Responding to the Early 21st Century as an Age of Anxiety in 'My Year of Rest and Relaxation' Sophia Simon-Bashall College

Ottessa Moshfegh’s 2018 novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation conceives of early twenty-first-century America as an anxious nation, raising a generation of young people simultaneously overstimulated and underwhelmed by the world in which they find themselves living. Between the unnamed protagonist of the book and her friend Reva, anxiety is depicted as a response to existing in an overwhelmingly materialistic and performative society. The ways in which the pair’s anxieties manifest, on the surface, are polar opposites – the protagonist poses as cynical whilst Reva is forcefully optimistic, the former trying to opt-out of the overstimulation of the world whereas the latter is constantly seeking to keep up with it. But ultimately, each of them is – in their own ways – attempting to numb out their anxieties and “become a whole new person” via their actions. Anxiety manifests itself in a variety of ways, the text suggests, but ultimately is rooted in the same issues. In this way, My Year Of Rest And Relaxation sets up a conversation about the social nature of anxiety – the wider issues that trigger and perpetuate it – and very much perceives of the new millennium as an age of anxiety.

From the novel’s opening chapter, there is a...