Ottessa Moshfegh Fangirled Out At Whoopi Goldberg’s House
Author Ottessa Moshfegh has defied the old warning, “never meet your heroes.” She wasn’t disappointed.
Those who’ve read Moshfegh’s second novel, 2018’s “My Year of Rest and Relaxation,” won’t have much trouble guessing who that hero is. Like her book’s unnamed protagonist, who spends a year fettered to her bed self-prescribing medication and binging films and TV, Moshfegh’s spiritual idol is Whoopi Goldberg, the subject of the novelist’s new profile for Garage.
Goldberg, as Moshfegh describes her, is a barrier-breaker who exists “at the intersection of so many difficult worlds [fashion, comedy, antique dishware]” and “outside of any mundane binary [between feminine and masculine].” She’s eclectic as she is original.
Noshing on chestnuts at Goldberg’s New Jersey home, Moshfegh noted the EGOT card-carrier blends the high and lowbrow, collecting troll dolls (“I love me a good troll,” quoth Whoopi), a Mao portrait by Warhol and a dozen place settings made for the King of Hanover in the 18th century — part of a book about table dressing she’s writing for Rizzoli. Her dining utensils also number a “potato chip spoon” as Goldberg self-identifies as a “potato chip whore.”
Even in her high fashion endeavors, which include a new collection called DUBGEE, Goldberg collapses the boundaries of haute couture, kitsch and even politics as capably as she’s evolved her career between dramatic turns in films like “The Color Purple,” a vast array of Hollywood comedies and network TV shows and over a decade on the panel of “The View.” She’s been a style icon through it all.
Another area where Goldberg dissolves rigid classifications is faith.
Moshfegh, whose father is a Jew from Iran, visited Goldberg in December and observed two mezuzahs adorning the multimedia star’s front door. But when she walked in she spied workers decorating the home for Christmas.
“You must really love Christmas. Aren’t you Jewish?” Moshfegh asked.
“There’s that, too,” Goldberg replied.
PJ Grisar is the Forward’s culture intern. He can be reached at [email protected].
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO