{"id":4024,"date":"2018-07-09T13:53:12","date_gmt":"2018-07-09T20:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/?p=4024"},"modified":"2018-07-09T13:53:12","modified_gmt":"2018-07-09T20:53:12","slug":"the-dark-magic-of-ottessa-moshfegh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2018\/07\/the-dark-magic-of-ottessa-moshfegh.html","title":{"rendered":"The Dark Magic of Ottessa Moshfegh"},"content":{"rendered":"

[contextly_auto_sidebar]<\/p>\n

IT’s not often that I pick up a book and get a new favorite writer. But that’s pretty close to what happened when a story collection called Homesick For Another World<\/em>, by a young author I’d not heard of, arrived in the mail one day. I read a few dark, alienated short stories, some of which were set in a dreary, bleached-out, dingbat-lined Los Angeles. I found a noirish novella called Eileen<\/em>, and devoured its grim Patricia Highsmith-like tale in record time.<\/p>\n

In few days Ottessa Moshfegh’s new novel, \"\"<\/a>My Year of Rest and Relaxation<\/em>, comes out. It’s in some ways different from the novella — the plot is more minimal, or at least more internal, as it mostly concerns a character trying to spend a year in a New York apartment doing just about nothing at all. But the combination of bitterness, bleak humor and writerly control is identical.<\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, I met Moshfegh — who grew up outside Boston but now lives in Hollywood and the high desert — for a coffee. I was struck yb a few things, including her early interest in what she called “black male” writers like James Baldwin, Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison, in part for their sense of internal exile.<\/p>\n

In any case, my brief profile of her is not yet online — I will post it if it comes up — but here<\/a> is a review of her latest by Dwight Garner in the New York Times. She’s not always an easy read, but she’s the real thing for sure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[contextly_auto_sidebar] IT’s not often that I pick up a book and get a new favorite writer. But that’s pretty close to what happened when a story collection called Homesick For Another World, by a young author I’d not heard of, arrived in the mail one day. I read a few dark, alienated short stories, some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35,34,30,29],"tags":[713,711],"class_list":{"0":"post-4024","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-books","7":"category-literary","8":"category-los-angeles","9":"category-west-coast","10":"tag-los-angeles","11":"tag-visual-art","12":"entry","13":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4024"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4028,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4024\/revisions\/4028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}