Having read Ottessa Moshfegh's first novel, "Eileen," I knew anything that might follow would be something to keep an eye on. I had no idea she had written "My Year Of Rest And Relaxation," so that is also on my reading radar.
Written in a rambling, almost Joycean style, "McGlue" tells the musings of a man on board a ship destined for his hometown of Salem, Mass. to face trial and execution for the killing of a compatriot named Johnson, with whom he had an ambivalent, and questionable relationship, despite his homophobic mentioning of the cabin boy on board as "the Fag," or "the Fagger."
The grittiness of it all had a very Cormac McCarthy flavor, while the scenes on land reminded me of Frank Norris' 1899 novel, "McTeague," which 28 years later, became the 1927 Erich Von Stroheim film, "Greed," wherein ZaSu Pitts (Yes, darlings, I kid you not; ZaSu Pitts, seven years before she portrayed Miss Tabitha Hazy in Norman Taurog's classic 1934 film version of Alice Hegan Rice's "Mr. Wiggs Of The Cabbage Patch," a sympathetic Goat Alley type tale based on the novel by Alice Hegan Rice. Neither the movie is shown anymore, or the book available. A shame, because I would love exposure to both.) gave one of the screen's greatest dramatic performances. You have to see it, to believe it! And this was decades before she played sidekick Elvira Nugent on "Oh Susanna!," aka "The Gale Storm Show," in the late Fifties.
The connections this tiny novella has is just remarkable. It is so surprisingly insightful and probing for so short a novel--only 145 pages. But it consolidates Moshfegh's stature as a writer, and I am interested now, more than before, in "My Year Of Rest And Relaxation!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Would that we all could have one of those, darlings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Nugie, the shipboard beautician!
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ReplyDeleteVictoria,
I forgot about Nugie!
How I loved that show, when I
was a child!