Love Moshfegh's essay and your close reading of it. I for one, want more of this kind of writing, unvarnished, anti-heroic and authentic. It makes me think of a quote by Salmon Rushdie (from a radio interview) that has been rattling around in my head for weeks, (paraphrased here): "we're all just a bag of selves in a bag of skin"
Perhaps it’s because I am from a different generation or perhaps my life experiences are different but I fail to see how this excellent essay could be negatively judged. Moshfegh is a dispassionate narrator, much like the writings of anthropologists I read in college many years ago. Prescriptive essays are boring, I don’t want anyone telling me what I should take away from them. There was also no need to describe the appearance of the former owner, what she does say tells us everything we need to know about him. I also reacted very personally to this essay. When we first arrived in the US my parents rented a house for a year. From the neighbors we found out that the owner had been institutionalized in a psychiatric facility. They then bought a house from a couple going through a divorce. Like in this essay, the former owners were heavy smokers. They also collected old furniture and cats. The basement was full of sofas in need of reupholstering and fleas, lots and lots of fleas. Even Goodwill would not take them and we had to pay to have them hauled to the dump. Once the cats and the couches left, the fleas stayed. We could not afford to remodel at the time but my mother, whose heavy smoker father had died from lung cancer five years before, scrubbed every wall of every room and washed the curtains. When the neighbors came to call they thought she had repainted and changed the curtains. She had the exterminator come and we had to leave during the time they flea bombed the house. When my first husband and I bought our house the former owner had died in it and was not found until a week later. The bathroom had to be torn out and changed completely because they could not get rid of the smell. She was a widow and had no will nor heirs but an estranged sister turned up and inherited the house. For a year we had to deal with her while waiting for things to be sorted out and the house to be ours although I should have realized that this was a portent to the future of our marriage. Like life, real estate is messy.
It’s a superb essay, there is nothing wrong with buying a house in foreclosure, the notion that this sort of routine participation in economic life is evil is itself a ludicrous form of self-unaware privilege, and the idea that the former owner could somehow be redeemed if one did not buy his house or took a different attitude towards him, or that you yourself, whoever you are, are not at this moment engaged in some economic behavior that touches on someone else’s bad luck and ruined hopes, or that you could preserve your own moral purity and self-regard by simply not contemplating other people’s suffering, or that there is some other order in which human misery would be eradicated and we should in life or art pretend we live aspirationally in that order rather than address ourselves to the world and ourselves as they actually are—all this is childish. These are childish readers.
Thanks so much for this. FWIW we've bought a foreclosure house and renovated it, and the pushback on this as "privileged" amazes me. Do people not participate in LIFE anymore, but only read about it? The foreclosure market is terrible and banks are terrible and capitalism is terrible, but snidely criticizing people's real-life activity via twitter as a way of doing something about it, well that's terrible, too. I did like this essay, it felt real. I appreciate being introduced to it, the writer, and the controversy. I had no idea people could be shocked by something that is incredibly normal for people who otherwise can't afford to own homes.
Feb 28, 2023·edited Mar 1, 2023Liked by Summer Brennan
I too do not feel that buying a home in foreclosure is an act of violence. Well, foreclosures can be an act of violence for sure, but the purchaser may be getting an opportunity they never would have had. The response that the narrator is villainous feels naive to me, and surprises me. Love the essay love her warts and bumps, her ungenerous description of her neighbor. I wish the essay ended with the previous owner simply saying, “I used to live here.” It is so understated regarding his grief. And I love that he stubs his cigarette on the floor once again. A violent act against property when he has experienced a violent act by the bank against self. Love the somber silence she and her dad offer.
I did not love Moshfehg's essay, but I do really love this examination of it. And I agree so deeply about the boring nature of the PR essay. That is an instinct I have to push back on continually in my own work. Thanks for this, there's such pleasure in examining how a piece works....
Thanks Charlotte. I think a lot of people who write memoir or essays have to push back on that, I know I do, the idea that we can only write something if it somehow tells how we've learned something or have found an answer or a solution of some kind.
Especially when writing about grief. Part of why it's taken so long ... there's no lesson, no happy ending, no adversity overcome. There are a lot of good things! But the preset narrative frames are so ubiquitous and so constricting that it's taken me forever to figure out a few ways around them.
This is so true, and so interesting. I've been thinking a lot about this. I've been trying to look to novels for formal examples, because that is where you're more likely to find ambiguous resolution, or mixed-up endings, or unhappy endings. It's that question we can ask, what *feels* like an ending? Film is probably a good source for inspiration for this, too.
Really appreciated this conversation between the two of you, spurred by this essay. I'm gathering myself and writings over the past five years or so, getting ready to dive into a story, the story, of my journey with my elderly mom and dad, which goes from complete aversion to re-engagement, and includes a house full of decades of hoarded goods, a pandemic, real estate transactions, and grief. As I'm getting ready for this writing journey, it's been coming up for me that i don't want to slip into didactic mode, or self help mode. While it's a journey of transformation, it's also a journey with a lot of ambiguity, and no neat or happy endings, necessarily. I want to honor the full spectrum of the story, and this conversation is helping me to remember that.
I just copied this out from Frances Wilson's review of the new Katherine Mansfield bio in the recent New York Review of Books: "What the writer does," Mansfield wrote to Woolf, "is not so much to *solve* the question, but to *put* the question. There must be a question put." I keep reminding myself to go into each chapter asking "what is the question" not "what do I want to write about." It's a terrific close reading of Mansfield's capacity for negative capability ...
And my sympathies on the family stuff. I just cleared my mother's apartment out in mid-December and it was a horror. She was a chain smoker, and everything was covered in a film of nicotine and filth -- so much nice family stuff just broken or lost or filthy. It was a huge lesson in compassion.
The central idea is in the sentence where the narrator describes their own smoking habits. “ I had been an on-and-off smoker for many years—something I tried (and probably failed) to hide from my parents.”
It is about what it means to be human—how our own faults are exploited in capitalism. It is so hard to own a home in this country. Can anyone really fault someone for buying a house that’s been foreclosed on? This was the author’s first house, no?
I sensed deep empathy for the previous owner, and regret for the previously unexplored relationship with her dad.
Thanks for pointing out that sentence. There is indeed something of the "there but for the grace of God go I" to this. I realize now she even uses that phrase: "(I finally quit last year thanks to Chantix and the grace of God.)" And yes it was her first house.
The economy and sweep of her craft leave me humbled. On the other hand, the depiction of the bragging neighbour left me cold, honestly. It almost seemed she decided to tip her hand, saying “here’s a tiny vignette so you’ll know I know I’m an asshole.” As jarring as the torture/murder detail, but gratuitous: the tomato-breast comparison. I get what you wrote about her attitude to arrogance, and applaud her for that, but she very much succeeded in losing some of my regard with that bit.
The essay’s power, like that nicotine varnish, sticks around. In the end I felt
almost no compassion for the title character (I too am an asshole), who after all seemed not to have any redeeming traits, other than being overwhelmed by grief. He quite literally poisoned his own home, then trespassed on it after losing it, and either in spite of his emotional reaction or because of it, continued to apply his poison while trespassing.
In the end, I really only like the woman next door with her disdain for the dogshit-filled yard, and her bounteous tomatoes.
Thanks for the discussion and your illumination of the writer. Really enjoyed thinking about it with the perspective you added.
Your comment also made me think of something else I hadn't noticed. By mentioning her own yard covered in dog crap, it kind of runs counter to the usual gentrification narrative. She changed the interior of the house to make it livable, but her yard is considered a blight by an existing neighborhood resident.
I wonder whose the dog was. Or were the neighbourhood dogs all crapping on the smoker’s lawn? Hung up on the dog crap and the tomatoes!
It’s remarkable writing in any case, which leaves aside any question of whom one likes or doesn’t. I haven’t read much of Rachel Cusk’s work but I wonder if you see a similarity in their writing? I keep thinking of the narrator of Second Place.
And there’s something else that just occurred to me: unacknowledged but very real is that the writer’s back story involves the loss of home as well.
In an interview I read that her grandfather was forced out of Iran at gunpoint. I assumed the dog was hers. I believe she had/has a dog/dogs. A few of her author photos have dogs in them.
I read the essay, didn't really reflect on my reaction, then read Summer's analysis and felt like perhaps I am a lizard person but your comment makes me feel sane. After the basement shooting, my second strongest reaction was to the idea of walking into someone else's house uninvited and lighting a cigarette.
I still feel like a lizard person, because my reaction speaks to the power of the writing, regardless of whom I like or dislike (the writer included), and that really bugs me. (Lizard: “mmm bugs!”) I’m on a journey to decide whether any art is redemptive or somehow beneficial... and so far it’s still in the balance.
Yes, we seem to have complicated heroines in novels but in few personal essays. I think the thought of social media clapback has an inhibitory effect here too. Essays that go viral get discussed in painstaking personal detail by some outlets. Essays that don't go viral get comments and social media postings that are equally intrusive. I have a personal essay coming out in a month or two and am wondering if people are going to start pointing out exactly the point I am myself making in it. If they read it at all, mind you.
It's a strange environment. And I don't think it's very good for art-making, to have this thing on your shoulder where you have to always prepare for the worst possible interpretation of your work. I was surprised to see actual investigative journalism performed on this piece by Moshfegh on Twitter. I'm looking forward to your essay!
I hardly see anything of literary Twitter anymore, thanks to Mr Musk, so I missed the commentary. When I learned about it I both was and was not surprised. The essay didn't seem to merit it but feelings are understandably high about the precarity of simply having a roof overhead now. My essay is partly about gentrification, so...
I loved this essay (I wish she wrote more essays) and I love your analysis of it. I'm drawn to Moshfegh because she's unencumbered by the need to draw a moral arc. Life isn't like that. The character in this essay (the version of herself buying and fixing up someone else's home) is relatable because we've all been that character at some point in our lives. Not necessarily gentrifiers, but we've had unkind thoughts about a neighbor, or someone in traffic, etc. I think if she had done that, it would be trite and boring. She writes past what most of us fear revealing.
This reminds me: An editor I was working with told me that one of my essays was too morally tidy. I agree, and in hindsight, I did go out of my way to remove any ugliness or anything that reflected too badly on the protagonist (me) to close out the essay. I didn't present myself as an angel, but I could have gone farther. I'm going to revisit it with "The Smoker" in mind. Secondly, this piece (and the concept of gentrification) is multi-layered, in that she benefits from his loss, his lack of privilege, twice: the house, then the first book written from the house. She then benefits yet a third time in this viral essay (maybe someone has pointed this out). I mean… It's the third time that makes me question the morality of the whole thing. Arguably, the best part of the essay, the climax, where he re-enters the home — he's the star. Without him (and that detailed, riveting description of his every move), without his reappearance, the essay doesn't work. Perhaps that would have given me pause as a writer, but I still love this piece.
So much to think about in the essay, the close reading, and the comments - all deeply thoughtful, and not easily forgotten. I’m grateful for all.
One image I keep thinking about are the two yards. In what world does anyone imagine these are discrete entities? I believe the dogshit in the one, through soil and wind and especially rain, is helping enrich the pendulous tomatoes in the other. We are more connected, through the mature wisdom of nature, than we’d perhaps be comfortable acknowledging.
And it may be stretching a bit, but the water of the former owner’s tears seems also to be enriching as well, promoting a genuine moment of remorse and empathy in the daughter-renovator. Whatever the failings of the former owner, he does honor to his own feelings. He knows the importance of ritual, of grieving. (Maybe heart always got too much in the way of head and that’s why he wasn’t all that successful amid the world’s and the neighborhood’s capitalism?)
Anyway, we seem to be connected by water and by desire and, if graced with the awareness, connected by intention as well.
I am not a writer. I am a reader. I was put off by the bluntness of the tomatoes/breast comparison and the soiled back yard. But the "stood there, respectfully" said so much about the moment. Respect for the prior owner's pain? I'm glad I read it and even better was the discussion you posted and comments by others. She is a good writer. I am just not sure I am in the right place for her writing at the moment.
Thanks so much Colleen. And yeah, taste can account for so much. I thought My Year of Rest and Relaxation was brilliant, but based on some of the imagery I've seen quoted from Lapvona, I just don't think it's for me at the moment. Perhaps the next one.
I really appreciate this analysis of the essay. My take, as an essayist, is that it was too spare to be as effective as it could be, but like you said, it is a difficult thing to create an arc in a short essay like this. My taste lean towards longer essays that chew on their material and have a greater awareness of the structural forces around them that lead to what is described in the essay.I’ve never particularly enjoyed Moshfeghs work, but that’s certainly a matter of taste and style as an essayist
Good for you. "I could have done this better" is actually a great feeling for a writer to take from a piece, as it helps clarify what you're trying to do in your own work.
Very true! I used to live in providence too, so this one hit close to home (and I have sat outside with someone smoking on a providence summer night, close to spiritual). I would have gone into detail about the history of the housing market in providence and the economic history of the place, I would have linked it back to my parents immigrant experience and what housing meant to them in Iran and their early experiences in the US, then would have ended it by talking about the entire concept of housing as part of the American dream. But that’s a Heather Aruffo essay and what people know my essays for, being expansive and highly researched, and not an Ottessa Moshfegh essay. Both can exist. You helped me learn something about this essay with this review of it, thank you!
Thanks for writing this. I read the social media backlash before I read the essay and, while I appreciated some of the craft, that certainly colored my opinion of the whole. Happy to have been wrong. I'm going to read it again today.
Thanks for commenting. Also happy to hear from those who disagree with my assessment! I read it totally unaware of the backlash, and I wonder if my reaction would have been different if I had seen the negative criticism first.
Yes, certainly thoughtful disagreement is good. I think I almost instinctively agreed with your analysis about intentionally presenting herself as the villain but hadn't given it too much thought, so as soon as I started reading your thoughts, it became clear. Upon re-read, the one thing that I still don't love is the word "respectfully" in the final paragraph. It's an odd moment of abstract telling (what does it mean to stand respectfully?) and seems to undercut the idea of the piece, like a lapse into self-righteousness, but perhaps that's a misreading on my part. Anyway, I loved re-engaging with it and with your writing.
I thought it was an amazing piece of writing, and I really appreciated your close reading of it. I felt that she absolutely empathised with the previous owner - her guilt, her awareness of her own privilege (and not niceness) radiated out.
Thanks for this reply. This was my impression as well, but it is interesting to see the different reactions and think about why it was received differently by different readers.
Love Moshfegh's essay and your close reading of it. I for one, want more of this kind of writing, unvarnished, anti-heroic and authentic. It makes me think of a quote by Salmon Rushdie (from a radio interview) that has been rattling around in my head for weeks, (paraphrased here): "we're all just a bag of selves in a bag of skin"
Perhaps it’s because I am from a different generation or perhaps my life experiences are different but I fail to see how this excellent essay could be negatively judged. Moshfegh is a dispassionate narrator, much like the writings of anthropologists I read in college many years ago. Prescriptive essays are boring, I don’t want anyone telling me what I should take away from them. There was also no need to describe the appearance of the former owner, what she does say tells us everything we need to know about him. I also reacted very personally to this essay. When we first arrived in the US my parents rented a house for a year. From the neighbors we found out that the owner had been institutionalized in a psychiatric facility. They then bought a house from a couple going through a divorce. Like in this essay, the former owners were heavy smokers. They also collected old furniture and cats. The basement was full of sofas in need of reupholstering and fleas, lots and lots of fleas. Even Goodwill would not take them and we had to pay to have them hauled to the dump. Once the cats and the couches left, the fleas stayed. We could not afford to remodel at the time but my mother, whose heavy smoker father had died from lung cancer five years before, scrubbed every wall of every room and washed the curtains. When the neighbors came to call they thought she had repainted and changed the curtains. She had the exterminator come and we had to leave during the time they flea bombed the house. When my first husband and I bought our house the former owner had died in it and was not found until a week later. The bathroom had to be torn out and changed completely because they could not get rid of the smell. She was a widow and had no will nor heirs but an estranged sister turned up and inherited the house. For a year we had to deal with her while waiting for things to be sorted out and the house to be ours although I should have realized that this was a portent to the future of our marriage. Like life, real estate is messy.
It’s a superb essay, there is nothing wrong with buying a house in foreclosure, the notion that this sort of routine participation in economic life is evil is itself a ludicrous form of self-unaware privilege, and the idea that the former owner could somehow be redeemed if one did not buy his house or took a different attitude towards him, or that you yourself, whoever you are, are not at this moment engaged in some economic behavior that touches on someone else’s bad luck and ruined hopes, or that you could preserve your own moral purity and self-regard by simply not contemplating other people’s suffering, or that there is some other order in which human misery would be eradicated and we should in life or art pretend we live aspirationally in that order rather than address ourselves to the world and ourselves as they actually are—all this is childish. These are childish readers.
Thanks so much for this. FWIW we've bought a foreclosure house and renovated it, and the pushback on this as "privileged" amazes me. Do people not participate in LIFE anymore, but only read about it? The foreclosure market is terrible and banks are terrible and capitalism is terrible, but snidely criticizing people's real-life activity via twitter as a way of doing something about it, well that's terrible, too. I did like this essay, it felt real. I appreciate being introduced to it, the writer, and the controversy. I had no idea people could be shocked by something that is incredibly normal for people who otherwise can't afford to own homes.
We are all pawns in an awful system, but I honor each of our intentions as generally for the good.
I too do not feel that buying a home in foreclosure is an act of violence. Well, foreclosures can be an act of violence for sure, but the purchaser may be getting an opportunity they never would have had. The response that the narrator is villainous feels naive to me, and surprises me. Love the essay love her warts and bumps, her ungenerous description of her neighbor. I wish the essay ended with the previous owner simply saying, “I used to live here.” It is so understated regarding his grief. And I love that he stubs his cigarette on the floor once again. A violent act against property when he has experienced a violent act by the bank against self. Love the somber silence she and her dad offer.
I did not love Moshfehg's essay, but I do really love this examination of it. And I agree so deeply about the boring nature of the PR essay. That is an instinct I have to push back on continually in my own work. Thanks for this, there's such pleasure in examining how a piece works....
Thanks Charlotte. I think a lot of people who write memoir or essays have to push back on that, I know I do, the idea that we can only write something if it somehow tells how we've learned something or have found an answer or a solution of some kind.
Especially when writing about grief. Part of why it's taken so long ... there's no lesson, no happy ending, no adversity overcome. There are a lot of good things! But the preset narrative frames are so ubiquitous and so constricting that it's taken me forever to figure out a few ways around them.
This is so true, and so interesting. I've been thinking a lot about this. I've been trying to look to novels for formal examples, because that is where you're more likely to find ambiguous resolution, or mixed-up endings, or unhappy endings. It's that question we can ask, what *feels* like an ending? Film is probably a good source for inspiration for this, too.
Really appreciated this conversation between the two of you, spurred by this essay. I'm gathering myself and writings over the past five years or so, getting ready to dive into a story, the story, of my journey with my elderly mom and dad, which goes from complete aversion to re-engagement, and includes a house full of decades of hoarded goods, a pandemic, real estate transactions, and grief. As I'm getting ready for this writing journey, it's been coming up for me that i don't want to slip into didactic mode, or self help mode. While it's a journey of transformation, it's also a journey with a lot of ambiguity, and no neat or happy endings, necessarily. I want to honor the full spectrum of the story, and this conversation is helping me to remember that.
I just copied this out from Frances Wilson's review of the new Katherine Mansfield bio in the recent New York Review of Books: "What the writer does," Mansfield wrote to Woolf, "is not so much to *solve* the question, but to *put* the question. There must be a question put." I keep reminding myself to go into each chapter asking "what is the question" not "what do I want to write about." It's a terrific close reading of Mansfield's capacity for negative capability ...
And my sympathies on the family stuff. I just cleared my mother's apartment out in mid-December and it was a horror. She was a chain smoker, and everything was covered in a film of nicotine and filth -- so much nice family stuff just broken or lost or filthy. It was a huge lesson in compassion.
The central idea is in the sentence where the narrator describes their own smoking habits. “ I had been an on-and-off smoker for many years—something I tried (and probably failed) to hide from my parents.”
It is about what it means to be human—how our own faults are exploited in capitalism. It is so hard to own a home in this country. Can anyone really fault someone for buying a house that’s been foreclosed on? This was the author’s first house, no?
I sensed deep empathy for the previous owner, and regret for the previously unexplored relationship with her dad.
Thanks for pointing out that sentence. There is indeed something of the "there but for the grace of God go I" to this. I realize now she even uses that phrase: "(I finally quit last year thanks to Chantix and the grace of God.)" And yes it was her first house.
The economy and sweep of her craft leave me humbled. On the other hand, the depiction of the bragging neighbour left me cold, honestly. It almost seemed she decided to tip her hand, saying “here’s a tiny vignette so you’ll know I know I’m an asshole.” As jarring as the torture/murder detail, but gratuitous: the tomato-breast comparison. I get what you wrote about her attitude to arrogance, and applaud her for that, but she very much succeeded in losing some of my regard with that bit.
The essay’s power, like that nicotine varnish, sticks around. In the end I felt
almost no compassion for the title character (I too am an asshole), who after all seemed not to have any redeeming traits, other than being overwhelmed by grief. He quite literally poisoned his own home, then trespassed on it after losing it, and either in spite of his emotional reaction or because of it, continued to apply his poison while trespassing.
In the end, I really only like the woman next door with her disdain for the dogshit-filled yard, and her bounteous tomatoes.
Thanks for the discussion and your illumination of the writer. Really enjoyed thinking about it with the perspective you added.
Your comment also made me think of something else I hadn't noticed. By mentioning her own yard covered in dog crap, it kind of runs counter to the usual gentrification narrative. She changed the interior of the house to make it livable, but her yard is considered a blight by an existing neighborhood resident.
I wonder whose the dog was. Or were the neighbourhood dogs all crapping on the smoker’s lawn? Hung up on the dog crap and the tomatoes!
It’s remarkable writing in any case, which leaves aside any question of whom one likes or doesn’t. I haven’t read much of Rachel Cusk’s work but I wonder if you see a similarity in their writing? I keep thinking of the narrator of Second Place.
And there’s something else that just occurred to me: unacknowledged but very real is that the writer’s back story involves the loss of home as well.
In an interview I read that her grandfather was forced out of Iran at gunpoint. I assumed the dog was hers. I believe she had/has a dog/dogs. A few of her author photos have dogs in them.
Thanks for commenting Max. Long live tomato gardeners.
I read the essay, didn't really reflect on my reaction, then read Summer's analysis and felt like perhaps I am a lizard person but your comment makes me feel sane. After the basement shooting, my second strongest reaction was to the idea of walking into someone else's house uninvited and lighting a cigarette.
Glad to be of service! 8^)
I still feel like a lizard person, because my reaction speaks to the power of the writing, regardless of whom I like or dislike (the writer included), and that really bugs me. (Lizard: “mmm bugs!”) I’m on a journey to decide whether any art is redemptive or somehow beneficial... and so far it’s still in the balance.
Yes, we seem to have complicated heroines in novels but in few personal essays. I think the thought of social media clapback has an inhibitory effect here too. Essays that go viral get discussed in painstaking personal detail by some outlets. Essays that don't go viral get comments and social media postings that are equally intrusive. I have a personal essay coming out in a month or two and am wondering if people are going to start pointing out exactly the point I am myself making in it. If they read it at all, mind you.
It's a strange environment. And I don't think it's very good for art-making, to have this thing on your shoulder where you have to always prepare for the worst possible interpretation of your work. I was surprised to see actual investigative journalism performed on this piece by Moshfegh on Twitter. I'm looking forward to your essay!
I hardly see anything of literary Twitter anymore, thanks to Mr Musk, so I missed the commentary. When I learned about it I both was and was not surprised. The essay didn't seem to merit it but feelings are understandably high about the precarity of simply having a roof overhead now. My essay is partly about gentrification, so...
I loved this essay (I wish she wrote more essays) and I love your analysis of it. I'm drawn to Moshfegh because she's unencumbered by the need to draw a moral arc. Life isn't like that. The character in this essay (the version of herself buying and fixing up someone else's home) is relatable because we've all been that character at some point in our lives. Not necessarily gentrifiers, but we've had unkind thoughts about a neighbor, or someone in traffic, etc. I think if she had done that, it would be trite and boring. She writes past what most of us fear revealing.
Love this. I am probably drawn to her for the same reason.
This reminds me: An editor I was working with told me that one of my essays was too morally tidy. I agree, and in hindsight, I did go out of my way to remove any ugliness or anything that reflected too badly on the protagonist (me) to close out the essay. I didn't present myself as an angel, but I could have gone farther. I'm going to revisit it with "The Smoker" in mind. Secondly, this piece (and the concept of gentrification) is multi-layered, in that she benefits from his loss, his lack of privilege, twice: the house, then the first book written from the house. She then benefits yet a third time in this viral essay (maybe someone has pointed this out). I mean… It's the third time that makes me question the morality of the whole thing. Arguably, the best part of the essay, the climax, where he re-enters the home — he's the star. Without him (and that detailed, riveting description of his every move), without his reappearance, the essay doesn't work. Perhaps that would have given me pause as a writer, but I still love this piece.
So much to think about in the essay, the close reading, and the comments - all deeply thoughtful, and not easily forgotten. I’m grateful for all.
One image I keep thinking about are the two yards. In what world does anyone imagine these are discrete entities? I believe the dogshit in the one, through soil and wind and especially rain, is helping enrich the pendulous tomatoes in the other. We are more connected, through the mature wisdom of nature, than we’d perhaps be comfortable acknowledging.
And it may be stretching a bit, but the water of the former owner’s tears seems also to be enriching as well, promoting a genuine moment of remorse and empathy in the daughter-renovator. Whatever the failings of the former owner, he does honor to his own feelings. He knows the importance of ritual, of grieving. (Maybe heart always got too much in the way of head and that’s why he wasn’t all that successful amid the world’s and the neighborhood’s capitalism?)
Anyway, we seem to be connected by water and by desire and, if graced with the awareness, connected by intention as well.
Really hope you give this format a few more spins! I don’t always want my thoughts so provoked, but the exchanges are great!
It's nice to get a discussion going sometimes.
I am not a writer. I am a reader. I was put off by the bluntness of the tomatoes/breast comparison and the soiled back yard. But the "stood there, respectfully" said so much about the moment. Respect for the prior owner's pain? I'm glad I read it and even better was the discussion you posted and comments by others. She is a good writer. I am just not sure I am in the right place for her writing at the moment.
Thanks so much Colleen. And yeah, taste can account for so much. I thought My Year of Rest and Relaxation was brilliant, but based on some of the imagery I've seen quoted from Lapvona, I just don't think it's for me at the moment. Perhaps the next one.
I really appreciate this analysis of the essay. My take, as an essayist, is that it was too spare to be as effective as it could be, but like you said, it is a difficult thing to create an arc in a short essay like this. My taste lean towards longer essays that chew on their material and have a greater awareness of the structural forces around them that lead to what is described in the essay.I’ve never particularly enjoyed Moshfeghs work, but that’s certainly a matter of taste and style as an essayist
Actually, I’ll be arrogant and say I could have done it better, but that again comes down to a matter of my own tastes in essays.
Good for you. "I could have done this better" is actually a great feeling for a writer to take from a piece, as it helps clarify what you're trying to do in your own work.
Very true! I used to live in providence too, so this one hit close to home (and I have sat outside with someone smoking on a providence summer night, close to spiritual). I would have gone into detail about the history of the housing market in providence and the economic history of the place, I would have linked it back to my parents immigrant experience and what housing meant to them in Iran and their early experiences in the US, then would have ended it by talking about the entire concept of housing as part of the American dream. But that’s a Heather Aruffo essay and what people know my essays for, being expansive and highly researched, and not an Ottessa Moshfegh essay. Both can exist. You helped me learn something about this essay with this review of it, thank you!
Thanks for writing this. I read the social media backlash before I read the essay and, while I appreciated some of the craft, that certainly colored my opinion of the whole. Happy to have been wrong. I'm going to read it again today.
Thanks for commenting. Also happy to hear from those who disagree with my assessment! I read it totally unaware of the backlash, and I wonder if my reaction would have been different if I had seen the negative criticism first.
Yes, certainly thoughtful disagreement is good. I think I almost instinctively agreed with your analysis about intentionally presenting herself as the villain but hadn't given it too much thought, so as soon as I started reading your thoughts, it became clear. Upon re-read, the one thing that I still don't love is the word "respectfully" in the final paragraph. It's an odd moment of abstract telling (what does it mean to stand respectfully?) and seems to undercut the idea of the piece, like a lapse into self-righteousness, but perhaps that's a misreading on my part. Anyway, I loved re-engaging with it and with your writing.
I thought it was an amazing piece of writing, and I really appreciated your close reading of it. I felt that she absolutely empathised with the previous owner - her guilt, her awareness of her own privilege (and not niceness) radiated out.
Thanks for this reply. This was my impression as well, but it is interesting to see the different reactions and think about why it was received differently by different readers.
Thank you for sharing this. Loved the straightforward narrative - very honest and beautifully written.