McGlue: A Novella

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Ottessa Moshfegh: I had the novella in a drawer for a few years. I’d sent it to a few people, but nobody knew how to publish it. People thought it should be expanded into a novel-length book, but that never felt right to me. Then Fence started this Prose Prize series, and Rivka Galchen chose McGlue as the winner. The prize was publication. Voila! Fence is great!

Kim: I was wishing the prison would give him a shower. Maybe that’s because I’m always wishing my ten-year-old boy would take more of them. What comes from the memory of Johnson’s death is the truest, most difficult sense of friendship — a tender portrayal of sacrifice, of revelation, of McGlue’s own possibility in the rancid corners of a violent and callused world. There are different kinds of torture, self-loathing, painful memory, buried things, definitions of vice, loneliness. There are kinds of friendship in which one tormented identifies in the other something worse, and not out of anything but love, helps his friend, puts him to bed. Gangui, A.H. ( 1998) A combined structural interpretation based on seismic data and 3D gravity modeling in the northern Puna/Eastern Cordillera, Argentina. PhD Thesis, Freien Universität, Berlin. This question goes to the heart of all Moshfegh’s fiction, from her 2014 novella McGlue, a feverish monologue by a drunken 19th-century sailor accused of murdering his wealthy gay lover; to her first novel Eileen, shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2016, in which poor Eileen, living with her abusive alcoholic father, is as trapped as the boys in the prison where she works. It is most obvious in My Year of Rest and Relaxation, which is set at the turn of the millennium and builds inexorably to 9/11. The narrator withdraws from the world, sustained only by Whoopi Goldberg movies and a panoply of pills, in the belief that if she can only sleep enough she will “become a whole new person”. “As summer dwindled, my sleep got thin and empty, like a room with white walls and tepid air conditioning.”

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Rank: Name are ranked by incidence using the ordinal ranking method; the name that occurs the most is assigned a rank of 1; name that occur less frequently receive an incremented rank; if two or more name occur the same number of times they are assigned the same rank and successive rank is incremented by the total preceeding names Filthy Stephen Fletcher "swilled" a female prison officer with urine and faeces that splashed into her mouth.

DeCelles, P.G., Ducea, M.N., Kapp, P. & Zandt, G. ( 2009) Cyclicity in Cordilleran orogenic systems. Nat. Geosci., 2, 251– 257. Olsen, P.E. ( 1990) Tectonic, climatic, and biotic modulation of lacustrine ecosystems—examples from Newark Supergroup of eastern North America. In: Lacustrine Basin Exploration (Ed. by B.J. Katz) AAPG Mem., 50, 209– 224. Placzek, C., Quade, J. & Patchett, P.J. ( 2006) Geochronology and stratigraphy of late Pleistocene lake cycles on the southern Bolivian Altiplano: implications for causes of tropical climate change. Geol. Soc. Am. Bull., 118, 515– 532. O'Shaughnessy - who has 28 previous convictions for 63 offences - admitted attempted robbery and possessing an offensive weapon. The titular antihero of McGlue is a nineteenth century sailor with a hole in his head. McGlue’s brains are spilling out and his memories too, the unpleasant consequence of enforced sobriety after he wakes up bloodied and befuddled to find himself accused of murder, possibly at the victim’s request. The deceased in question is Johnson, McGlue’s friend, patron, beloved. The novella lurches along a path of hallucination towards the moment of death. McGlue‘s prose evinces the concern of a former classical pianist turned experimental writer for sound and rhythm above elaboration of plot.

Brian S: And what’s it like to have to refamiliarize yourself with something you’ve been away from for a while? Sohn, Y.K., Rhee, C.W. & Kim, B.C. ( 1999) Debris flow and hyperconcentrated flood-flow deposits in an alluvial fan, northwestern part of the Cretaceous Yongdong Basin, central Korea. J. Geol., 107, 111– 132. Demaster, D.J. ( 1979) The Marine Budgets of Silica and Si-32. PhD Thesis, Yale University, New Haven, CT.

Demicco, R.V. & Gierlowski-Kordesch, E.H. ( 1986) Facies sequences of a semi-arid closed basin; the Lower Jurassic East Berlin Formation of the Hartford Basin, New England, U.S.A. Sedimentology, 33, 107– 118. Turnbridge, I.P. ( 1984) Facies for a sandy ephemeral stream and clay playa complex; the Middle Devonian Trentishoe Formation of North Devon, UK. Sedimentology, 31, 697– 715. He spotted a holdall hidden in a bush near Windermere Court, in Penrith Street, at around 11.30am, on November 26 last year. He was identified by police on the video and arrested at home, when officers discovered items seemingly taken from Alder Hey.Smith admitted burglary, possessing cannabis, plus breaching his bail, a suspended sentence and conditional discharge. Gierlowski-Kordesch, E.H. & Rust, B.R. ( 1994) The Jurassic East Berlin Formation, Hartford basin, Newark Supergroup (Connecticut and Massachusetts); a saline lake-playa-alluvial plain system. In: Sedimentology and Geochemistry of Modern and Ancient Saline Lakes (Ed R.W. Renaut & W.M. Last) SEPM Spec. Publ., 50, 249– 265. These equally hazy references to Johnson’s father, and Johnson’s spoken desire to kill him, occasionally litter the memories. It goes unexplained in detail, but Moshfegh makes us feel the weight of it — whatever that pressure or pain is that a parent can bring upon a child — and there’s weight enough to derail Johnson and send him running to sea. Perhaps it’s the unhappiness of young men that provokes them to self-medicate and go in search of “some dumb fantasy” that will fulfill them; perhaps it’s some disappointment, shame, or a rejection of Johnson’s family’s wealth and prominence, his inheritance. What Johnson wants is to see the world, labor, make his own way, perhaps prove something, or escape, indulge in the very smut and debauch for which McGlue, from the moment Johnson happened upon him freezing, is a poster boy. The Employment Appeal Tribunal, presided over by Underhill J as President, in a decision handed down on 10 February 2012, allowed the appeal of the Land Registry against the five Claimants who alleged age discrimination. It dismissed their appeal against the decision in respect of Mrs McGlue. In the interim, there had been a remedies hearing, as we have indicated, but because by then the result of the appeal had not been known the hearing involved the five Claimants who ultimately failed as well as the Respondent to the appeal before us today, Mrs McGlue.