hand-in-hand with the right booze.

“Okay, Mr. Shteyngart, can you please remove your pants?” Ever compliant, the Super Sad True Love Story author drops his designer jeans to reveal that he is wearing…what?

Does a certain contemporary Pushcart Prize-winner still wear Underoos? Does the latest Pulitzer-winner prefer the silkiness of Victoria’s Secret panties against his hairy nether regions?

Wouldn’t you like to know.

Recently the Financial Times and the New Yorker featured profiles of writers and their libraries, hoping to unlock some great secret about what book collections say about their curators. Voyeuristic bibliophilia at its geekiest. Yet we don’t learn anything new about writers: they own a lot of books; like to talk about books; think Chekov was a genius (fair enough); and feel like they haven’t read enough books.

So rather than invade writers’ libraries, why not launch a literary panty raid? Invasion of privacy issues aside, analyzing undergarments might reveal far more about our favorite writers and expose what kind of creative stuff they are made of. “Scandalous!” cries Oates. “Okay,” mumbles Roth, loosening his belt. “Undergarments?” queries Boyle.

Kenneth Grahame, author of The Wind in the Willows, supposedly changed his underwear only once a year.  Evidently his underwear became a type of protective second skin he was reluctant in shedding. And Jane Smiley writes in a robe—or perhaps even less. She’s rather vague about it.

Looking back, I imagine that Hemingway went commando or strapped on some sandpaper. Something rough and uncomfortable yet oddly liberating, the feeling of which helped him keep his prose economical. Tolstoy, too, probably free-balled it under his coarse peasant garb—a vain attempt to rid himself of impure sexual thoughts.

Other writers, however, must have required some type of confinement. Jean-Paul Sartre probably preferred Gauloises-singed tighty whities, something that undoubtedly irked Beauvoir’s more refined sensibilities. And I like to imagine Edith Wharton and Virginia Woolf shielding a secretive sensual side, burying sexy lace buried under heavy woolen skirts. Much like their prose, both women harbored fiery passions beneath stoic veneers.

Or there’s the curious case of John Cheever. As a young and poorly paid writer, Cheever donned his only suit in the morning to commute to the building where he rented a room in which to write. Upon arriving, he would undress and carefully hang his suit. Then he would sit down and write. “A great many of my stories were written in boxer shorts,” Cheever wrote in1978.

Our contemporary literary giants should be as forthcoming about their unmentionables. What was Underworld written in, or IQ84? Given the massive girth of his latest tome, I imagine Murakami required something roomy and durable. Perhaps a simple pair of cotton Hanes boxers or, ideally, his awesome red running shorts. 

Photo: Jaunted

In art news: Another Ryan Gosling meme, this time for design snobs
And modern artists interpret classic paintings with new technology.
Just hope those artists aren't accused of pulling a Quentin Rowan.
Speaking of sad dudes, check out the literature from the Great Depression.
Though "dude" may or may not be in the new vocabulary for transsexual people.
Meanwhile, Gary Shteyngart and other authors let us sniff around their personal libraries.
And protestors work had to maintain their own libraries, open to the public, of course.
Who will surely be happy to know that sales for locally-grown food are booming.
Which is further proof that us writers have chosen the wrong day job.
Then again, obstacles, whether purposeful or not, have always helped writing ideas flourish.
Just try your best not to make one of them a near-death experience.
How about listening to music instead, and while you're at it, exploring its history?
Or you can always turn to YouTube and watch some inspired infomercial parodies.