DESCRIPTION

“You think everyone hates you, Jerome. It might be the one thing you’re getting right.” In Ottessa Moshfegh’s acerbic narrative, My New Novel, struggling writer Jerome Littlefield trades verbal blows with his mother; his therapist; and Stacey, a pregnant stripper who responds to his appeal for an “attentive individual to sit and listen. No speaking required.”

Matched with an artwork by Issy Wood, the publication inaugurates Gagosian’s Picture Books, an imprint conceived by author Emma Cline and dedicated to publishing fiction by leading authors alongside contributions by celebrated contemporary artists.

Produced in response to Moshfegh’s writing, Wood’s painting The down payment (2021) portrays a weeping Jerome in the midst of what the artist calls “the most directly surreal part of the story.” The pairing of writer and artist was an obvious one, says Cline. “Both Moshfegh and Wood share a gothic, spiky humor and an attunement to the darker currents of the world, the hidden realms where shame and desire intersect.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR, ARTIST, & EDITOR

Ottessa Moshfegh is a fiction writer from New England. Eileen, her first novel, was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Man Booker Prize, and won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. My Year of Rest and Relaxation and Death in Her Hands, her second and third novels, were New York Times bestsellers. She is also the author of the short story collection Homesick for Another World and a novella, McGlue. She lives in Southern California.

Issy Wood is an artist who lives and works in London. She received her BA in fine art from Goldsmiths, University of London in 2015. Her practice spans painting, music, and writing.

Emma Cline is the author of The Girls (2016) and of the story collection Daddy (2020). Cline was the winner of the Plimpton Prize and was named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists. The Girls was an international bestseller and was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award, the First Novel Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

READ MORE

“PICTURE BOOKS: OTTESSA MOSHFEGH AND ISSY WOOD” by Emma Cline, Gagosian Quarterly, Winter 2021 Issue