Ottessa Moshfegh: Homesick for Another World (Part II)

Bookworm

KCRW

Arts

4.5 • 606 Ratings

🗓️ 26 January 2017

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the second half of our conversation with Ottessa Moshfegh, the author discusses her discomfort in this world but admits that there is a touch of self-parody in the title of this collection of stories.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.
0:03.8	Boots!
0:06.0	Where would we be without boos?
0:12.0	Where would we be without good?
0:15.0	No, Tenderberg.
0:16.0	It's a rhetorical question, sir, but where would we be without books?
0:23.8	From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.
0:29.9	I'm very excited by the work of Otessa Mosheg.
0:33.9	Her new book of stories is called Homestick for Another World.
0:39.0	It's published by the Penguin Press.
0:42.8	Now, I identify with this phrase, homesick for another world, very deeply.
0:49.1	What does it mean to you?
0:51.5	Well, what it means to me is that I don't feel at home here. But the phrase also has a little
1:03.1	twist of self-parody in it. It's like, oh, the drama of feeling existentially misplaced. And that's
1:10.6	kind of like the whole collection.
1:14.1	People taking their own misery a little bit too seriously.
1:18.7	Yeah, some of the stories go mockingly far.
1:24.2	And then comes one that gets into the weird Mr. Wu.
1:34.9	Yeah.
1:35.9	He is obsessed with a woman who runs a parlor, a game parlor.
1:43.9	Computer Cafe, basically. And it happens in China, right?
1:48.1	And he has fallen in love with her, but his discretion prevents him from telling her.
	...

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