the year of my rest and relaxation

p.289

rating: 1.1/5

i had to put this book down so many times and every time i picked it back up, i genuinely questioned whether anything had actually happened since the last time i opened it. in retrospect, perhaps that was the most appropriate way to experience it. go late capitalism ig!

my initial (rough) thoughts:

much of the narrator's relationship with reva (her "best friend" and her only friend) seems to be sustained by a peculiar kind of self-deception, one in which her contempt for reva depends on her inability to recognize herself in the very qualities she finds so intolerable/insufferable. reva becomes something of a repository for everything the narrator would rather disavow. she regards reva's need for reassurance with disdain as if her own life doesn't revolve around lying to her shitty psychiatrist and drugging herself into oblivion because she can't handle being conscious for more than day.

the narrator thinks she's escaping society, but she doesn't realize that her ability to escape is itself a privilege created by that same society. she can only afford to reject the world because she's wealthy enough not to depend on it the way other people do. and that's what makes her attitude so ironic. her tone is unbearably condescending and feels like shes somehow above society (reva) but she's actually benefiting from the very inequalities that allow her to avoid them. ultimately, she confuses being able to escape the pressures of society with actually being free from them. she isn't really rebelling against the system. she's just privileged enough to stop participating in the parts that inconvenience her while continuing to benefit from it. reva, on the other hand, doesn't have that luxury. she has no choice but to keep up with the demands of a world (work lmfao) and somehow the narrator mistakes reva's inability to just walk away from her problems all as some kind of "weakness".

but reva isn't necessarily any more liberated than the narrator. she's just as deeply invested in the very standards that make her miserable. her obsession with beauty (real), thinness (so real), professional success (so fucking real) and romantic validation reveals how thoroughly she's internalized the same social expectations the narrator claims to reject. the narrator mistakes her ability to withdraw from society for some kind of superiority, while reva mistakes her ability to conform to its expectations for some kind of success. they're both trapped within the same system, just responding to its pressures in completely different ways. they each seem to recognize something intolerable in the other without ever acknowledging how much they have in common. the narrator looks at reva and sees everything she despises about participating in the world. while reva looks at the narrator and sees a kind of freedom from the expectations she's spent her entire life trying to satisfy. what neither seems to recognize is that their respective ways of coping are shaped by the very same conditions that make them so miserable in the first place.

so why do i dislike this book?

its because that its social criticism is far more interesting to think about than it is to actually read! the narrator is so far up her own ass that she can't seem to recognize how much of her misery and apathy is shaped by the very world she thinks she's above. instead of questioning why her life feels so empty, she decides the problem must be existence itself and that the most reasonable solution is to drug herself into unconsciousness for an entire year. and somehow, despite being an absolute train wreck herself, she still manages to look down on her reva, treating her suffering as a personal failing while remaining completely oblivious to the social and economic conditions shaping both their lives.

i get what moshfegh was trying to do with this book and i can appreciate the underlying critique of late capitalism, alienation and the emptiness of living in a world even from someone who deems to "have everything". and i do understand that the narrator is suppose to be unlikeable, why nothing really happens and why we're forced to sit through her endless cycle of self-destruction and emotional detachment. and i can recognize how these choices serve the books end goal but i don't think understanding an author's intentions automatically makes the execution good. that's ultimately my biggest issue with this book.

moshfegh seems so committed to making us experience the narrator's emptiness that the book itself becomes empty in ways that aren't particularly interesting. the repetition, lack of development, and emotional distance are clearly deliberate. even moments that should have carried some emotional weight felt strangely insignificant because everything was filtered through the same indifference. i understand that this is the point but how many times can you make the same point before it stops being effective yk? and at times, it almost felt like the book was relying on the reader's ability to recognize its intentions to justify how little it was actually offering. maybe that's an unfair expectation to have of a book about someone who actively refuses to engage with her own life but i don't think thematic consistency should come at the expense of narrative substance. i don't need the narrator to become a better person, have some grand revelation or suddenly find meaning in her existence. i just wanted the book to give me something beyond the same observations and behaviours repeated until the ending.

i can appreciate that the monotony is intentional but recognizing that doesn't make it any less monotonous to read!

i think there's a difference between understanding why a book feels empty and finding that emptiness compelling, and for me, moshfegh never quite bridges that gap.

“the notion of my future suddenly snapped into focus: it didn't exist yet. i was making it, standing there, breathing, fixing the air around my body with stillness, trying to capture something—a thought, i guess—as though such a thing were possible, as though i believed in the delusion described in those paintings—that time could be contained, held captive.” (moshfegh, p.286)