12 *** Saturday 4 August 2018 The Daily Telegraph The Daily Telegraph Saturday 4 August 2018 *** 13

INTERVIEW OTTESSA MOSHFEGH

the artworks Moshfegh invents to Prize took her by surprise. “It abstract discomfort of heart”. She also began suffering mock the art scene of the Nineties was kind of nuts,” she says. “I my own being.” from chronic back pain, a legacy (“you know, back when Damien understood that it was a major Moshfegh has a of the scoliosis with which she Hirst was still sawing farm animals literary award but I didn’t strong sense that was diagnosed as a child. “Several in half ”): there are stuffed dogs understand that when I went to she is fated to write discs between my vertebrae are with lasers coming out of their England people were going to be the books that she cutting into my spinal cord,” she eyes, sculptures of monkeys made buying 12 copies of my book at a writes. Anything else said. “The MRI was insane.” She ‘9/11? Talk about from pubic hair, and Pollock-style time. Literature is important in the is a distraction. She is trying to manage the pain but canvases created by methods United States, but people aren’t had even sworn off may end up needing surgery. probably best glossed over in a fanatical like that. It was shocking.” relationships before the novelist But the work does not stop. performance art…’ ‘EvEry family newspaper. “I loved coming Did she think about winning it? Luke Goebel came to interview her She has adapted McGlue into a sEntEncE up with those! It was hilarious.” “I thought about it a lot. I think I for a literary magazine in 2016 and screenplay and is researching is obsEssEd From early on in the novel, we knew I wouldn’t win but I still read they ended up in bed. They wrote her next novel. “It is the story ovEr’ realise that a clock is ticking. It is all the other shortlisted books. I the interview together (it’s worth of a Chinese teenage girl who Ottessa Moshfegh set in New York City in the year hope to be invited back one day, tracking down) and got engaged emigrates to California in drag in Newton, 2000. Moshfegh was a student just to revisit the weirdness and soon after. She even allows him to because it takes place during Massachusetts, at Barnard College on the Upper intensity.” read her work-in-progress. “He’s the Chinese exclusion act where she grew up West Side at the time of the Twin In some ways Moshfegh is like brilliant. He’s the most fun person I when women weren’t allowed Towers attacks in 2001. “I heard her writing: serious, even intense, have ever met.” to emigrate,” she says. “Eileen what had happened over the radio but also self-aware and funny. In May 2017, Stein, 83, jumped takes place over a week, My Year Ottessa Moshfegh was catapulted to fame by her debut ‘Eileen’. and there was a TV in the lobby There is an uncompromising from the window of her 15th-floor of Rest and Relaxation takes Now she is back – with the tale of a girl in New York in 2000 of my building so I watched it honesty about her that can result apartment. Moshfegh told The New My Year of Rest place over a year and this one there. You could see smoke from in her coming across the wrong Yorker she still thinks about Stein and Relaxation feels like it will have a much who wants to sleep for a year. Duncan White finds out why where we were. Since that day I way. “I’m sure a lot of people think every day. In November she also is published by longer trajectory. The challenge have watched tons of footage. This I’m an asshole,” she says. In some lost her beloved younger brother, Jonathan Cape interests me: it feels scary and erman Melville said leg of the kind of coast-to-coast sounds really un-American but talk of her promotional interviews who had struggled with drugs. In (£12.99). Call huge.” Moshfegh is getting ready that great writers were reading tour reserved for literary about performance art. Completely for Eileen, she was presented as a piece she wrote a year before his 0844 871 1514 to dive again, to bring another H “thought-divers”, who rock stars. The readings have disturbing, mind-blowing arrogant and cynical. Reading death, she described him as “the to order a copy strange story back to the surface sought out depths come in the wake of rapturous imagery on our televisions. It them made her feel “naive” and brutalised monster inside of my for £10.99 from the murky depths. before returning to the reviews: called “used”. “It taught me a couple surface with “bloodshot eyes”. her “superabundantly talented” of things about myself. I need to Ottessa Moshfegh, whose novel and gave her the be careful. But it also taught me Eileen was shortlisted for the full profile treatment. Her story I am more uncomfortable being Booker Prize in 2016, certainly collection, Homesick for Another dishonest and careful than I am dives deep, and in strange waters. World, published last year, showed being honest.” She writes about self-loathing, the range of her invention. Now ‘Literature matters trauma, addiction, sex, perversion, My Year of Rest and Relaxation ome critics were put off by psychoses, and, quite often, confirms her as a in America but the Eileen because they found about defecation. Her major writer. And S the repressed protagonist characters drink lots and take she’s still only 37. British are fanatical. disgusting. That helped motivate drugs but never in ways that Between sips of It was shocking’ My Year of Rest and Relaxation. lead to them having much iced coffee, Moshfegh “When I was just sketching out fun. Her stories are depraved, gives a precis of the the character a lightbulb went off. profound, and bleakly, new book. “It’s about a What if I actually made her really wickedly funny. To read her woman in her mid-20s beautiful, like untouchably perfect is to be unsettled. living in Manhattan looking? And what if I made her We have met to talk about in the year 2000,” totally obsessed people and left white, blue-eyed, blonde? Are they her new book, My Year of she says. “She’s been them vulnerable. I don’t think we still going to think she’s disgusting? Rest and Relaxation, in disillusioned and have come to terms with what I’ll show them. They didn’t like Newton, Massachusetts, disappointed by a lot happened. After 9/11, s--- changed.” Eileen because they thought she the town where she grew up. It in life despite being born into a lot Soon after graduating, Moshfegh was ugly, but this perfect-looking is a leafy and affluent suburb of of privilege. In her very early 20s moved to Wuhan, China, teaching woman is, psychologically at least, , home to the privileged she experienced major trauma and English by day and working at a a lot more troubling than Eileen.” and successful. It seems an odd maybe never really dealt with it. punk bar at night. It was a difficult My Year of Rest and Relaxation fit for Moshfegh, who now lives She reaches a point when she’s 24 time: she was drinking heavily and was conceived while Moshfegh in LA. “I would never want to and she wants nothing more to do struggling with eating disorders. was staying with Stein on the say anything bad about Newton,” with life. On returning to New York, at the Upper East Side. “I watched these she says. “But I always felt out of “But she hasn’t completely given age of 24, she landed a job as an incredibly wealthy people walking place here.” Well, David Lynch up, so she sets out on this mission to assistant to Jean Stein, a member around and how they conducted grew up in the suburbs, too. sleep as much as humanly possible of Manhattan’s literary aristocracy themselves and my first instinct is Her family background for an entire year. And she does who would go on to nurture that they must be vapid. But then contributed to her sense of being that with the aid of a psychiatrist Moshfegh’s talent. After being I thought, how could that be true? an outsider. “I guess I had a who prescribes her anything and attacked by a stray cat, Moshfegh They are probably really weird. different perspective growing up everything. She hopes that she will suffered numbness To have to fit into a society with parents who are immigrants,” wake up renewed and with a totally and forgetfulness that is so scripted? You must she says: she is the middle of three new perspective. and, on being have a really strange inner children. “I don’t have a history “She believes that if she can sleep diagnosed with cat monologue. You have to here.” Her father, Farhoud, was long enough her cells will have scratch fever, was censor so much of your own born in Arak, Iran, the son of a regenerated enough times for her to forced to quit her job humanity. So that’s how the self-made millionaire forget her negative past. And for bed rest. character came to be. who started out as a she believes the world might It was a chance “I had the summer to kid selling cloth in actually change with her.” to become serious myself so I went to Paris to the Jewish ghetto. My Year of Rest and about her writing. write there. I don’t know A gifted violinist, Relaxation is a surreal She studied for why. I don’t even like Paris Farhoud trained fairy tale, an acerbic satire, an MFA at Brown that much. I rented this in Germany and a literary experiment and University and garret on the ninth floor. And Belgium and met a psychological novel then won a writing I threw my back out on the his wife, Dubravka, without ever becoming fellowship at Stanford. She worked very first day. I couldn’t even walk a fellow violinist too much of any one of with ferocious and consuming down stairs, so I was stuck in this from Zagreb, at the these things. Moshfegh’s determination. “I f---ing love tiny studio apartment. Of course Royal Conservatory control is masterful and writing,” she says. “I don’t know this would happen. I had just in Brussels. They hard-earned. “I write a first if other people love it as much as I begun a book about a woman who settled in Tehran only to flee when sentence and the rest of the book do. If you do, you are not going to cannot leave her apartment. the Islamic Revolution broke out. is just revision,” she says. “Every sacrifice anything for it.” In 2014 “S--- like that happens to me The Khomeini regime targeted sentence is obsessed over.” she published McGlue, a novella all the time. That whole period families like the Moshfeghs – Not that she didn’t have fun. The about a 19th-century sailor who became a very difficult time and it wealthy, intellectual, Jewish – and unnamed narrator is a world-class awakes from a drunken blackout informed the writing of the book. so they abandoned everything to bitch who delivers a succession wondering if he has killed his Intensely personal, difficult s---. I start again as music teachers in of brutal put-downs about her gay lover. The following year she don’t know if there is a one-to-one suburban Massachusetts. needy friend, Reva, and her ex- published Eileen. correlation with my protagonist,

Moshfegh is on the penultimate boyfriend Trevor. Then there are BELCHER JAKE Being shortlisted for the Booker but it was like facing the most