Our next Fiction Book Club will be held on Sunday, September 13 at 5pm. Please note the later time. Our novel this time will be Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke, which promises to spark much conversation and possibly even debate. I’m sure many of you have read it already even if you’re not in our book club, so please come join us so we can dig it together! We always read a short story to accompany the novel, and this month’s selection is the equally contentious story by Ottessa Mosfegh, “Bettering Myself.”
Click here to read “Bettering Myself” by Ottessa Mosfegh at Electric Literature (originally published in The Paris Review) or come by the store for a printout of the story (book club members can receive the printable version in their email—just email adam@snowfortbooks if you’re interested).
The story was recently in the news because a teacher, Vinita Prabhakar, was fired for teaching it to her freshman students at South Florida State College. The story was selected by The Paris Review to win the George Plimpton Award for Fiction in 2013. Jeffrey Eugenides wrote the citation:
“Bettering Myself” did what it said it would: it convinced me that Moshfegh was even better than I already thought. The voice here is totally unlike that of “Disgust” [another Mossfegh story that won the prize]. It’s a sharp-witted, wayward, unpredictable first-person voice, evidence that Moshfegh is a writer of significant control and range. The narrator of “Bettering Myself” is a problem drinker and Catholic school math teacher who says to her students, “Most people have had anal sex. Don’t look so surprised.” There’s a deadpan humor to many of Moshfegh’s utterances. A little Henny Youngman in there, trying to break out. But also something a whole lot sadder … What distinguishes her writing is that unnameable quality that makes a new writer’s voice, against all odds and the deadening surround of lyrical postures, sound unique.