A couple of days back I read The Smoker—an essay written by Ottessa Moshfegh and published in The Paris Review. Actually, I first listened to the author read it on The Paris Review podcast, and was so enthralled that I had to go and read it (and re-read it), too.
It’s a short essay, and it feels even shorter than it is somehow. I think that’s because the bit that makes you really feel something is just a few words, but it needed the other words to set it up. Some of those words feel like they exist just to give you a moment to get ready.
Some parts of the essay have absolutely no right to be interesting, but somehow they are. They pull you along just a little bit further.
The layout of the house was nothing special. When you walked through the front door, you could go up the staircase on the left. Or you could walk straight down the hall, past the small living room, to the kitchen, and from the kitchen you could take a u-turn and step down to the side-door to the driveway, or continue on down to the basement.
That’s barely taken out of context, to be honest. The most normal description of the layout of a house, but somehow it pulls you along. It reminds me of Ira Glass stating that a great story simply needs momentum. It just needs to keep leading you somewhere.
The story told in that essay could have happened to anyone. Many folks would simply have said, “huh, that was strange” and moved on with their life. Perhaps retold it at the housewarming. It’s a small moment of many that could have slipped by unnoticed, but thankfully it didn’t.
That’s the power of a great personal essay to me. A little vignette that captures something meaningful in the almost-mundane. A story that makes you feel something when you read it. It could be a few hundred words but land harder than some of the best books you’ve read.
The Smoker is a perfect example of this. A short, personal essay that captures a small, meaningful moment. I’d encourage you to read it—it’s worth the handful of minutes that it will take you.