If you enjoy reading, you are likely familiar with all the most famous, renowned authors of the past. You know your medieval writers, Dante Alighieri, William Shakespeare. You are probably also familiar with Voltaire and Austen, 19th-century Dickens and Leo Tolstoy. If you are really caught up, you might even know James Joyce and Toni Morrison. But do you ever stop to think: who is going to leave their ink on the pages of today? Who is going to be examined and applauded as one of the influential authors of our everyday?
Over the summer, I had the pleasure of finding who I believe to be the most influential author of modern day writing. It was late May, and I was browsing Left Bank Books on Euclid Avenue when I stumbled upon a certain Ottessa Moshfegh. The specific book that I picked up was her “My Year of Rest and Relaxation.” The physical book stood out because of its odd Victorian-style painting-esque cover and intriguing blurb written on the back. I recall reading for hours for the next three days. I sat for so long reading this book that I would have to remember to unclench my shoulders after an hour or so had passed.
This past summer, I was so enchanted with Moshfegh’s style of writing that I scoured my local library for any book of hers that I could get my hands on. I read “Eileen” and “Lapvona,” with “Homesick For Another World” being next on my list. My local librarian remarked to me in July that it seemed rare enough these days that younger girls would latch onto a single author as desperately as I did with Moshfegh. And she was right, I became so obsessed with Moshfegh’s style of writing. I fell in love with how genuine it was, the depth of each and every single character she wrote, so much so that for the whole summer I did my best to model my entire life after her unnamed protagonist in “My Year of Rest and Relaxation.” So, why do I think Ottessa Moshfegh will be considered a classic author in the next 100 years? Well, let’s dive in.
For starters, Moshfegh has lived exactly the type of life that you would expect a future classic artist to live. She is still relatively underground, so her Wikipedia page isn’t exactly the same length as, say, Dickens’s, but it provides just enough intrigue to make you think, “this is exactly the type of woman who is just eccentric enough, who has lived just enough lives to make her one of the greatest up-and-coming writers of the 21st century”.
Moshfegh grew up in Boston, and her writing has already earned her an extensive list of nominations, ranging from the Hemingway Foundation Award to the Stegner Fellowship at Stanford. She has also lived in New York City and even worked at a punk bar in China while also teaching English on the side.
Though “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” isn’t her first published work, it is what drew me into my Moshfegh obsession. Published in 2018, the book follows a recent, unnamed Columbia graduate as she struggles to face her parents’ passing, the shallowness of New York City society in 2000, and her battle to sleep away an entire year with the help of a wacky psychiatrist who eagerly over prescribes a wide variety of sedatives and various other psychiatric drugs.
This anger, the boredom with life that radiates from the unnamed protagonist as she attempts to sleep away a life that most would die for was so intriguing to me that I ended up rereading “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” twice more last summer. The book is full of gems such as “Rejection, I have found, can be the only antidote to delusion.” Sleep felt productive. Something was getting sorted out. I knew in my heart—this was, perhaps, the only thing my heart knew back then—that when I’d slept enough, I’d be okay. I’d be renewed, reborn. I would be a whole new person, every one of my cells regenerated enough times that the old cells were just distant, foggy memories. My past life would be but a dream, and I could start over without regrets, bolstered by the bliss and serenity that I would have accumulated in my year of rest and relaxation. This book offers a tale of what emotional exhaustion with a valueless and material-based society can do to someone with a teetering mental state.
The relatableness of a girl unhappy with her current situation, who said things I often find in my own internal thought process, is exactly what makes Moshfegh such an important author. She weaves feelings that the average young woman from the ages of 13-30 would feel, and she draws you in. The characters she builds feel the most common human emotions, and they are portrayed through stories that are impossible to put down. Obviously being addicted to sleeping pills and isolating yourself isn’t model behavior, but the way in which the unnamed protagonist in “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” was portrayed through the writing of Moshfegh made it applicable to any girl’s life.
Not only is Moshfegh a talented author because she is able to say what is on the minds of her readers so beautifully, but she is able to write a wide variety of storylines and characters with all varying dimensions, showing her talent as an author.
In “Lapvona,” set in a medieval village, a disabled boy lives with his cruel, shepherd stepfather, who was in turn nursed by the village witch. The deformed boy, Malek, ends up living in the castle of a cruel and self-centered lord. Entirely different than a modern, rich, model-like Ivy graduate, this novel explores the idea that our wills are not entirely chosen by ourselves, but instead by those with the most power and privilege.
In “Eileen,” which takes place in the 1960s, the uptight Eileen, exhausted by having to take care of her alcoholic father, dreams of escaping to the big city. While working at the juvenile detention center, she meets Rebecca, an Ivy graduate who emanates beauty, confidence, and stability, everything Eileen craves. The two end up committing a crime together, given that Eileen is desperate to make Rebecca like her. The book is most likely meant to be a critique of those in power; it brings forth the idea that the people in prisons that are most dangerous are not the inmates but the authorities, the parents of juvenile prisoners, the police.
Ottessa Moshfegh’s ability to take such different scenarios and draw in her readers to each and every character she writes shows her incredible talent as an author. Even if she has yet to reach mainstream levels of fame, I am certain that she will be revered as a classic author, if not in my lifetime, sometime in the future. It is rare that an author can have such a knack for writing that her creativity shines through with each and every successful novel that she writes.
