Review of Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation

This book is very well written, though it drags a bit in the middle and near the end. The only thing that kept me reading was the dates ticking closer to 9/11. It has quite an engaging game loop: cruel to Reva, recounting trauma with parents, recounting past cruelty, wants to fuck Trevor, drugs, blackout — repeat until it just becomes drugs, then “how nice the trees are,” ending with: I can’t stop watching the 9/11 jumpers. It is a pretty vulgar book, though not the most — it is far a bit tamer than Tropic of Cancer. It feels as if the last chapter of Ulysses (the Molly Bloom sexual stream of consciousness) had been given the grammar of Mean Girls.

Moshfegh says in her interviews that she was very inspired by American Psycho in writing this work, and this is apparent both in the narrative and its effect upon culture. Both characters are rich white kids who, in the vacuous milieu of spectacular capitalism, become heightened toxic versions of their genders. Polemically, you could phrase it in Freudian terms as mummy issues (My Year of Rest and Relaxation) vs. daddy issues (American Psycho).

While the male parallel to this book is certainly more brutally destructive, I see this wave of nihilistic/dissociative feminism as having a parallel destructive impact upon the niche subcultures that celebrate this work. Online I saw a meme with this book’s title saying “I relate to this protagonist because we are both selfish privileged idiots but are really hot and hate everyone,” which can be seen as a feminised commentary on American Psycho. She talks in the book of “art creating the future,” and the way Moshfegh articulated this character — the particular memes she drew upon (#girlboss lines like “I learned to float on cheap affections gleaned from other people’s insecurities”) — has somehow made this behaviour desirable for thousands of readers. It has had enough of an impact for BuzzFeed to award it the distinction of “this book is a red flag” in romantic partners.

Some people seem to forget that this character is designed to be unlikeable. She is a psychopath. Some people read the ending as her year of rest and relaxation — which was really just one long bender — having resolved the deep malaise that befell her. This is suggested by her seeing the “grace” in nature, calling Reva, and selling the house. Particularly in selling the house and throwing out the things in the attic, it shows her moving on from the toxic relationship she had with her mother and getting over her parents’ death, which is the true vexation of her spirit. Throughout the work she has these lapses of empathy and humanity; I think this was just one of them. Reading the last passage:

“On September 11, I went out and bought a new TV/VCR at Best Buy so I could record the news coverage of the planes crashing into the Twin Towers. Trevor was on a honeymoon in Barbados, I’d later learn, but Reva was lost. Reva was gone. I watched the videotape over and over to soothe myself that day. And I continue to watch it, usually on a lonely afternoon, or any other time I doubt that life is worth living, or when I need courage, or when I am bored. Each time I see the woman leap off the seventy-eighth floor of the North Tower — one high-heeled shoe slipping off and hovering up over her, the other stuck on her foot as though it were too small, her blouse untucked, hair flailing, limbs stiff as she plummets down, one arm raised, like a dive into a summer lake — I am overcome by awe, not because she looks like Reva, and I think it’s her, almost exactly her, and not because Reva and I had been friends, or because I’ll never see her again, but because she is beautiful. There she is, a human being, diving into the unknown, and she is wide awake.”

I don’t know about you, but this was not my reaction to watching videos of the jumpers. It’s fucking weird. On top of that, this is the only time she calls Reva beautiful — and she is dying. I think this last passage shows her slipping back into psychopathy, with Moshfegh writing four pages of humanity to throw us off the scent. This is a pathological liar, an apathetic narcissist who is cruel to her boss, her friends, and the world around her — seemingly void of humanity.

That said, it was an enjoyable read.