Homesick for Another World - Ottessa Moshfegh (2017)

Ottessa Moshfegh came to my attention through The Paris Review Podcast (Episode #7), in which she read her story, "A Dark and Winding Road." I hadn't heard of her before. Because Dead Boys and Try made the Best Books list (both many years ago), so too must this.  She is a contemporary, just a couple years older than me. I am jealous of her. She is a great writer. She is not boring. Her concerns are not trivial. Yet they sometimes are? It's o.k. She's hilarious.  She is hardcore.

Story collections often make for difficult reviews because there can be so much ground to cover, but like Dead Boys, the stories here seem to have enough elements in common for an overarching theme to emerge. At first blush (or second), one could write off this work as going for "shock value." And indeed, few of these characters are completely uncontroversial. The teacher in the first story pounds 40's and sleeps in a sleeping bag in her classroom after hours. More than one male character uses make-up to try to hide their acne. Crystal meth is consumed by several characters. Two older male characters half-stalk women they vaguely know and pine for. Few of them seem to have "enough" money, and none of them have lives that anyone would aspire towards. Almost every single one is flawed, and deeply so. Great literature often portrays characters that are internally flawed--they appear normal outwardly but something happens that causes them to become unhinged. Here, everyone is basically already unhinged. And we can debate back and forth all night about the merits of writing about flawed characters, but the sad fact is, from what I have seen, people just keep getting stranger and stranger. So this is a great book for our times, one of the best books I have read in the last couple years. 

To run through the stories: "Bettering Myself" is a story about a teacher in New York City, perhaps in a bygone-era, pre-2004 (smoking allowed in bars), who resigns for personal reasons.  "Mr. Wu" is about a man who has a crush on a woman who runs an internet "arcade" and who engineers a scheme to secretly text her and meet up with her.  Once I gave my sister a book of Raymond Carver short stories and put an asterisk next to all the ones I thought were most worth reading, if she didn't have the time or interest to read them all.  This story would get an asterisk.

Before we run through each of the stories, it is prudent that we include an excerpt, because the book is due back at the library today.  So even though it is probably the most widely publicized story in the book, one passage from "A Dark and Winding Road" particularly hit home for me:

"I rolled a joint in my car with the lights on and smoked it sitting in the armchair, in the dark.  There was no cell phone service up there, which made me nervous.  I don't know why I continued to smoke marijuana as long as I did.  It almost always sent me in an existential panic.  When I smoked with my wife, I had to feign complete exhaustion just to excuse myself from going out for a walk, which she liked to do.  I was so paranoid, so deeply anxious.  When I got high, I felt as though a dark curtain had been pulled across the world and I was left there alone to waver in its cold, dark shadows.  I never dared to smoke by myself at home, lest I throw myself from our twelfth-story window.  But when I smoked that night at the cabin, I felt fine.  I whistled some songs, tapped my feet.  I whistled one difficult tune in particular, a Stevie Wonder song, which is melodically complicated, and after a few rounds I could really whistle it beautifully.  I remembered what it was like to practice and get good at something.  I thought of how great a dad I would be.  'Practice makes perfect,' I'd tell my child, a truism maybe, but it now seemed suddenly endowed with great depth and wisdom.  And so I felt wonderful about myself, forgetting the strange world outside.  I even thought that after my child was born, I'd still come up to the cabin once or twice a month, just to keep the secret of how great I was.  I whistled some more." (76-77)

And later:

"The cabin hardly looked any cleaner after all that sweeping.  In fact, I probably stirred up more dust than I swept out the door.  I sneezed and drank a few beers and relieved myself again and used more hand-sanitizing gel and sat in the armchair.  I smoked another joint.  That last one was a mistake, because after just a few minutes I was picturing my unborn son crying over my grave fifty years into the future, and I felt the gravity of his woe and resentment toward me, and I despised him.  Then I imagined everything bad he'd say about me to his own children after my death.  I imagined my grandchildren's bitchy faces.  I hated them for not worshipping me.  Had they no idea of my sacrifice?  There I was, perfectly wonderful, and nobody would see that.  I looked up and saw a bat hanging from the rafters.  I went to a very dark place.  The oceanic emptiness in my gut churned.  I pictured my old body rotting in my coffin.  I pictured my skin wrinkling and turning black and falling off my bones.  I pictured my rotting genitals.  I pictured my pubic hair filling with larvae.  And after all that, there was infinite darkness.  There was nothing.
Just as I considered hanging myself with my belt, there was a knock on the door of the cabin, and a girl's voice called out, 'MJ?'" (79-80)

It's these types of interior confessions, as inimical as they often are, which set this book apart from others.  I'm not sure if Moshfegh always writes likes this.  She does actually show some pretty incredible range here, writing tonally different stories that are told from diverse perspectives.  She does have her bete-noires, and that is why I compare this to Dead Boys.  Her bete-noir is L.A. and the illusions and dreams that go with it.  She could also be lumped in, easily, with Bret Easton Ellis.

It is perhaps worth noting that half (7 out of 14) of these stories were originally published in The Paris Review.  Several others were published in The New Yorker, Vice, and Granta.  Only the last story ("A Better Place") is printed here for the first time.  This speaks to the quality of the work.  They're all fairly polished pieces in spite of (perhaps because of) their raw subject matter.  That is, they feel untouched by any editorial hands other than the author's.  Truthfully, the book is gone and I can't recall the specific subject matter of each of the stories but I will give it a try, and asterisk those stories I remember being best.

"The Weirdos"* is a first-person (nearly all that I recall are first-person) narrative about a young woman in L.A. living with her wannabe actor/pseudo-landlord/psychopathic boyfriend and the travails of their failing relationship.

Is it possible the male character from "Malibu" and "The Weirdos" is the same?  I doubt it, but it's totally possible.  I always say this (and it's probably not always true) but an adaptation of this collection could make for a great film in the vein of Short Cuts.  Of course the danger is that it would come off more like The Informers.  It would probably end up somewhere in between the two.

"A Dark and Winding Road"* is about a successful Manhattan real estate attorney that goes up to his family's cabin and ends up smoking meth with his brother's girlfriend.  The narrator may rank as the most personally despicable in the collection, though the story is also hilarious.

"No Place for Good People" may have the most endearing and likable narrator in the collection, who is an early 50's man working part-time at a home for the mentally disabled, yet he is also far from perfect.  It is mostly about how he takes three of his residents out to a birthday dinner at Hooter's.

"An Honest Woman" is reminiscent of the oeuvre of Flannery O'Connor (I have gotten halfway through the complete collection of her short stories, and found it an impossible task to adequately review) about a man in his early 60's with vitiligo and how he befriends his new neighbor and tries to set her up with his nephew, drinking with her and failing to hide his obsession with her.

"Slumming"* is about just that--a youngish teacher slumming it up at her summer home in a lower class town.  Again, could this be the same narrator from "Bettering Myself?" It's possible.  "The Beach Boy"* is about a middle-aged couple that goes on vacation in the Caribbean and comes back home to New York to tell their friends about it--then the story takes a ridiculous turn that probably shouldn't work, but ends up doing so beautifully. 

"The Locked Room" is probably the shortest story in the book and is about a girl getting locked in a practice room above a music hall with her boyfriend.  It is probably the most lighthearted and casually amusing entry in the collection.

"Nothing Ever Happens Here" features another aspiring actor in L.A., though this character seems more innocent and sane than those of "Malibu" or "Weirdos."  As usual the story takes a depressing turn.  "The Surrogate" is about a young woman that acts as "surrogate vice president" of a company in order to be seen as a sex object and gain a business advantage.

"Dancing in the Moonlight"* could be the best story in the collection.  It feels more epic and like an actual "story" than the others, as it details a 33-year-old man's Christmas day spent alone, conspiring to travel from New York City to Providence to buy an ottoman so that he can ask the woman he pines for to restore it for him.  Along the way he gets drunk with an older polish lady at a nearby bar.

Finally there is the tonally-different "A Better Place" which is almost fairy-tale like in its simplicity and feels very deep, bringing forth ruminations on a different plane of existence.  It is about a young girl and her twin brother, and how the girl speaks of her wish to return to the better place she was before, and how her brother tells her that the only way to get there is to die or to kill a certain man that their mother has warned her against.  It is hard to tell what this story is about, and it is not one of the best in the collection, yet it would undoubtedly yield profound interpretations if taught as part of a course on fiction writing.

In summation, and upon greater reflection, not everyone will agree that this deserves to be in the Best Books category. Sometimes, the stories come off as primarily comic, and secondarily serious, with little overlap or subtlety of meaning. Perhaps it is just because I give special kudos to authors of transgressive fiction for taking risks with their work, but this book did it for me in a way that few others have lately. I don't have much else to say because I haven't had the book in front of me, and I recognize that this is not up to the standard quality of a NY Times Book Review. I know I could do better, and use the first person a bit less. Moshfegh could do better than this story collection, too. That sounds like a weird thing to say but it's meant to be a compliment. Perhaps she'll fade into the ether, but regardless, she's left behind something beautiful, specifically because it's not.

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned - Wells Tower

To believe the hype, or not to believe the hype? That is the question all of us bloggers face when reviewing a new book or album or movie that carries an enormous buzz. The Vampire Weekend debut album comes to mind. I think it is fair to say that Wells Tower's debut collection of short stories, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned is the literary equivalent to that piece of cultural history from 18 months ago. Except that, in the case of the former, I disagreed with the general consensus, and in this case, I agree with it. The hype is deserved; Wells Tower will be here to stay for a while.

I saw him speak at a panel discussion entitled "Short and Sweet" at the Printer's Row Lit Fest this year. He was definitely one of the biggest celebrities in attendance this year, though he has only recently become a known name. I think he is about 36 years old. Apparently he went to college and is friends with one of the guys in Les Savy Fav. He used to write for the Washington Post, or something? Then, he got his MFA from Columbia University (like the author posted about previously, whom he may surpass in fame in the coming years) and he published stories in all the right places (The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Harper's, McSweeney's) and here finally is his collection. I have to say it is the best short story collection I have read since Richard Lange's Dead Boys, and it is hard to say which is better. Lange's is dear to my heart because of its L.A.-centricity, but Tower's seems to cover more human territory. Not that all of Lange's protagonists are the same (as at least one review, in the San Francisco Chronicle, assumed, which I found weird) but they do all seem genetically, if not socio-economically, similar. Tower's protagonists are of a much wider variety, and because of this, his book appeals to the least common denominator (or would greatest common factor be a more appropriate mathematical term?). I don't think this book will make Oprah's Book Club, nor do I think Tower would want to become a part of that institution. I think this book lacks a specific "issue" focus that Oprah's books always seem to project. Nevertheless, I still can't help but think of this as an Oprah-style-book because it's something that is practically impossible to denounce or discount. Uniformally positive reviews are the rule here.

I did read it very quickly, and I enjoyed it very much. As much as I would like to be cool and slam it and affect the pose of a sophisticate hipster who is above consuming anything that has generated a "buzz," it would be a mistake. I got it out of the library on Tuesday and finished reading it on Friday. Story-by-story analysis? Alright, but don't expect too many quotes. Tower may have established himself as one of the best young writers working today with this volume, but he is nothing compared to Mann--not yet, at least.

"The Brown Coast" opens up the collection with one of the few third-person perspectives it contains. It is about a guy (Bob) who has been sent to make some repairs on the summer home of his uncle (Randy) in Florida, or somewhere. He captures some fish and puts them in an aquarium. He makes friends with his neighbors and goes skinny-dipping with them. He is separated from his wife but wants to get back together with her. Later, there is a destructive act, and it is only in this kind of denouement that Tower's stories seem to inhabit thematically similar territory. This story did remind me of Richard Lange.

As did the next one, "Retreat," which is about two brothers--one a real estate entrepreneur and the other a musical therapist. One brother has recently bought a mountain with a cabin on it, and has invited the other one over for a weekend of bonding. They go hunting with another man, bag some serious game, and then later, something destructive happens. This story was probably better than the first one.

"Executors of Important Energies" is about a kid who patents crazy inventions and makes a pretty good living off it (which made me think of "Shark Tank") whose father is starting to succumb to Alzheimer's, or some variant of it. His father is a chess guru and lawyer, and married to a much younger woman. The kid lives in the West Village, and meets his father in Washington Square Park, where he is taking on another hustler in a game. They befriend this person and take him out to dinner. This is a very good story but arguably not as good as the second one.

"Down Through the Valley" is about a recently divorced guy who has to pick up his daughter and his wife's new lover, a spiritual guru, from some new age camp and drive them home, because of an injury. It's complicated to explain. They stop at a roadside bar to get some dinner, and a fight breaks out. This story does have some nice moments, potentially even great moments, but is one of the less memorable of the collection for some reason.

With "Leopard," the collection veers into new territory, describing the miserable existence of an 11-year-old boy who fakes being sick to avoid going to school because his classmates are so mean to him, only to be stuck at home with a seemingly worse stepfather. He is asked to get the mail, which is no small task at their house, and he fakes fainting on the walk back. In the mailbox was a flyer asking for help to find a lost pet leopard. A cop stops by and tries to help. The ending is really messed up. This was definitely a highlight, but still slight in comparison with what is to come.

"Door in Your Eye" is about an 83-year-old man who has moved in with his daughter and been told by her that a woman across the street from their apartment is a whore. This story is hilarious and sweet and while also slight, another highlight in the collection.

"Wild America" signals the beginning of the end, the final trilogy of stories that I think should be considered the strongest overall part of the collection. If "Wild America" is not the longest story, it is the second longest. It is about one day in the life of Jacey, who is hanging out with her cousin Maya, and a boy named Leander. All are in high school. Maya is a model and aspiring ballet dancer who smokes and Jacey is plump, athletic, and might one day consider a future in pharmacy. Leander is a boy that Jacey necked with once in a planetarium, and now has been invited to come over and watch Jaws. A trip to a convenience store with Maya veers off into the forest for a pot smoking excursion, which ends in Jacey flipping out and turning her attentions towards an older man who is sunbathing on a rock in a creek nearby. This is a really weird story and I didn't think I was going to like it at first but is just paced very well.

"On the Show" is probably the best story in the collection. It is about a group of people brought together by a carnival and a despicable act in a portable toilet. It is something of a mystery story, a whodunit that seems almost secondary to the entertaining description of what it is like to be a carny. It may be longer than "Wild America," or vice versa, but these are the two longest stories, and this is definitely the more elegantly composed of the two. It is almost like a short novella, and it could have gone on indefinitely, it seems, following any of the characters. But as it stands, the length is perfect, the material is pure page-turner, and the characters are wonderfully evoked.

"Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned" is the notorious title story that I feel like most people consider the single highlight of the collection. It could also be known as the story about Vikings. It does end the collection on a great note, a lighter note for sure. After all of Tower's deep and often unsettling observations on contemporary America comes a piece of historical fiction that is absurd, depraved, and just kind of silly, if harmless. It's not especially long, but it is not the slightest of the lot either. It is probably the most comic of all stories but it also contains the most grotesque imagery. One could easily be cynical about this story, or what it represents (which is open to debate), but I don't think it's meant to be taken all that seriously. Take an exchange between the two main characters, on their voyage to the land they are set to pillage, as an example:

"We had less light in the evenings out here than at home, and it was a little easier sleeping in the open boat without an all-night sun. Gnut and I slept where we rowed, working around each other to get comfy on the bench. I woke up once in the middle of the night and found Gnut dead asleep, muttering and slobbering and holding me in a rough embrace. I tried to peel him off, but he was large, and his hard arms stayed on me tight as if they'd grown there. I poked him and yelled at him, but the big man would not be roused, so I just tried to work up a little slack to where he wasn't hurting my ribs, and I drifted back to sleep.
Later, I told him what had happened. 'That's a lot of horseshit,' he said, his broad face going red.
'I wish it was,' I said, 'But I've got bruises I could show you. Hey, if I ever come around asking to be your sweetheart, do me a favor and remind me about last night.'
He was all upset. 'Go to hell, Harald. You're not funny. Nobody thinks you're funny.'
'I'm sorry,' I said, 'Guess you haven't had a whole lot of practice lately having a body beside you at night.'
He rested on the oar a second. 'So what if I haven't.'" (224-225)

At the "Short and Sweet" panel, Wells Tower mentioned that he was at work on a novel. Whatever it is, it will probably be worth reading. Maybe it will not be as good as this collection, but he seems to know what he is doing, and I would put odds that his star will only continue to grow. Whatever he releases, I'll be paying attention.

Ed: It is perhaps worth noting that Oprah released her newest book club selection--a collection of short stories titled Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan--also a debut collection. True to form, it is more issue-centric than Tower's collection, and it will probably appeal to Oprah's audience and Akpan will now become more famous. This is only worth noting because it was funny that I mentioned her book club and that only a few days later, she picked her next book, a short story collection. I would like to think that Oprah is a reader of this blog (I would love to become her friend) but I highly doubt that.

Dead Boys - Richard Lange

Since the 1980's, Raymond Carver has dominated the short story market. He died in 1989. Nobody gets namedropped half as much. He was nicknamed "the Chekhov of the suburbs." He is regarded as one of the few recent major modern American writers. This is probably because his work is quite even. There appear to be no missteps, no poorly regarded works, no ill-considered books. He could seemingly do no wrong. Flash forward, ten, fifteen years after his death. His stamp is all over college and graduate writing programs. Everybody wants to be him.

I only mention that because two of the blurbs for Dead Boys invoke Carver (but they also include Denis Johnson). Richard Lange's work does have a bit in common with both of them. The stark style, the "grittiness." But beyond marketing techniques, once you get down to the actual stories, it's clear that Lange has his own slightly skewed brand of originality that Carver and Johnson both employed and employ.

There are very few weak spots in the book. The only story that took me a while to get through was the opener, "Fuzzyland," which is probably the longest story in the book. Okay that's not true. "Bank of America" and "Long Lost" are just as if not slightly longer. But "Fuzzyland" is the most content to meander along harmlessly. It's about a salesman whose younger sister has just been raped and how he and his wife drive from L.A. down to her area of San Diego and stay with her for a weekend and go to Tijuana while a fire continues to bear down on the area near her condo. There are some good moments in it, and it is by no means a dull story, but it may be one of the weaker ones in the collection. But I feel really bad saying that.

"Bank of America" is the second story and it is about a painter who robs banks in his spare time while being a totally normal husband and father at the same time. All of the stories in this collection are first person. This is one of the more notable ones.

"The Bogo-Indian Defense" is about a group of older guys who hang out at a donut shop and play chess. Then one of them dies and one of them gives the narrator the task of returning the ashes to an estranged daughter in Downey. All of these stories take place in the Los Angeles region.

"Long Lost" is an especially bizarre piece about two brothers that meet for the first time over Christmas. I particularly liked this story because the main couple lives in Silverlake and invites the brother to stay with them there.

"Telephone Bird" is where the collection starts to pick up, in my opinion. From here to the end, the stories seem to get better and better. The main character here lives in a boarding house and works as a temp at a gas company while all the other workers are on strike. There is a bird that sounds like a telephone ringing that keeps him up at night. There are other residents of the boarding house that act as extras in a zombie movie. Another one of them is a law school dropout who is mentally unstable.

"Culver City" is about a troubled marriage between a man who takes dying pets away to be put to sleep and a coffee shop waitress who supposedly hangs out with Hollywood celebrities and finds a picture of gay sex that she hopes to use to blackmail the actors in question for $100,000. They also have a son. The husband is sure that the picture will only cause more trouble, and it does.

"Love Lifted Me" may be one of the best stories in the collection. It is about an alcoholic guy living in a motel in Van Nuys who hang outs with/protects a 16-year-old meth addict who is engaged to a guy named Eightball, whose father comes into town for their wedding. Also, the main character is haunted by the ghost of his wife, who jumped off the highway overpass where the Hollywood, Harbor and Pasadena freeways intersect. When they drive over to the county courthouse, the car breaks down, and they end up walking into Chinatown. And the main character thinks he meets a postal worker at a bar who likes him. It's a crazy story.

"Loss Prevention," like "Bank of America" is probably the most "blockbuster" story in this bunch. It is about a new security guard trainee at a Chinese-run grocery store and his friend who is a recovered drug addict and loves to listen to Neil Young. They half-confront a lady who is shoplifting and then are later faced with a harrowing situation.

"The Hero Shot" is about a guy who moved to L.A. when he was young to try to make it as an actor, got one speaking role, two lines, received a lot of encouragement, but eventually served out his time in the city with no more breaks. He goes home to live with his widowed mother. He sells his old comic books for $500. His brother lives down the street from his mom and never visits. This is another very-affecting piece.

"Blind-Made Products" is named for the factory where the narrator's blind ex-girlfriend used to work. The story is mainly about helping a friend named Dee Dee move to a new apartment where they then have a pretty cool party and then run out into the desert to set fire to her car. Another very energetic, memorable story.

"Everything Beautiful is Far Away" -- I don't remember what it is about off the top of my head. Let me check. Oh yeah, it's about the guy who is stalking his ex-girlfriend named Lana and works at a newsstand. This is another especially bizarre story that works to incredible dramatic effect. Also he lives in a bachelor unit and paints the brick wall that is his only view into a beach scene.

"Dead Boys," the title story, is also arguably the best story in the collection. It features the most writing about "the workplace" and slim, yet devastating details about the narrator's concern for a co-worker that he goes to a strip joint with. Thus, the last two paragraphs of the book are extremely powerful. It ends with a bang.

I read this book in two days and didn't really want to have to stop to pause in between. None of the short stories exasperated me. It's hard to review a book of short stories. You have to describe so many different little parts. At least in Jesus' Son the stories are all seemingly tied together by the same main character. Here, some of the main characters may be interchangeable, but they all have distinct little foibles that would be way too disorienting to ever make the case that they were the same person. They are lived in lives. Many of them are borderline alcoholics but few of them toy around with very hard drugs. They are fundamentally decent people. The setting that Lange places them in is the only recurring central character. Anybody who has lived in L.A. will enjoy this book for the all-too-familiar tone of desperation that permeates the city underneath, and anybody who has not lived there will probably enjoy this book and then want to move there to see if it is crazy as Lange makes it out to be. No matter what other weird opinions I have on this book, all of the prose is excellent, and Richard Lange definitely deserves to reach a wider audience. Apparently he is working on a novel now and it will soon be published. I'm definitely looking forward to it.