Authors Note: I wrote this with 80 pages to go and intend to finish it today. Perhaps my mood will change at pages end, but I doubt it.

I had a hard time finding this book believable. After all the raving about Moshfegh that I had heard from press, former high school students I taught, other literary types, I found myself intrigued to finally dive in. But something was off about this writing. I had my doubts and skepticisms. Was it me? Probably, I thought. Let’s see what this is all about. I regret that to a degree for two reasons. Moshfegh interviews well and seems generally interesting and articulate. But never do background mid-read, kids. Do it before if it’s class or after if it’s pleasure. 

I would border on calling this book pornographic in the clinical sense of the word. I fear that reading one of her influences was Bukowski soured everything for me. It still might be me, but the narrative came off as a post modernist attempt at being obscene with an unloveable character. But unlike Bukowski, whose merits are debated ad nauseam and to nauseous ends, there is just no truth behind this story of the narrator. Bukowski worked because Chinaski was someone worth rooting for or against, depending on perspective. The Voice in this story held nothing compelling. Her privileged neglect is unfortunate, dare I say even tragic, but wholly uninteresting and lacks any compelling qualities. At least in the few details that Moshfegh offers us. 

I am reminded, unfortunately, of Jay McInery’s The Good Life and sort of harsh transgressive narrative about hopelessness with uninspired sexuality, drugs, and partying as a means to escape self imposed monotony. And the people I’ve known in my life that use sex and drugs to escape the boredom of their own existence comes off as pathetic. There is nothing remotely transgressive about an emotionless, privileged, know it all know nothing. This is why New York is such a trite backdrop of a story, an easy choice, and true as it may be for the end of the century, the end of the millennium, there’s nothing remotely original about putting a book written 17 years later in that setting. 

I wish I could go back to the conversations with the young people, often women and queer femmes, that I had about Moshfegh’s novels. Those were inspiring. I wish I had the ability to see what they see in these books. But much like Bukowski was titillating when I was their age, offering something that the curriculum didn’t through subversion, sexuality, drugs, and violence, Moshfegh’s Relaxation doesn’t hold weight after you’ve seen some real shit. Ultimately you stop rooting for the Chinaski’s, the people that keep letting themselves down. You find their misery pathetic and sad. You hurt for them, but you know you can’t help them. I think this type of work is good for young people, it belongs to teenagers who know there is a curtain being pulled around them to try and protect them. But this is imaginative and not experiential. And though it’s fiction and the escape is supposed to be the point, I still want the real in it. At least Hank gave us his scars, his vomit, his misogyny. I don’t feel that here.

With all this said, the casual racism, an attempt at capturing the attitudes and conversations about race in America as we entered a new millennium, were so off putting. Race was not transgressive then, now, or at any other time. The suggestion that this character has both some awareness of racism and race, but seems obnoxiously ambivalent at best about her experiences and understanding was just poorly executed. The attempt to center Whoopi Goldberg at the center of this exploration of whiteness was awkward at best and, frankly, racist in total. There is a tone-deafness in this choice on Moshfegh’s part, even if it’s drawn from her real experiences. And I sense that it is. But a pretty little rich white girl obsessed with Goldberg as a cutesy Aunt Jemima fantasy without context of how subversive Goldberg actually is was a bad choice. It’s race tourism. 

I feel off about my feelings on this. I was rooting to lover Moshfegh, had such high hopes that maybe mainstream literature was taking a turn for the better. But among the several modern feminist novels the industry is pushing out on us, I’m not feeling very hopeful. I’ve read enough zines, small press, and self published authors that are strong voices in the transgressive. I know the work exists and it’s truly emotional work. Some of it is autobiographical, some of it is meta exploration or the self, some of it brilliant fiction by a bevy of writers. But this ain’t it. This is the wet dream of the feminist lit classes I took in the 90’s, the shape of their lit porn to come. But honestly, near 30 years later Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid is much more horrifying an ordeal than anything found here. I’m not giving up fully, I own two other books of hers, gifts from former students. But this isn’t on the list of modern writers I’m going to hype.