McGlue - Ottessa Moshfegh

The other day I thought of the student who many years ago gave me My Year of Rest and Relaxation and decided to read the other Moshfegh books I could get my hands on. Obviously, I couldn't find them in my London libraries, so I had to read them in translation (and in doing so I discovered that Moshfegh's translator is a lady I had met years ago at a literary festival). 

McGlue ended up being easily my least favourite novel. Despite being short (it can actually be labelled a novella) it took me a while to finish it, in part because of the rambling nature of the prose (I had as much interest in this fictional alcoholic ramblings as I have in the real ramblings of the local alcoholics on the Thames Path), in part because I really had no interest in discovering whether McGlue killed his friend or not (the exploration of their relationship came in way too late for me to actually care about the murdered). 

And ultimately - sadly - it really didn't matter to me whether McGlue would spend his life in a cell or get executed. Partly, perhaps, because it doesn't matter to him (and that makes the novel a hard sell, at least for me). 

Eileen - Ottessa Moshfegh

Had it not been for a former student, I never would have known who Ottessa Moshfegh was. Instead I saw this book selling for 50p at the local farm, and immediately made it mine. Now it has been sold to Skoob (the secondhand bookshop in Russell Square) for 50p as it didn't quite make it as one of the 283 novels I have space for in my living room. The circle of life applied to books!

This was one of the most disturbing (if not the single most disturbing) reads of the year, one in which you know from the start that things are going to go so darkly wrong. Kind of like watching Fargo. 

I can absolutely see why Moshfegh is hailed as one of the best young American novelists, though I think that My Year of Rest and Relaxation deserves more praise, but that may have to do with the even more bizarre plot.

Post Office – Charles Bukowski

A couple of supposedly angry girls in my high-school class read something by Bukowski and boldly declared him the greatest writer of the 20^th century. For their own sake, I hope that they were saying that because it was cool to do so – if they actually believed what they said they were either fairly dumb or awfully misguided (or both?!?).

I think post-men are awesome literally characters (just ask Skármeta!), but Chinaski’s adventures and miseries are just boring and, well, miserable – not to mention not particularly well written. He likes to get laid, and he likes to drink. He likes to play tough and he ends up on the losing end of life’s battles. That’s as much as I remember from this book. I have read plenty of other books in which characters do pretty much the same things and I often find those novels really good. This one, however, just isn’t.

The Legend of the Holy Drinker – Joseph Roth

At age 14 I was confused between The Legend of the Fisher King (the way in which the Terry Gilliam movie is titled in Italy) and The Legend of the Holy Drinker. So I watched both movies (the latter directed by Ermanno Olmi and with a masterful Rutger Hauer) and read Roth’s novella over the span of a few days – stealing it from my aunt’s bookshelf, although she had probably stolen it from ours years before.

I am unsure whether this book can be considered a masterpiece only because of its diminutive size, but it’s surely a work of absolute beauty and, surprisingly, not one of despair like I was expecting. I immediately came to care quite a lot about Andreas’s fortunes, but the way in which these develops – both at their highs and their lows – is pure poetry.

I can’t remember whether it’s the movie or the book (or actually, probably both) that ends with the line “May God grant us all, all of us drinkers, such a good and easy death!” but it’s probably one of the most remarkably memorable closing lines in the 20th century.