The New Yorker: Fiction · The New Yorker
Ottessa Moshfegh Reads David Means
June 1, 2023·1 hr 1 min·5 clips
Ottessa Moshfegh reveals how David Means' story baffled her with its trippy second-person narrator.
As heard by us
A severe, circling David Means reading about a homeless brother, family shame, and grief without resolution.
Ottessa Moshfegh chooses David Means's "Two Ruminations on a Homeless Brother," a story that moves with a grim, circling pressure. The brother is seen through repeated traces: a cigarette at the trash cans, a hospital ward that briefly shelters him from the outside world, an…
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