April 30, 2024
my year of rest and relaxation, by ottessa moshfegh, is frequently discussed on booktok and the like, a highly polarizing work in no doubt to i) it’s unlikable main character, ii) its portrayal of mental illness, and iii) its reflection thereof regarding folk beliefs sprung out of the internet in the post-social media world. at its core, the book is about a rich WASP deciding to sleep for a year and alienate her (singular!) friend (who proceeds to die in 9/11) as she finds her current life unstimulating. at the end of the year the narrator has cured herself of her disenchantment with life.
the narrator is an unnamed wasp living off her inheritance. there is a certain expectation for women in media to be likable, or at least caring – see the ever-present internet debate regarding skylar white in breaking bad. not only is the protagonist bereft of caring, she is downright escapist in regard to the ties she has with others, hating her only friend and spurning her throughout the book.
many readers do so because they feel (or want to feel) an identification with the characters in the media that they consume. as a broad generalization, these characters act as wish fulfillment to an extent, living out a life which they may never possess. the broad appeal of books such as colleen hoover’s are in no small part due to the appeal of this fulfillment to a society increasingly marked by loneliness. fifty shades promises an adventurous relationship to a demographic that may otherwise feel stifled by the trappings of their social class. in the same way, breaking bad tends to offer to men the day dream of being a lone autonomous agent; to some reading roman history provides the chance to imagine the state of the current world if only one had been an agent in those times. not all media is wish-fulfillment, but a lot is (as an aside, i wonder if this is where the popular denigration of lolita comes from – those who view fiction as wish fulfillment being disgusted by those who read for other reasons). one could attribute much of the popularity of my year of rest and relaxation to it serving a demographic composes of women and those who take issue with it primarily men. this is approximately true – the majority of readers are women – but is an oversimplification.
though not explicitly stated i suppose it is apparent that the narrator is significantly mentally ill; it is not as if the process of trying to hibernate for a year is much different from a temporary cessation of life. the lack of reaction toward everyday life is part of what makes the narrator unlikeable; simultaneously she fulfills several of the criteria for major depressive disorder. the question underlying the work, as many of our public cultural debates (see: treatment of kanye west) is the extent to which mentally ill people are responsible for their flaws.
among certain subsets of gen Z mental health issues have been unduly sanitized, evident in debates over kanye west’s culpability in anti-semitism, with some claiming that illness itself cannot result in racism, misogyny, etc. this is false. oftentimes, the most culturally acceptable instances of mental disorders become its official representation. in the case of autism, those who can live independently with some issues are much more visible than those without these skills (a natural result of a subgroup being more capable of advocacy than another – see reactions toward ABA). for bipolar disorder, those who are stably medicated are far more equipped for visibility and so this obscures the profoundly disabling effects of mental illness – kanye was both anti-semitic and mentally ill, even if his delusions led him to be so. empathy does not mean excusing or promoting these actions.
similarly, the narrator’s beliefs are twisted and maladjusted; from the inside of her mind these are fully justified as in real illness. the main character is unlikable because depression is an unlikable quality! lack of interest in day-to-day life is one of the worst traits one can have imo. reading this book ought not to be an exercise in identification but rather a critical view of the experience of mental illness. therefore, those who read books for identification are split into a depressive contingent who enjoy the book and a healthy one who do not, further polarizing beliefs on the book.
in the internet-heavy demographic which my year of rest and relaxation latched onto, there are certain other beliefs regarding mental illness – primarily that it serves as an identity. i’ve written about this before in autobiographical asphyxiation which has a ton of sources. one in particular, in turn found through pe moskowitz’ wonderful blog is “capitalism and schizophrenia”. in it, the founder of buzzfeed discusses the rise of internet commerce and advertising, connecting it to identity formation by way of lacan, deleuze, and guattari. the paper is as follows:
in short, the phenomenon of the internet accelerates identity formation with ideas such that this identification becomes the object both being consumed and that of desire. moshfegh’s final diversion is such that the narrator, or object of identification, herself loses the feature of identity which many of its readers rely on as a tool, severing the link between her and the over-identifying audience, a final betrayal. this subversion alienates the non-critical reader. if one is to identify with their illness by way of a tie with the narrator, that which remains in the spurning of the reader, left behind and viewed as a reviled object. this heel-turn is what makes this book enjoyable. also, that it’s a funnier version of remember me (2010).
fitting in the theme of long spells of solitude which were not quite such (book being discussed, journal of a solitude, yellow wallpaper, etc.), i spent approximately six months of my life speaking less than 150 words per day to others, most of the times which i did speak would be over the phone. this was an intractably lonely period of my life. when i finally had the opportunity to speak again i found that i had quite literally lost my voice – any prolonged period of conversation required respite. one of the basic elements of the body withered away.
a wish for escape from the pains of daily life is understandable but stems from a neglect toward reality. i am curious what the narrator would think of her episode, ten years on, or on her deathbed. would she wish for one more year of her life to replace that which she so easily squandered? or would it be a reprieve and oasis in her memory? the difficulty with experience is that its interpretation is not fixed; the enjoyable turned to regret and the arduous to fulfillment. that which may have been painful turned to a site of rest.