From Mary Gaitskill’s story “The Blanket”:
When he held her that way, she felt so happy that it disturbed her. After he left, it would take her hours to fall asleep, and then when she woke up she would feel another onrush of agitated happiness, which was a lot like panic. She wished she could grab the happiness and mash it into a ball and hoard it and gloat over it, but she couldn’t. It just ran around all over the place, disrupting everything.
Yeah, that’s quite the emblematic Gaitskill paragraph: everything’s tinged with its opposite, all the more dizzying given the purported subject — namely, love and its various objects, which here also seem to be the residual stand-ins for some darker, deeper, unresolvable obsession. Mortality, perhaps, or loneliness (or the desire to be alone while still not being able to sustain one’s own company.) Or something like that. Perfect bedtime reading.
Sounds like you had a fantastic time out there in the desert, Liza and all.
Hi, Jon! Yeah, I’m reading her Because they wanted to right now. “The Blanket” kind of blew me away. I so related to that character.
And amazingly – there’s kind of a positive ending. Very un-Gaitskill-ish. I LOVE the story.
The anxiety of being happy. Ouch.
I don’t have that collection — yet — but I’m putting it on my list. And her move toward happier or, rather, perhaps (M’kay, Henry James, much?)…more sanguine endings is generally reflective I think of how and where her life’s been developing in the past decade or so.
Check this link out for a fairly recent interview in NY Mag in which she talks a bit about this development (including getting married and wearing — yikes! — a big, honking diamond ring) ring):
http://www.partselect.com/xq/aspx/Inventory.452443/qx/PartDetail.htm?SourceCode=1
But be forewarned: she also talks about “Veronica” with some detail, so if you’re not into spoilers, however minimal, I’d say skip or skim those parts where she talks about the novel (assuming, of course, you’re still intending on reading it.)
That is EXACTLY how I felt when I was dating my now-husband of 14 years. I was a walking bowl of butter!!
BTW, I JUST discovered you. You have an uncanny knack for writing JUST the things I think about and wouldn’t know the first thing about how to put down on paper. I LOVE the way you described “Annie Kinsella” in “Field Of Dreams”.
The line that sealed it for me was when “Ray” asked her if she thought he was crazy for wanting to build the baseball field and she replied,
“Yes. But I also think if you really feel you should do this…then you should do it.”
Man, I could take a few thousand pages from her book!
Sue – thanks! I loved writing that piece about Annie Kinsella. It’s one of my favorite things i’ve done and I am so glad you enjoyed!!
Oh shit, Sheila! I noticed that the link I had pasted in my previous comment is for a replacement gasket I recently ordered for my dishwasher, not one to the NY Mag interivew with Gaitskill… (
though, actually, if you look hard enough at the gasket, it seems to be saying the same thing Gaitskill does, i.e. “clean up your leaky act, lady!”)
Ha ha.
But if you still insist on reading the actual interview, here’s the correct link:
http://nymag.com/nymetro/arts/books/14988/
Apologies for confusion…
Jon–I was reading the gasket site, and it dawned on me that modern literature had left me behind. What a relief to discover it was a mistake. To be serious, I have really enjoyed the little Gaitskill I have read, but, for some reason, I always forget about her when looking for something new to read. Today, I am writing it down.
Jon – hahahahahaha
I will definitely read that interview when I have a second. She’s fascinating to me – Bad Behavior is one of the best short story collections I’ve ever read. That and Birds of America. (Oh, and Dubliners, of course!!)
I should read Bad Behavior again, actually. It’s kind of a startling book – at least I remebmer being startled by it when I first read it.
Did you read 2 Girls Fat & Thin? What did you think? I remember almost nothing about it except the fat-ness, and then the weight loss, and something to do with Ayn Rand.
“Bad Behavior,” “Birds of America”: You’ve got MY cuh-luh! (sepia, of course.) Both incredible collections, both way up there on my list of “Best” story collections in the past 20 years.
That first story “Witness,” in Moore’s book? About the depressed film actress who quits acting and moves into the Days Inn on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago and has “two meals: breakfast and popcorn; two moods: coma and hysteria; two friends: Tommy and Charlotte Pervil”…epigraphed with the Joyce Carol Oates line “How can I live my life without committing an act with a giant pair of scissors?”…Hilarious, Heartbreaking, Very Close to the Bone. Same for the story “Community Life,” about the librarian child of Romanian immigrants, dating that Unabomber-like freak in Madison, WI? What can’t that woman write?
But “Dubliners,” well, what really could anyone write “worth reading” after that?
Haven’t read, though, “2 Girls, Fat & Thin”, so I can’t quite answer your question. Though given your memory of the book, I probably could make up an answer (this is what grad school was helpful in training me to do, among other torques of self-presentation)…and maybe even get away with it:
“So, um, yeah, 2 Girls, Fat & Thin, it’s about these girls and they, um, love Ayn Rand, especially those stories about her wedding to that other, um, disciple of objectivism, and, um, well, they decide to perform this mock Ayn Rand-type wedding, but things fall apart because, well, um–”
“Excuse me, but I don’t recall there being a wedding in 2 Girls, Fat & Thin. How do you account for this particular reading of the text?”
“Um, well, um, well, um….well…that’s what I got out of it…”
See? Doesn’t that satisfy your curiosity?
Ha ha ha !
Anyway, a trisket, a trasket, Mary Gaitskill’s a gasket. (and a gas, too!)
And by the way, here are a couple other must-read collections:
“The Tattered Cloak…and Other Stories” by Nina Berberova (Russian emigre who 1st lived in Paris, then the U.S., living and dying, I think, in Philly; she’s genius, “odd,” dreamy…)
“All Around Atlantis” by Deborah Eisenberg [and, actually, anything by her is pretty well near damn brilliant; see too “The Stories (so far) of Deborah Eisenberg” for what had been amassed before “Atlantis” and, more recently, “Twilight of the Superheroes” were published, the latter reportedly just as wonderful.]
Am headed now to my office where “Bad Behavior” lies about on some shelf or toher. Will aim to quote anon…
Jon:
“that’s what … I got out of it” BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Oh man. Busted! Sheila is busted!!!
And yes – that story about that film actress … Lorrie Moore is just … she gives me shivers. Perfection. Her short stories are perfection. They’re not as bleak as Gaitskill – she’s got more humor – but her specificity of what she chooses to write about and how she chooses to describe stuff – is very similar. Goosebumps!!
I never read her novel – or did she write more than one??
I love the story about the woman who goes to some conference in Italy with her boyfriend – and ends up going to see this massage therapist on a daily basis?? Do you remember that one?
I’m trying to remember if that one is in Birds of America or This Life (which I recently read).
It made me laugh out loud (the story about the woman at the conference) but it also was one of the most wrenching tragic stories … she’s just an incredible writer.
Yeah, that story you’re talking about is called “Terrific Mother.” And, yeah, it’s as wrenching as it is hilarious. One of the fucking funniest lines in that story is when the protagonist and her husband (?)(I think) are having their big show-down toward the end, and, leave it to Moore to have a Mandy Patinkin CD playing while they’re fighting. At some point, I can’t remember who, but one of them finally is so frustrated with the music that s/he yells something like: “Would you please turn that fucking music off? I can’t stand Mandy Patinkin…and all of his unshackled exuberance.” “Unshackled exuberance!” Perfect!
So many other stories, too, in the collection, now that I’m thinking of it, are spot-on. “Real Estate,” with those two or three pages full of only the word “HA?” Such a huge risk, but she pulls it off — and just barely (oh god, don’t I sound now like some figure skating commentator?) In fact, it’s one of the main things I love about Lorrie Moore: she does, as you say, inflect her stuff with so much humor (more, word for word, I sense, than Gaitskill), and sometimes I think she overdoes it. But just when you think “O.K., all right, enough with the schtick,” she pulls back –but in a way that not only relieves us of incipient irritation, but also because her story demands it. In other words, that tonal push-and-pull is as much her “main subject” as are the particularities of her characters and the plots they spin. And, really, I think she does it brilliantly. Kind of incomparably.
Oh that’s right – remind me: why does she fill up 3 pages with “Ha”? It totally works – but I just can’t remember the context.
Yeah – that story about the conference in Italy made me laugh out loud. How she felt abandoned at the group dinners where everyone had assigned seating and she was separated from her mate … or had he not gone at all?? I have to go back and read it. And the RIDICULOUS intellectual conversations going on all around …
Meanwhile, she was running from that tragedy – her dropping the baby at the family picnic – and there is no forgiveness for her in the universe, no solace, no peace …
GORGEOUS.
Yeah, kill a baby and what’s left? I can’t imagine. I mean, it makes sense (at the very least) in the story that the woman basically doesn’t get out of bed for a year after she drops the kid. And then the brilliance of how the massage relaxes her enough to say “I killed a baby,” and the masseuse says something like “Yah, we all kill the baby, deep inside” — apparently assuming that the protagonist is speaking in some New Age-like mode, and then the protagonist says “No, I mean, I really killed a baby…” but the masseuse doesn’t seem to get it, the operative word here being “seem” — which is another hallmark of that story’s intense power. Maybe she does “get” it and chooses, for whatever reason, not to take up the matter with the protagonist. Or maybe she really doesn’t get it, and she’s just “performing” for the money. Oh god, so many other brilliant touches in that story — including the protagonist heading out for her studio space each morning (where, of course, she can’t concentrate), armed with a bag of lunch (which, of course, she gobbles completely down before 10 am.) Hilarious. And too close for comfort!
And the context for the “HA’s” in “Real Estate” is just the general awfulness of the woman’s cancerous condition and, if I’m not misremembering, her husband’s infidelities, her obese avant-garde dancing daughter’s insensitivities, and generally just the hell of knowing you’re really going to die alone in the middle of the middle of the country, tumors riddling your lungs, and with a huge bee hive somewhere in between the walls of your house. And, oh yeah, a bunch of stoner Goth teenagers who’ve been camping out in your attic for the past few months, unbeknownst to you.
What else could you say after that?
“HA!” (about a million times.)
Brilliant.
Yeah, and Gaitskill is pretty damn GRIM!!
It’s funny – the ending of her story The Blanket (that this excerpt is from) is suddenly hopeful – and because it’s Gaitskill writing – the hope is even more piercing and almost awful than with other writers. You get the sense of how difficult it is for unhappy people to accept happiness … it is all very very hard-won.
But I was SO moved by that story. Sheesh. It made me cry.
I hate to interrupt this interesting commentary. Just wanted to mention how wonderful it is to see a LOVE of books–stories, characters, and, especially, writing. You two make me want to jump in the car, and head to the bookstore. OK, gushing over. Back to your conversation.
DBW – ha!! I love talking with book lovers too – especially if you love the same things. It’s really cool.
Jon is the reason I picked up Lorrie Moore – and for that I am truly grateful!!
And Lorrie Moore’s the reason I picked…
…someone up once in a bar. And for THAT I’m really and truly grateful!
Oh Sheila, you make me blush. And you’re the one who made me (finally!) pick up Atwood’s “Cat’s Eye” last week and read it in like basically one afternoon. Whoa: From “Hairball” to that (and with “Bodily Harm” in between.) Don’t know where to begin. Let’s just say, your taste is impeccable (and your shoes are gorgeous!)
(I’m kidding, by the way, about picking someone up in a bar because of L.M. — though stranger things have happened, including my meeting and subsequently dating for a while Liza’s personal massage therapist.) (Yes, that Liza.)
Glad to know, DBW, whoever you are, that we’re inspiring you. Will need your testimony when I’m accused of doing otherwise in my life — which is most of the time. Hope you find something great in the bookstore.
Cat’s Eye kills me. I read that book only once. Once was enough.
Come to think of it – that should be on the 1001 books you should read before you die list.
One of the great novels – far superior to her more well-known ones, like Handmaid’s Tale. Although Bodily Harm … sheesh, that book gives me the shivers. When Atwood is on there is nobody better.
Cat’s Eye is superb. The closing pages on the airplane … can’t even talk about it.
Uhm, yes, that is from memory.
But still, what an impact that book had on me. It was almost AWFUL, actually.
So much about Cat’s Eye. I’m almost afraid to read it again.
The mother with the bruised heart.
Burying the narrator in the backyard – how her memory blanks out much later – and she can’t remember why she was in that deep hole
Seeing Virgin Mary in the snow when she had to go after her hat
So many painful scenes. Great writing.
Oh yeah, all that stuff in “Cat’s Eye,” pretty strong stuff. And these
virgin/mother/daughter/memory lapse matters are things she also deals with in “Bodily Harm” — which, not to rain on the tears pouring from your Cat’s Eyes, I think is the better of the two books. Granted, this may have more to do with where I generally was when I read “B.H.” (in a fairly unmitigated emotionally volatile state) than with it necessarily being a superior book. And don’t get me wrong: I really was moved by C.E. But somehow, I don’t know why, the stakes in B.H. seemed higher and more, I don’t know, “compelling” — if not for any other reason than its political/international scope. Or, rather, the way in which the personal/political pendulum seems to swing back and forth through that novel’s pages, from beginning to end — but in a completely non-didactic, even darkly humorous way. And, of course, at the heart of that narrative is this awful tragedy of a woman who realizes too late what it means to empathize with another human being. But the fact she does, and the fact that she’s helped along the way through remembering, for example, her mother and her grandmother (oh god, I well up just thinking of those memories she has while waiting to be executed of her grandmother wandering dementedly through her Ontario kitchen, muttering about “everlasting life” and looking for her “hands” while the narrator backs up into a cupboard, horrified and unable to understand what her grandmother needs until her mother walks in, exasperated, grabs the grandmother’s hands and says “Here they are! Right where you left them!”)
Oh awful, awful! And I remember Kate also being deeply affected by that passage (esp. since this was right after her own grandmother passed away.)
O.K. Enough. I’m crying.
Jon – Awful indeed.
Bodily Harm is also one of Atwood’s greatest. What a book!! Handmaid’s Tale gets all the glory – but can it even compare to the chilling poetry in Bodily Harm??
Just that opening scene – when she comes home to find the cops in her kitchen and the coil of rope on her bed …
That invisible threat – unknown, unexpressed – hovers over the whole book in this almost unbearable way.
I’ve not been happy with Atwood’s stuff in the last, oh, 10 years?? But those books are better than almost anything I’ve ever read by ANYbody – so I forgive her.
I haven’t really read anything of hers other than what I’ve mentioned. Or an essay of hers here and there. But I heard she designed (and hired an engineer to create) a machine that, when hooked up to a computer, will enable an author to do a kind of virtual book tour, where in addition to giving a computerized video reading of a book that they’d normally read aloud to adoring fans in a bookstore or an auditorium, those fans can actually place copies of the author’s book on a stand connected to the computer/video and have it literally inscribed (via mechanical pen) by the author in real-time. Among other pet peeves, book tour travel is something Atwood apparently hates, and she’s evidently put her money where her cats eyes are. I’m not sure how successful this thing will be if it ever gets off the ground; a prototype was unveiled last year at the London Book Fair, but apparently there are still a bunch of glitches that need to be worked out. And though in no way can I see such a contraption holding a candle (let alone a pen) next to a live reading (esp. if you’re as good a live reader as Atwood supposedly is), I can also see how this might enable authors to reach communities that have and will never be slated stops on an actual book tour (i.e. rural and exurban areas), an argument that Atwood also cites as a primary motivating force for developing the thing. Something to look out for, I guess. I can just see it, though: after one of these virtual tours, some overly adoring fan will walk up to the machine, stick their ass or something on it and ask for it to be signed. Ouch.
(would be kind of funny, then, if Kafka were still alive and he was giving tours for “The Penal Colony” where the prisoners are punished by a machine that literally inscribes their crimes, I think, on their bodies. wonder how he would use the gadget…)
Saul calls, and so I follow…
I remember hearing that about the virtual book tour thing – I think it’s kind of great. Atwood grew up traveling around remote areas of Canada with her biologist father – living in cabins – far from civilization – I can see how she would sympathize with those way out there who would never get to, say, Toronto or Montreal.
Another really fun Atwood is Lady Oracle. It’s a funny book – which is kind of hard to imagine from Atwood – but it made me laugh out loud. Her humor can be so BITING – especially when she takes on the pretensions of Toronto. She’s merciless!!