PHILLY — Really hit close to home, this one, especially with how dang nippy out it's getting; feeling of late like hibernation is just about all I'm up for. Otessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018), her fourth book and second novel, is about a mid-twenties Manhattanite intent on blocking out the world by ingesting an increasingly harrowing cocktail of sedatives. Read it last week, mostly lying on my side, on my couch, on Benadryl, but also walking places, in the daytime, in the cold. In this episode, which I recorded at 7 a.m. while walking to the dentist, I get into why this character wants to block out the world and whether she's able to find her way back into the world. Also: my shifting affinities towards character-driven rather than auto-fictional writing. And: how being an alt bro doesn't change the fact that you're still, physiologically and temperamentally, a bro.
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REFERENCED QUOTES--
From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018) by Otessa Moshfegh
In the bodega. “…a whole wall of magazines that I avoided. I didn’t want to read more than newspaper headlines. I steered clear of anything that might pique my intellect or make me envious or anxious. I kept my head down” (7).
“Reva was partial to self-help books and workshops that usually combined some new dieting technique with professional development and romantic relationship skills, under the guise of teaching young women ‘how to live up to their full potential.’ Every few weeks, she had a whole new paradigm for living, and I had to hear about it” (18).
“ ‘At least I’m making an effort to change and go after what I want,’ [Reva] said. ‘Besides sleeping, what do you want out of life?’
“I chose to ignore her sarcasm.
“ ‘I wanted to be an artist, but I had no talent,’ I told her.
“ ‘Do you really need talent?’
“That might have been the smartest thing Reva ever said to me.
“ ‘Yes,’ I replied” (20).
Lol. “ I asked Trevor once, ‘If you could have only blow jobs or only intercourse for the rest of your life, which one would you choose?’
“ ‘Blow jobs,’ he answered.
“ ‘That’s kind of gay, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘To be more interested in mouths than pussies?’
“He didn’t speak to me for weeks” (39).
Fake woke alt bros. “That specific brand of young male. An ‘alternative’ to the mainstream frat boys and premed straight and narrow guys, these scholarly, charmless, intellectual brats dominated the more creative departments. As an art history major, I couldn’t escape them. ‘Dudes’ reading Nietzsche on the subway, reading Proust, reading David Foster Wallace, jotting down their brilliant thoughts into a black Moleskine pocket notebook. Beer bellies and skinny legs, zip-up hoodies, navy blue peacoats or army green parkas, New Balance sneakers, knit hats, canvas tote bags, small hands, hairy knuckles, maybe a deer head tattooed across a flabby bicep” (39-40).
Sensitive bros. “The worst was that those guys tried to pass off their insecurity as ‘sensitivity,’ and it worked. They would be the ones running museums and magazines, and they’d only hire me if they thought I might fuck them. But when I’d been at parties with them, or out at bars, they’d ignored me. They were so self-serious and distracted by their conversation with their look-alike companions that you’d think they were wrestling with a decision of such high stakes, the world might explode. They wouldn’t be distracted by ‘pussy,’ they would have me believe. The truth was probably that they were just afraid of vaginas, afraid that they’d fail to understand one as pretty and pink as mine, and they were ashamed of their own sensual inadequacies, afraid of their own dicks, afraid of themselves. So they focused on ‘abstract ideas’ and developed drinking problems to blot out the self loathing they preferred to call ‘existential ennui’” (40-1).
“Trevor had never wanted to ‘kneel at the altar.’ I could count the number of times he’d gone down on me on one hand. When he’d tried, he had no idea what to do, but seemed overcome with his own generosity and passion, as though delaying getting his dick sucked was so obscene, so reckless, had required so much courage, he’d just blown his own mind” (41-2).
“But at least Trevor had the sincere arrogance to back up his bravado. He didn’t cower in the face of his own ambition, like those hipsters. And he knew how to manipulate me—I had to respect him for that at least, however much I hated him for it” (42).
“Ping Xi’s work first appeared at Ducat as part of a group show called ‘Body of Substance,’ and it consisted of splatter paintings, a la Jackson Pollack, made from his own ejaculate. He claimed that he’d stuck a tiny pellet of powdered colored pigment into the tip of his penis and masturbated onto huge canvases” (46).
“When a homeless woman set herself up in the back room one afternoon, Natasha found out. I’d had no idea how long the woman had been there. Maybe people thought she was part of the artwork. I ended up paying her fifty bucks out of petty cash to leave. Natsha couldn’t hide her irritation” (53).
“I didn’t think it was very funny, but I played along. Back then, I interpreted Trevor’s sadism as a satire of actual sadism. His little games were so silly. So I just knelt there with the banana in my mouth, breathing through my nose” (116).
“[Ken’s] wife, who [Reva’d] told me was petite and Japanese and cruel” (133).
“Occasionally, over the years, when I’d felt abandoned and scared and heard a voice in my head say, ‘I want my mommy,’ I took the note out and read it as a reminder of what she’d actually been like and how little she cared about me. It helped. Rejection, I have found, can be the only antidote to delusion” (189).
“ ‘I just want Ken to feel bad.’
“ ‘Men don’t feel bad the way you want them to,’ I told her. ‘They just get grouchy and depressed when they can’t have what they want’” (252).
“There was a tiny, living creature in her womb. The product of an accident. A side effect of delusion and sloppiness. I felt sorry for it, all alone, floating in the fluid of Reva’s womb, which I imagined to be full of diet soda, constantly jostled around in her hysterical aerobic workouts and pinched and prodded as she tensed her torso furiously in her Pilates classes. Maybe she should keep the baby, I thought. Maybe a baby would wake her up” (255-6).
“ ‘I’m sick and can’t leave my apartment. Can you buy me a new VCR and bring it over? I really need it. I’m on all this medication. I can barely make it to the corner. I can hardly get out of bed.’ I knew Trevor. He couldn’t resist me when I was weak. That was the fascinating irony about him. Most men were turned off by neediness, but in Trevor, lust and pity went hand in hand” (257).
“Picasso was right to start painting the dreary and dejected. The blues. He looked out the window at his own misery. I could respect that. But these painters of fruit only thought about their own mortality, as though the beauty of their work would somehow soothe their fear of death. There they all were, hanging feckless and candid and meaningless, paintings of things, objects, withering toward their own inevitable demise” (349-50).
From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018) by Otessa Moshfegh
In the bodega. “…a whole wall of magazines that I avoided. I didn’t want to read more than newspaper headlines. I steered clear of anything that might pique my intellect or make me envious or anxious. I kept my head down” (7).
“Reva was partial to self-help books and workshops that usually combined some new dieting technique with professional development and romantic relationship skills, under the guise of teaching young women ‘how to live up to their full potential.’ Every few weeks, she had a whole new paradigm for living, and I had to hear about it” (18).
“ ‘At least I’m making an effort to change and go after what I want,’ [Reva] said. ‘Besides sleeping, what do you want out of life?’
“I chose to ignore her sarcasm.
“ ‘I wanted to be an artist, but I had no talent,’ I told her.
“ ‘Do you really need talent?’
“That might have been the smartest thing Reva ever said to me.
“ ‘Yes,’ I replied” (20).
Lol. “ I asked Trevor once, ‘If you could have only blow jobs or only intercourse for the rest of your life, which one would you choose?’
“ ‘Blow jobs,’ he answered.
“ ‘That’s kind of gay, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘To be more interested in mouths than pussies?’
“He didn’t speak to me for weeks” (39).
Fake woke alt bros. “That specific brand of young male. An ‘alternative’ to the mainstream frat boys and premed straight and narrow guys, these scholarly, charmless, intellectual brats dominated the more creative departments. As an art history major, I couldn’t escape them. ‘Dudes’ reading Nietzsche on the subway, reading Proust, reading David Foster Wallace, jotting down their brilliant thoughts into a black Moleskine pocket notebook. Beer bellies and skinny legs, zip-up hoodies, navy blue peacoats or army green parkas, New Balance sneakers, knit hats, canvas tote bags, small hands, hairy knuckles, maybe a deer head tattooed across a flabby bicep” (39-40).
Sensitive bros. “The worst was that those guys tried to pass off their insecurity as ‘sensitivity,’ and it worked. They would be the ones running museums and magazines, and they’d only hire me if they thought I might fuck them. But when I’d been at parties with them, or out at bars, they’d ignored me. They were so self-serious and distracted by their conversation with their look-alike companions that you’d think they were wrestling with a decision of such high stakes, the world might explode. They wouldn’t be distracted by ‘pussy,’ they would have me believe. The truth was probably that they were just afraid of vaginas, afraid that they’d fail to understand one as pretty and pink as mine, and they were ashamed of their own sensual inadequacies, afraid of their own dicks, afraid of themselves. So they focused on ‘abstract ideas’ and developed drinking problems to blot out the self loathing they preferred to call ‘existential ennui’” (40-1).
“Trevor had never wanted to ‘kneel at the altar.’ I could count the number of times he’d gone down on me on one hand. When he’d tried, he had no idea what to do, but seemed overcome with his own generosity and passion, as though delaying getting his dick sucked was so obscene, so reckless, had required so much courage, he’d just blown his own mind” (41-2).
“But at least Trevor had the sincere arrogance to back up his bravado. He didn’t cower in the face of his own ambition, like those hipsters. And he knew how to manipulate me—I had to respect him for that at least, however much I hated him for it” (42).
“Ping Xi’s work first appeared at Ducat as part of a group show called ‘Body of Substance,’ and it consisted of splatter paintings, a la Jackson Pollack, made from his own ejaculate. He claimed that he’d stuck a tiny pellet of powdered colored pigment into the tip of his penis and masturbated onto huge canvases” (46).
“When a homeless woman set herself up in the back room one afternoon, Natasha found out. I’d had no idea how long the woman had been there. Maybe people thought she was part of the artwork. I ended up paying her fifty bucks out of petty cash to leave. Natsha couldn’t hide her irritation” (53).
“I didn’t think it was very funny, but I played along. Back then, I interpreted Trevor’s sadism as a satire of actual sadism. His little games were so silly. So I just knelt there with the banana in my mouth, breathing through my nose” (116).
“[Ken’s] wife, who [Reva’d] told me was petite and Japanese and cruel” (133).
“Occasionally, over the years, when I’d felt abandoned and scared and heard a voice in my head say, ‘I want my mommy,’ I took the note out and read it as a reminder of what she’d actually been like and how little she cared about me. It helped. Rejection, I have found, can be the only antidote to delusion” (189).
“ ‘I just want Ken to feel bad.’
“ ‘Men don’t feel bad the way you want them to,’ I told her. ‘They just get grouchy and depressed when they can’t have what they want’” (252).
“There was a tiny, living creature in her womb. The product of an accident. A side effect of delusion and sloppiness. I felt sorry for it, all alone, floating in the fluid of Reva’s womb, which I imagined to be full of diet soda, constantly jostled around in her hysterical aerobic workouts and pinched and prodded as she tensed her torso furiously in her Pilates classes. Maybe she should keep the baby, I thought. Maybe a baby would wake her up” (255-6).
“ ‘I’m sick and can’t leave my apartment. Can you buy me a new VCR and bring it over? I really need it. I’m on all this medication. I can barely make it to the corner. I can hardly get out of bed.’ I knew Trevor. He couldn’t resist me when I was weak. That was the fascinating irony about him. Most men were turned off by neediness, but in Trevor, lust and pity went hand in hand” (257).
“Picasso was right to start painting the dreary and dejected. The blues. He looked out the window at his own misery. I could respect that. But these painters of fruit only thought about their own mortality, as though the beauty of their work would somehow soothe their fear of death. There they all were, hanging feckless and candid and meaningless, paintings of things, objects, withering toward their own inevitable demise” (349-50).
Sean Thor Conroe has written stories for X-R-A-Y (x-r-a-y.com/author/sean-thor-conroe/) and has another coming soon from Soft Cartel. He lives on twitter at twitter.com/stconroe and in Philadelphia, where he works on his health.
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