Times of Contemporary Distress: 'My Year of Rest and Relaxation' (2018) as a Chronic Crisis Novel

The relationship between different types of crises (both collective and private ones), the trauma resulting from their experience, and literature has been widely investigated in the field of Trauma Studies since the end of the Twentieth century. As critics argue, literature can be considered a privileged space to uncover, negotiate and even resolve traumatic experiences and vulnerable identities (Pellicer-Ortín & Sarikaya-Şen 2020), and therefore can offer readers valuable perspectives on the human experience. Within this theoretical framework, this paper aims to explore the connection between literature and the concept of crisis through a reading of 'My Year of Rest and Relaxation' (MYoRaR) (2018) by Ottessa Moshfegh. Set in New York City in 2000 and 2001, MYoRaR depicts the emotional spiral of an unnamed female narrator in her twenties who attempts to sleep for an entire year in the hope that this will lead to a sort of rebirth. However, personal traumas and historical crises are here strictly interwoven. As Keeble (2022) argues, the novel can be read as an historical narrative questioning the myth of the social liberalism of the late ‘90s, whilst simultaneously addressing the historical, social, and cultural ailments leading up to 9/11. This paper argues that MYoRaR can be read as a ‘chronic crisis novel’ (Fuchs 2022). While modern crisis narratives usually feature a crucial tipping point following a climactic build-up, chronic crisis novels undermine the narrative modes and epistemological frames of modern crisis narratives by portraying a perpetual state of extreme distress. The protagonist’s desire to lose track of time parallels the plot’s impossibility to move forward (Greenberg 2021), its endless and frozen present mirroring the long-lasting permanence of crisis. This paper argues that MYoRaR fits Fuchs’s definition of the genre based on such features as the use of exhaustion and hopelessness as symptoms of broader social issues, the narrative technique of communicative silence, and the problematized relationship between present, inescapable past and inconceivable future.