Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction
Bad Behavior: Stories
Mary Gaitskill is what I would call a “scary-good” writer. She has been since her startling debut – with the short story collection Bad Behavior. I think she was 23 or 24 when it came out and the author photo on the back looks like it could have come out of a high school yearbook. She’s tiny and young and … well, she terrifies me, let’s be honest. She’s just so freakin’ GOOD. The NY Times Book Review is excerpted on the front cover with the words: “Wise beyond her years, utterly unsentimental, Gaitskill is … glorious.” It’s that “utterly unsentimental” part that is truly startling about her work – especially for such a young woman. Her stories are COLD. Her prose is spare, yet – deceptively simple. It is not easy to write the way Gaitskill writes. And believe me. I have tried. One of the nicest compliments I’ve ever received on this here blog was when Jon said that something I wrote reminded him of Gaitskill. I don’t say that to brag – or hell, maybe I do. To be compared to her – especially in a piece that I wrote pretty much off the cuff – gave me a nice moment, and one of those encouraging feelings of: “Keep going. You can write. Just keep going.” Her work is so so so good. What is it that makes her so good? To me, it is that “unsentimental” thing that stops me in my tracks. Gaitskill does not write about “nice” people. Many of them are assholes, actually. In the post I wrote about her on her birthday (lots of information about her there) I write:
I have to feel on pretty sturdy ground in order to be able to deal with Gaitskill. If I’m having a blue day … or a blue month … she’s one of the writers I stay FAR away from. She doesn’t wallow. She doesn’t mope. None of her characters mope. That is what is so tragic about them. They survive. They are survivors. And there is something beautiful about survival but oh, there can be such sadness there too. When you have a consciousness of what you have lost along the way. Gaitskill writes about those moments … those moments when you realize what you have lost.
I actually can’t think of a writer to compare her to. Her idol is Nabokov – and I can definitely see his influence – there’s KIND of a Margaret Atwood feel, at times – but not really. Atwood is also “utterly unsentimental” – which is why she’s so great … but Gaitskill – it’s like she’s living on a frozen ice-cap – It’s not that she doesn’t care about people, there is great compassion in her writing – just from how she observes things, she sees EVERYTHING. It’s that she doesn’t waste time psychologizing, or trying to understand WHY or give reasons for her characters behavior (their “bad behavior”). She just tells us what they do. Gaitskill was a runaway as a teenager. She lived on the street, and was a callgirl for a while. She’s quite open about that period of her life. Many of her characters are prostitutes, strippers, drug addicts, runaways – and then there’s the whole sex thing. Gaitskill writes about sex in a way that makes you (at times) want to run away screaming. These are not people who are yearning for intimacy, in the women’s magazines definition of the word. To Gaitskill’s characters, intimacy exists when someone punches you in the face as he’s fucking you. Gaitskill does not pity such people, who yearn for pain, who only understand love when it hurts. She doesn’t glorify them either. She is not interested in judging them in one way or another. She just tells us what they do. That’s why I say: if I’m feeling shaky, or on the verge of a depression – Gaitskill is the last writer I will look to. She’s not interested in comforting me. She’s not interested in shocking me, either – this is not about shock-value.
The movie Secretary is based on a Gaitskill short story – and they definitely Hollywood-ed it up – but I was amazed how much they were able to get away with. (I love that movie, by the way. And I love that relationship. Read into that what you will!)
It’s not so much her subject matter that I am drawn to – but the sheer virtuosity of her prose. She’s as good as it gets. She just came out with a novel Veronica – it’s her second novel … In my opinion, her “milieu” is the short story – her two novels, while filled with unbelievable writing, didn’t work as well for me as her short stories – where she knocks it out of the park, page after page after page.
I often wonder what it would be like to be able to write like Mary Gaitskill. I know I have my own gifts, my own style … but I do wonder what it would be like to have something within me cauterized to such a severe degree, that I would be able to write about rape and rough sex and homeless runaways and drugs and users … with such a cold clear unblinking eye. Gaitskill is terrifying. Terrifyingly good.
Bad Behavior like I said was her debut. And if you’re gonna have a literary debut, then you want Gaitskill’s literary debut. Because she writes so much about sex – and because it’s not the kind of sex you normally hear about – she got a lot of attention for that. There are some parts of some of her stories that even I wince at. But Gaitskill doesn’t. That’s the power of it. She’s not rubbing my face in shit, and saying, “LOOK! THESE ARE PEOPLE TOO!” or whatever – her interests as a writer are not: “Let me humanize a subversive group of people …” She’s not an evangelist. She’s not polemical. She doesn’t care if we’ve never heard of sex clubs and S&M joints and runaways who like to get punched in the face and look for men who will punch them in the face. She knows those people, she lived among those people, she probably IS one of those people – and so she, without blinking, writes about what they do.
I dislike writers who want to “shock” me (and, it’s funny – 2 of the writers in the last 5 years who seemed interested in “shocking” me turned out to be frauds!!) Gaitskill is not a fraud. These are her people. Gaitskill, despite her subject matter, couldn’t care less if I was shocked or not. She’s still gonna keep writing about these people, and telling me what they do. The title of her book is a wonderful little wink – at those who would judge, at those who couldn’t “take” such stories – because they would need a moral, or they would need SOME narrative voice to say, “This woman is abused and needs to be healed – her behavior right now is ‘bad’ – and she needs to get past it …” or some other such Glamour mag sentiment. Gaitskill does not satisfy in this regard. She does not look at her characters as needing to go through 12 step programs to join regular society. She does not concede ground to those who would mutter, “Wow. That girl is so SICK.”
Maybe that girl IS sick. Gaitskill, again, doesn’t care about diagnosing her characters. She doesn’t go for easy labels. There is nothing about Gaitskill that is easy. And, to be honest, I know a lot of these people. I’ve known “Gaitskill characters” in my life. Her observations are so clear, so RIGHT, that you yourself as a reader feel exposed by them.
She’s one of the best writers alive today – certainly in America at the top of the heap.
The first story in Bad Behavior is called ‘Daisy’s Valentine’. Her stories don’t really have “plots”. At least not that would be interesting to relate. Suffice it to say: Joey and Daisy work in a second-hand bookstore in Manhattan together. They are dating. Joey is also living with a woman named Diane – his girlfriend of 8 years. Here’s an excerpt.
EXCERPT FROM Bad Behavior: Stories
Joey didn’t think of having sex with Daisy, at least not in detail. It was more the idea of being near her, protecting her. She was obviously so confused. She looked everywhere for answers, for someone to tell her what to think. “I just want your perspective,” she’d say.
There was a customer she called the “answer man” because he claimed that he could predict the future through “automatic handwriting”. He was a handsome elderly man who wore expensive suits and looked as though he’d had at least one face lift. He had been coming into the store for years. Every time he came in, Daisy would walk him off into a corner and ask him questions. He would scrawl down answers in thin red ink and hand them to her with an imperious, terribly personal look. She would become either stricken or joyous. Later she would run around talking about what he’d said, examining the red-scrawled pieces of store stationery. “He says my painting is going to start being successful in a year and a half.” “He says there are no worthwhile men around me and that there won’t be for months.” “He says David will move out next month.”
“You don’t take that stuff seriously, do you?” asked Joey.
“Oh, not really,” she said. “But it’s interesting.” She went back to her desk and stuck the papers in her drawer and began typing, her face still glowing and upturned because someone who was possibly crazy had told her that she would eventually be a success.
It’s what I’m calling blogethapy: I don’t check-in with you for a while, and when I do, almost whimsically, there you are: writing about freakin’ Mary Gaitskill, as though the mere typing of her name had called me through the ether to pick up where we left off. Don’t tell me there isn’t a higher power working here! Uncanny, Sheila! And I’m sorry for not having gotten back to you from the summer about “Veronica”–which, as I recall, you weren’t so keen on, feeling that M.G. had strayed into lyricism with that book, softening too much (?) her trademark diamond-sharp prose and vision. I think I can see exactly what you mean by this–if by “lyricism” you mean the way in which going so relentlessly in and out of Alison’s (the main character’s) past risks flattening our interest in what’s going on for her in the here-and-now, itself not exactly a realm of angular, urban, sex-frought coldness. At the same rate, given the nature of that realm (which is literally the natural world in/around Marin County, where Alison’s working as cleaning woman) and the book’s arguable project (Alison learning and yearning explicitly to be a more empathetic person), I would think that if M.G. had framed the narrative more in terms of what we’re used to seeing in her stories (geographically, stylistically), then she’d have a harder time getting us to empathize (but, of course, not necessarily sympathize) with Alison. And as you so rightly point on, M.G. is a master of empathy–in the truest sense of the word. In the stories, she’s not trying to make the demimonde “lovable” or more “comprehensible” to the wary reader; she certainly has her judgments about her characters and the worlds they live in, but her presentation of it all is very much: “Here it is, kids, make of it what you will, no need to get all uppity or hysterical about it, it’s often not pretty and in fact in might depress the shit out of you, but it’s not going to kill you either–in fact, in might even make you feel more alive. Or at least more aware of where you are…and others, too.” But, sure, even the greats don’t always hit the bullseye for everyone every time. And it might just be that having to deal with a character as ruminative as Alison is for the length of that book is making some readers feel that M.G. is working too long and too often at cross-purposes. I personally love the book–but also know that one’s love for a book arguably has as much to do with where you “are” when you read the book as it does with the story itself. Will be interesting, I think, to go back to it a year or two from now and see how I feel–as you do so amazingly and admirably with so many of the titles you’ve devoured.
P.S. And the fact that you wrote that earlier piece pretty much off the cuff is further testament to how good it–and you–are. Keep me posted on whatever work you might continue to do on it. I can totally see it getting published–as it should be.
Jon – Hi! That is so weird that you would re-visit me as I’m about to go off on a Mary Gaitskill kick!! I love it!!
There were, indeed, parts of Veronica that were so well written that I just wanted to put my pen down forever. Like – STUNNING writing. To me, it didn’t “add up” – and perhaps that wasn’t Gaitskill’s point – and to be honest, I’m willing to go wherever she wants me to go. She is phenomenal. To me, her brilliance was in the tiny descriptive moments – how she just GETS what New York City is like in the early morning, after you’ve been up all night. The way she describes the random conversations of drunk people at parties – assholes and users and manipulators. I also liked how she really never described what Allison looked like – which is fascinating, because she was a model. We have such an objectified view of female beauty – it’s all about the PARTS … we only know that people respond to Allison in a certain way … we get the point: “wow, she must be stunning …” but we are left to make up the rest.
And I think I might ahve said in that email to you – that the ending of the book packed an enormous punch, which took me by surprise. The resolution with her father … it was startlingly moving to me – her writing just WORKS.
I think, though, that some people are kick-ass at short stories – like Lorrie Moore. I think Annie Proulx is too. Entire worlds are erected in a matter of 15 pages – it’s incredible – and I stand back in awe. Mary Gaitskill, to my mind, is one of the best. I think Lorrie Moore is THE best – but Gaitskill’s short stories are just … you can’t think of anything else while you are reading them, the whole world around you stops … and so much of it is horrifying, or scary or ugly … but you never feel like she’s rubbing your face in it, like a pleased little kid pissing off the grownups. She truly is writing her truth – writing what she knows.
Amazing!!!
I believe I have you to thank for making me read Lorrie Moore too!
Really? I was the one who tipped you off to Lorrie Moore? It’s possible…but somehow I can’t imagine that someone like you wouldn’t have come to her in your own ethereal way before I ever mentioned her. In any case, she is a genius in her own right–and, of course, so different in many ways from Gaitskill, with M.G. doing exactly what you described (i.e., the world outside stopping while you descend into hers)..whereas Moore tends to remind us of (and also defamiliarizes) the one we already live in–and often through a nearly theatrical lens of humor (her detractors I suppose would call it schtick). Oh god, it so hard to generalize about these two–so many similarities between them as well, especially since you could say the same thing about M.G. in terms of reminding/defamiliarizing…and also humor and irony. Though if I had to say whose work I’d rather read if I’m having a dark day (or month), I think I’d stick with Moore. Because Gaitskill kind of doesn’t let you escape once you get in that elevator with her. Have to have the stomach for it. Anyway, so glad you’re posting about them. And so glad to reconnect with you! Great point, too, about our not ever really seeing Allison in “Veronica.” That’s true. I never realized that until you mentioned it. Haunting.