![]() Of course, just because the character finds her thoughts and memories unremarkable does not mean that the reader will. She wants to sleep life way because she’s tired of the world as well as her own dull thoughts and “lame memories.” I’m not a moron.”) She doesn’t seem fond of anyone, and certainly not her best friend or dead parents. (“I was born into privilege,” she tells her artist friend Ping Xi. She’s not going to check her privilege, she’s going to write checks with it. She is not driven by political awakening or artistic ambition. Her narrator is rich, beautiful, boring (to herself at least) and bored. While misanthropic characters often make up for their nastiness though their creativity, righteous anger, or unfortunate life circumstances, Moshfegh eschews all that. The story follows a rich young white woman in New York City at the turn of the millennium who is so over existence that she decides to take as many drugs as possible and sleep life away. In her new novel, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Moshfegh pushes the question of how “unlikeable” a character can get even further. I’m fucking brilliant!” Readers will have as strong a reaction Moshfegh’s author persona as they do her characters, but for me at least, it is a refreshing change from an era dominated by false humility and the accumulation of social media “likes.” She’s blunt about her opinion of her own talent: “I’m not going to be making cappuccinos. She’s described her stories as “like seeing Kate Moss take a shit” and bragged that she started writing Eileen just to prove “how easy is” to write a successful thriller. In public, Moshfegh seems to delight in undercutting her own fans and acclaim. Each of these books has been well-reviewed, even as critics have sometimes balked at the misanthropy and frequent descriptions of bodily excretions. Her works so far have featured a possibly murderous drunk (the underrated novella McGlue), an ugly-inside-and-out secretary who hates everyone and everything (the PEN/Hemingway-winning and Man Booker-shortlisted novel Eileen), and a host of enjoyable nasty and cranky protagonists in her excellent short story collection Homesick for Another World. ![]() To be clear, I mean that as a compliment. Ottessa Moshfegh’s oeuvre reads almost like an attempt to see just how “unlikeable” characters can get. If you’re the type of reader who is looking for friends, Ottessa Moshfegh is probably not the writer for you. Who you’d “like to have a beer with” isn’t a great way to elect presidents or create characters. Many nice people are dull as dirt on the page (why do you think Facebook has an “unfollow” button?), while literature is full of morally questionable assholes that are a pure delight to spend time with. Is a character-no matter how cruel, bitter, or immoral-someone you like to read about?.Is a non-existent fictional character a “good person” that you’d want to “be friends with”?.Part of what’s so irritating about the idea of “unlikeable characters” is that that it confuses two different questions. “If you’re reading to find friends, you’re in deep trouble.” The exchange kicked off a debate about “unlikeable characters,” a concept that frustrates most authors, especially since - as Messud pointed out - readers are more likely to complain about a character’s likeability if the character is a woman. “For heaven’s sake, what kind of question is that?” Messud replied. In 2013, Claire Messud was asked by an interviewer if she’d want to be friends with one of her bitter protagonists.
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