Love Moshfegh's essay and your close reading of it. I for one, want more of this kind of writing, unvarnished, anti-heroic and authentic. It makes me think of a quote by Salmon Rushdie (from a radio interview) that has been rattling around in my head for weeks, (paraphrased here): "we're all just a bag of selves in a bag of skin"
Perhaps it’s because I am from a different generation or perhaps my life experiences are different but I fail to see how this excellent essay could be negatively judged. Moshfegh is a dispassionate narrator, much like the writings of anthropologists I read in college many years ago. Prescriptive essays are boring, I don’t want anyone telling me what I should take away from them. There was also no need to describe the appearance of the former owner, what she does say tells us everything we need to know about him. I also reacted very personally to this essay. When we first arrived in the US my parents rented a house for a year. From the neighbors we found out that the owner had been institutionalized in a psychiatric facility. They then bought a house from a couple going through a divorce. Like in this essay, the former owners were heavy smokers. They also collected old furniture and cats. The basement was full of sofas in need of reupholstering and fleas, lots and lots of fleas. Even Goodwill would not take them and we had to pay to have them hauled to the dump. Once the cats and the couches left, the fleas stayed. We could not afford to remodel at the time but my mother, whose heavy smoker father had died from lung cancer five years before, scrubbed every wall of every room and washed the curtains. When the neighbors came to call they thought she had repainted and changed the curtains. She had the exterminator come and we had to leave during the time they flea bombed the house. When my first husband and I bought our house the former owner had died in it and was not found until a week later. The bathroom had to be torn out and changed completely because they could not get rid of the smell. She was a widow and had no will nor heirs but an estranged sister turned up and inherited the house. For a year we had to deal with her while waiting for things to be sorted out and the house to be ours although I should have realized that this was a portent to the future of our marriage. Like life, real estate is messy.
It’s a superb essay, there is nothing wrong with buying a house in foreclosure, the notion that this sort of routine participation in economic life is evil is itself a ludicrous form of self-unaware privilege, and the idea that the former owner could somehow be redeemed if one did not buy his house or took a different attitude towards him, or that you yourself, whoever you are, are not at this moment engaged in some economic behavior that touches on someone else’s bad luck and ruined hopes, or that you could preserve your own moral purity and self-regard by simply not contemplating other people’s suffering, or that there is some other order in which human misery would be eradicated and we should in life or art pretend we live aspirationally in that order rather than address ourselves to the world and ourselves as they actually are—all this is childish. These are childish readers.
Thanks so much for this. FWIW we've bought a foreclosure house and renovated it, and the pushback on this as "privileged" amazes me. Do people not participate in LIFE anymore, but only read about it? The foreclosure market is terrible and banks are terrible and capitalism is terrible, but snidely criticizing people's real-life activity via twitter as a way of doing something about it, well that's terrible, too. I did like this essay, it felt real. I appreciate being introduced to it, the writer, and the controversy. I had no idea people could be shocked by something that is incredibly normal for people who otherwise can't afford to own homes.
I did not love Moshfehg's essay, but I do really love this examination of it. And I agree so deeply about the boring nature of the PR essay. That is an instinct I have to push back on continually in my own work. Thanks for this, there's such pleasure in examining how a piece works....
The central idea is in the sentence where the narrator describes their own smoking habits. “ I had been an on-and-off smoker for many years—something I tried (and probably failed) to hide from my parents.”
It is about what it means to be human—how our own faults are exploited in capitalism. It is so hard to own a home in this country. Can anyone really fault someone for buying a house that’s been foreclosed on? This was the author’s first house, no?
I sensed deep empathy for the previous owner, and regret for the previously unexplored relationship with her dad.
The economy and sweep of her craft leave me humbled. On the other hand, the depiction of the bragging neighbour left me cold, honestly. It almost seemed she decided to tip her hand, saying “here’s a tiny vignette so you’ll know I know I’m an asshole.” As jarring as the torture/murder detail, but gratuitous: the tomato-breast comparison. I get what you wrote about her attitude to arrogance, and applaud her for that, but she very much succeeded in losing some of my regard with that bit.
The essay’s power, like that nicotine varnish, sticks around. In the end I felt
almost no compassion for the title character (I too am an asshole), who after all seemed not to have any redeeming traits, other than being overwhelmed by grief. He quite literally poisoned his own home, then trespassed on it after losing it, and either in spite of his emotional reaction or because of it, continued to apply his poison while trespassing.
In the end, I really only like the woman next door with her disdain for the dogshit-filled yard, and her bounteous tomatoes.
Thanks for the discussion and your illumination of the writer. Really enjoyed thinking about it with the perspective you added.
Yes, we seem to have complicated heroines in novels but in few personal essays. I think the thought of social media clapback has an inhibitory effect here too. Essays that go viral get discussed in painstaking personal detail by some outlets. Essays that don't go viral get comments and social media postings that are equally intrusive. I have a personal essay coming out in a month or two and am wondering if people are going to start pointing out exactly the point I am myself making in it. If they read it at all, mind you.
I loved this essay (I wish she wrote more essays) and I love your analysis of it. I'm drawn to Moshfegh because she's unencumbered by the need to draw a moral arc. Life isn't like that. The character in this essay (the version of herself buying and fixing up someone else's home) is relatable because we've all been that character at some point in our lives. Not necessarily gentrifiers, but we've had unkind thoughts about a neighbor, or someone in traffic, etc. I think if she had done that, it would be trite and boring. She writes past what most of us fear revealing.
So much to think about in the essay, the close reading, and the comments - all deeply thoughtful, and not easily forgotten. I’m grateful for all.
One image I keep thinking about are the two yards. In what world does anyone imagine these are discrete entities? I believe the dogshit in the one, through soil and wind and especially rain, is helping enrich the pendulous tomatoes in the other. We are more connected, through the mature wisdom of nature, than we’d perhaps be comfortable acknowledging.
And it may be stretching a bit, but the water of the former owner’s tears seems also to be enriching as well, promoting a genuine moment of remorse and empathy in the daughter-renovator. Whatever the failings of the former owner, he does honor to his own feelings. He knows the importance of ritual, of grieving. (Maybe heart always got too much in the way of head and that’s why he wasn’t all that successful amid the world’s and the neighborhood’s capitalism?)
Anyway, we seem to be connected by water and by desire and, if graced with the awareness, connected by intention as well.
I am not a writer. I am a reader. I was put off by the bluntness of the tomatoes/breast comparison and the soiled back yard. But the "stood there, respectfully" said so much about the moment. Respect for the prior owner's pain? I'm glad I read it and even better was the discussion you posted and comments by others. She is a good writer. I am just not sure I am in the right place for her writing at the moment.
I really appreciate this analysis of the essay. My take, as an essayist, is that it was too spare to be as effective as it could be, but like you said, it is a difficult thing to create an arc in a short essay like this. My taste lean towards longer essays that chew on their material and have a greater awareness of the structural forces around them that lead to what is described in the essay.I’ve never particularly enjoyed Moshfeghs work, but that’s certainly a matter of taste and style as an essayist
Thanks for writing this. I read the social media backlash before I read the essay and, while I appreciated some of the craft, that certainly colored my opinion of the whole. Happy to have been wrong. I'm going to read it again today.
I thought it was an amazing piece of writing, and I really appreciated your close reading of it. I felt that she absolutely empathised with the previous owner - her guilt, her awareness of her own privilege (and not niceness) radiated out.
Love Moshfegh's essay and your close reading of it. I for one, want more of this kind of writing, unvarnished, anti-heroic and authentic. It makes me think of a quote by Salmon Rushdie (from a radio interview) that has been rattling around in my head for weeks, (paraphrased here): "we're all just a bag of selves in a bag of skin"
Perhaps it’s because I am from a different generation or perhaps my life experiences are different but I fail to see how this excellent essay could be negatively judged. Moshfegh is a dispassionate narrator, much like the writings of anthropologists I read in college many years ago. Prescriptive essays are boring, I don’t want anyone telling me what I should take away from them. There was also no need to describe the appearance of the former owner, what she does say tells us everything we need to know about him. I also reacted very personally to this essay. When we first arrived in the US my parents rented a house for a year. From the neighbors we found out that the owner had been institutionalized in a psychiatric facility. They then bought a house from a couple going through a divorce. Like in this essay, the former owners were heavy smokers. They also collected old furniture and cats. The basement was full of sofas in need of reupholstering and fleas, lots and lots of fleas. Even Goodwill would not take them and we had to pay to have them hauled to the dump. Once the cats and the couches left, the fleas stayed. We could not afford to remodel at the time but my mother, whose heavy smoker father had died from lung cancer five years before, scrubbed every wall of every room and washed the curtains. When the neighbors came to call they thought she had repainted and changed the curtains. She had the exterminator come and we had to leave during the time they flea bombed the house. When my first husband and I bought our house the former owner had died in it and was not found until a week later. The bathroom had to be torn out and changed completely because they could not get rid of the smell. She was a widow and had no will nor heirs but an estranged sister turned up and inherited the house. For a year we had to deal with her while waiting for things to be sorted out and the house to be ours although I should have realized that this was a portent to the future of our marriage. Like life, real estate is messy.
It’s a superb essay, there is nothing wrong with buying a house in foreclosure, the notion that this sort of routine participation in economic life is evil is itself a ludicrous form of self-unaware privilege, and the idea that the former owner could somehow be redeemed if one did not buy his house or took a different attitude towards him, or that you yourself, whoever you are, are not at this moment engaged in some economic behavior that touches on someone else’s bad luck and ruined hopes, or that you could preserve your own moral purity and self-regard by simply not contemplating other people’s suffering, or that there is some other order in which human misery would be eradicated and we should in life or art pretend we live aspirationally in that order rather than address ourselves to the world and ourselves as they actually are—all this is childish. These are childish readers.
Thanks so much for this. FWIW we've bought a foreclosure house and renovated it, and the pushback on this as "privileged" amazes me. Do people not participate in LIFE anymore, but only read about it? The foreclosure market is terrible and banks are terrible and capitalism is terrible, but snidely criticizing people's real-life activity via twitter as a way of doing something about it, well that's terrible, too. I did like this essay, it felt real. I appreciate being introduced to it, the writer, and the controversy. I had no idea people could be shocked by something that is incredibly normal for people who otherwise can't afford to own homes.
I did not love Moshfehg's essay, but I do really love this examination of it. And I agree so deeply about the boring nature of the PR essay. That is an instinct I have to push back on continually in my own work. Thanks for this, there's such pleasure in examining how a piece works....
The central idea is in the sentence where the narrator describes their own smoking habits. “ I had been an on-and-off smoker for many years—something I tried (and probably failed) to hide from my parents.”
It is about what it means to be human—how our own faults are exploited in capitalism. It is so hard to own a home in this country. Can anyone really fault someone for buying a house that’s been foreclosed on? This was the author’s first house, no?
I sensed deep empathy for the previous owner, and regret for the previously unexplored relationship with her dad.
The economy and sweep of her craft leave me humbled. On the other hand, the depiction of the bragging neighbour left me cold, honestly. It almost seemed she decided to tip her hand, saying “here’s a tiny vignette so you’ll know I know I’m an asshole.” As jarring as the torture/murder detail, but gratuitous: the tomato-breast comparison. I get what you wrote about her attitude to arrogance, and applaud her for that, but she very much succeeded in losing some of my regard with that bit.
The essay’s power, like that nicotine varnish, sticks around. In the end I felt
almost no compassion for the title character (I too am an asshole), who after all seemed not to have any redeeming traits, other than being overwhelmed by grief. He quite literally poisoned his own home, then trespassed on it after losing it, and either in spite of his emotional reaction or because of it, continued to apply his poison while trespassing.
In the end, I really only like the woman next door with her disdain for the dogshit-filled yard, and her bounteous tomatoes.
Thanks for the discussion and your illumination of the writer. Really enjoyed thinking about it with the perspective you added.
Yes, we seem to have complicated heroines in novels but in few personal essays. I think the thought of social media clapback has an inhibitory effect here too. Essays that go viral get discussed in painstaking personal detail by some outlets. Essays that don't go viral get comments and social media postings that are equally intrusive. I have a personal essay coming out in a month or two and am wondering if people are going to start pointing out exactly the point I am myself making in it. If they read it at all, mind you.
I loved this essay (I wish she wrote more essays) and I love your analysis of it. I'm drawn to Moshfegh because she's unencumbered by the need to draw a moral arc. Life isn't like that. The character in this essay (the version of herself buying and fixing up someone else's home) is relatable because we've all been that character at some point in our lives. Not necessarily gentrifiers, but we've had unkind thoughts about a neighbor, or someone in traffic, etc. I think if she had done that, it would be trite and boring. She writes past what most of us fear revealing.
So much to think about in the essay, the close reading, and the comments - all deeply thoughtful, and not easily forgotten. I’m grateful for all.
One image I keep thinking about are the two yards. In what world does anyone imagine these are discrete entities? I believe the dogshit in the one, through soil and wind and especially rain, is helping enrich the pendulous tomatoes in the other. We are more connected, through the mature wisdom of nature, than we’d perhaps be comfortable acknowledging.
And it may be stretching a bit, but the water of the former owner’s tears seems also to be enriching as well, promoting a genuine moment of remorse and empathy in the daughter-renovator. Whatever the failings of the former owner, he does honor to his own feelings. He knows the importance of ritual, of grieving. (Maybe heart always got too much in the way of head and that’s why he wasn’t all that successful amid the world’s and the neighborhood’s capitalism?)
Anyway, we seem to be connected by water and by desire and, if graced with the awareness, connected by intention as well.
Really hope you give this format a few more spins! I don’t always want my thoughts so provoked, but the exchanges are great!
I am not a writer. I am a reader. I was put off by the bluntness of the tomatoes/breast comparison and the soiled back yard. But the "stood there, respectfully" said so much about the moment. Respect for the prior owner's pain? I'm glad I read it and even better was the discussion you posted and comments by others. She is a good writer. I am just not sure I am in the right place for her writing at the moment.
I really appreciate this analysis of the essay. My take, as an essayist, is that it was too spare to be as effective as it could be, but like you said, it is a difficult thing to create an arc in a short essay like this. My taste lean towards longer essays that chew on their material and have a greater awareness of the structural forces around them that lead to what is described in the essay.I’ve never particularly enjoyed Moshfeghs work, but that’s certainly a matter of taste and style as an essayist
Thanks for writing this. I read the social media backlash before I read the essay and, while I appreciated some of the craft, that certainly colored my opinion of the whole. Happy to have been wrong. I'm going to read it again today.
I thought it was an amazing piece of writing, and I really appreciated your close reading of it. I felt that she absolutely empathised with the previous owner - her guilt, her awareness of her own privilege (and not niceness) radiated out.
Thank you for sharing this. Loved the straightforward narrative - very honest and beautifully written.