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1 week ago | 
ottessathisottessathat.substack.com | Ottessa Moshfegh
Send your writing-related questions to: [email protected]. Each week I'll pick a question and answer it here. Dear Ottessa,What do you think about the writer social scene in LA these days? Do you cavort with other writers here, and do you think LA has a "vibrant literary culture," or is it all a sham, a fake, a phony? Sincerely,Zelda FitzgeraldDear Zelda,First of all, how are you?! I’m sure you know this already, but a “scene” doesn’t define itself from within.
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2 weeks ago | 
ottessathisottessathat.substack.com | Ottessa Moshfegh
Welcome back to “Reviews of All the Movies Mentioned in My Year of Rest and Relaxation, the novel.”As I wrote the book, I noticed that the protagonist was mentioning movies that I, Ottessa Moshfegh, had never actually seen. Did I feel I needed to watch these films in order to know how to handle the narrator’s sense of them? No. What mattered in these instances was the essence of a film, not the actual film.
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2 weeks ago | 
ottessathisottessathat.substack.com | Ottessa Moshfegh
Dear Ottessa,How does one get over crippling self-consciousness and an overwhelming feeling of being a cringey, pretentious loser when they’re writing? The last couple years whenever I’ve tried to write it’s as if there’s an audience watching from above and giggling like zFir? Thanks, HomerDear Homer, First of all, if I were a cartoon, and single, I would totally bone you. Moving on: Being a cringey pretentious loser is how we all start out. This post is for paid subscribers
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3 weeks ago | 
ottessathisottessathat.substack.com | Ottessa Moshfegh
The narrator of my novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation watches a lot of movies1. Reva, her best friend, doesn’t understand her taste…“What do you like so much about Whoopi Goldberg?” [Reva asked me.] “She’s not even funny. You need to be watching movies that are going to cheer you up. Like ‘Austin Powers.’ Or that one with Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant. You’re like Winona Ryder from ‘Girl, Interrupted’ all of a sudden. But you look more like Angelina Jolie.
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4 weeks ago | 
ottessathisottessathat.substack.com | Ottessa Moshfegh
“You go straight to the thing that you know is the most sensitive thing for me.”—OttessaLuke: Hi, Ottessa, can you tell me about what you're doing? Ottessa: Well, I'm going to put these two dirty spoons in this dishwasher from 2004 and not run it because it's empty so that you have something to put in your documentary about me. Luke: Do you remember the first time that you ever did dishes? Ottessa: No.Luke: You don't have a memory of that?
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1 month ago | 
ottessathisottessathat.substack.com | Ottessa Moshfegh
Please come! Free tickets! See link below…Eddie Huang and I are hosting an auction of weird stuff on April Fool’s Day at a Dim Sum Restaurant called THE GOLDEN UNICORN. Drinks/preview of items at 7 pm, action/auction starts at 8. I’m completely serious. It’s for paid subscribers only, and capacity at the unicorn restaurant is limited, so it’s first come first serve. Be quick! If you’ve been waiting for the perfect moment to become a paid subscriber, it’s now.
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1 month ago | 
ottessathisottessathat.substack.com | Ottessa Moshfegh
If I were not half asleep right now, nor were I so overwhelmed by all I have to catch up on (after going to Italy for work for three weeks), you’d have here a more interesting note today. You’d have some fabulous essay or dazzling list about the top ten most important things you need to know if you want to be happy. I’m so sorry to disappoint you…But I will make up for it…If you’re a paid subscriber, you’ll receive an automatic invite in the Substack Chat.
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1 month ago | 
ottessathisottessathat.substack.com | Ottessa Moshfegh
“One moment he was putting his arm around my shoulders, moving the hair out of my eyes, speaking softly, fingers curling into my armpit. The next he was raging through my backpack, looking for some kind of damning evidence, sticking a finger up my nose, spitting into my ear, digging a penny out of my front pocket and swallowing it.”Before I ever wrote a novel, I wrote short stories. “Pale Mold” is one I worked on for years.
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1 month ago | 
ottessathisottessathat.substack.com | Ottessa Moshfegh
Last week I invited you to write in with your embarrassing stories. Here’s what came back. I think the moral of the story here is that in order to really appreciate the intensity of someone’s embarrassment, you first have to understand their pride. Send your embarrassing stories to [email protected]. UPSCALE UPCHUCKWhile living in Miami, I dabbled in escorting and some old guy decided my friend and I were classy enough to whisk away to Martha’s Vineyard—via helicopter, no less.
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1 month ago | 
ottessathisottessathat.substack.com | Ottessa Moshfegh
“If a team fails to function as a group, it must look at itself and confront its separators. Who is holding all the hate?” I asked. Nobody stepped forward. The dream took place at the New England Conservatory which was my high school’s printmaking studio which was also a summer camp for intellectually challenged children or children from broken homes or children with cancer, somewhere in Iowa, but not Iowa. I saw a team of janitors preparing a big auditorium for our end-of-the-year celebration.