Bettering Myself by Ottessa Moshfegh, 2013
The magic trick:
Using the narrator’s speech patterns as a way to describe her mindset and character
“Bettering Myself,” like another Moshfegh story we’ve featured here “The Weirdos,” is carried by its excellent narrator.
Well, she’s actually far from excellent as a person, but her narration is excellent.
She speaks in sharp, quick sentences, using few conjunctions. It makes for fun, quick reading. More importantly though, the style helps to create the story’s mood and reflect the woman’s character. Thoughts don’t connect. Events don’t run together. One thing doesn’t lead to another in her life.
It’s easy to analyze this as a manifestation of the woman’s alcoholism and depression. And that’s probably a fair assessment. But either way, it’s impressive to see a narrator’s storytelling voice used as such a primary descriptor in its own right.
And that’s quite a trick on Moshfegh’s part.
The selection:
I was thirty. I had an ex-husband. I got alimony and had decent health insurance through the Archdiocese of New York. My parents, upstate, sent me care packages full of postage stamps and decaffeinated teas. I called my ex-husband when I was drunk and complained about my job, my apartment, the boyfriend, my students, anything that came to mind. He was remarried already, in Chicago. He did something with law. I never understood his job, and he never explained anything to me.
The boyfriend came and went on weekends. Together we drank wine and whiskey, romantic things I liked. He could handle it. He looked the other way, I guess. But he was one of those idiots about cigarettes.
“How can you smoke like that?” he’d say. “Your mouth tastes like Canadian bacon.
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