{"id":5584,"date":"2006-11-11T15:38:31","date_gmt":"2006-11-11T20:38:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=5584"},"modified":"2022-10-11T22:50:00","modified_gmt":"2022-10-12T02:50:00","slug":"happy-birthday-to-mary-gaitskill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=5584","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday to Mary Gaitskill"},"content":{"rendered":"

She’s one of my favorite present-day writers. I first discovered her back when her first short story collection came out – Bad Behavior: Stories<\/a>\"\"<\/i>. My first boyfriend made me read it – telling me I was gonna flip out about this chick’s writing. I did. Her stuff is rough – or it can be. It’s a lot of sado-masochistic characters (literally), homeless people, prostitutes, callgirls, runaways … This was Mary Gaitskill’s background, which she is quite open about. She lived on her own from the time she was 16, and worked as a callgirl and prostitute. She writes about what she knows. And her prose!! I have to be in the mood for it – she can be quite dark, bleak – and also … how to say this – kind of matter-of-fact about the most horrific things. She doesn’t write with a ton of emotion. It’s cold, clear. This is the world that this class of people lives in. But that’s part of the fascination. And also, it can’t be stressed enough: these are people, she makes these people come alive, even if you hate them, or pity them, or don’t understand them … You feel shivers of recognition at times in some of them … or she describes a situation with such accuracy that you know you have been there before, even if you cannot recall the particulars.<\/p>\n

Her debut was a stunner – I remember everybody talking about it. It was a big deal. (The movie Secretary<\/a><\/i> was based on one of the short stories in that collection – although she did say that it was the “Pretty Woman<\/i> version of what she wrote” – which is true. By the way – I just went to the IMDB page for the film and noticed the brief plot summary – rated R for “strong sexuality” and also “depiction of behavioral disorders”. Hm. I don’t know what behavior disorder is in that film. Obsessive cleanliness maybe? She was in a mental hospital – but the story isn’t really about that. She may seem odd, different, but mentally ill? Insane? The film makes it a point of showing that she is not, and in a way she is the sanest one in the film. Or is it the S&M that is considered a behavior disorder? If you think there’s an easy answer to that last question, or if your answer to that question is a very quick “yes” – then probably Mary Gaitskill isn’t your girl.). The story is way darker than the film, and the story doesn’t have the nice domestic ending. But I loved that movie – they were true ENOUGH to what she wrote … in its controversial way … the freedom that that character found in a sado-masochistic relationship. How addicted she was to it. And how to her – that was love. And who is to say that she is wrong? Of course everyone in the film says she is wrong … but she knows. She knows that “normal” love just wouldn’t work for her.<\/p>\n

Gaitskill writes about people like that like nobody else I know. It’s not artificial, or … self-important. She’s not writing about a sub-section of society that she finds interesting – which can be a condescending stance to take. She’s writing about people she knew, and about the kind of struggles people like that have. The ones who grew up being raped, abused, abandoned … what happens to those people when they’re adults? Can they just start having normal relationships? Or has something twisted in them, for good? This is an open-ended question. Certainly some people survive such abuse and are able to then join society in a normal way … but Gaitskill isn’t writing about those people. She’s writing about the other ones. The subversive ones. The ones who love pain, the ones who associate love or sex with humiliation. You know those people who are just so attracted to the very thing that will be the WORST for them? Gaitskill writes about them. But the great thing – and you can see it in Secretary<\/i> perfectly – is that maybe the larger world, the conventional world – would look at that relationship and think: “How could she debase herself like that? Or … how could she “let herself” be treated like that? She obviously has serious Daddy issues … and so she’s looking for an authoritarian figure in her boyfriend … and that is absolutely the WORST thing she could look for …” And yes, that is A point of view … but it’s not the only point of view. The OTHER point of view is that that girl in Secretary<\/i> actually chooses the only way that is possible for her. It is the only way she can actually have what others have (a mate, a home, safety, stability) … and in a way, she has chosen perfectly. She has made the BEST possible choice she could make.<\/p>\n

Excerpt from the story:<\/p>\n

When he asked me to come into his office at the end of the day, I thought he was going to fire me. The idea was a relief, but a numbing one. I sat down and he fixed me with a look that was speculative but benign, for him. He leaned back in his chair in a comfortable way, one hand dangling sideways from his wrist. To my surprise, he began talking to me about my problems, as he saw them.<\/p>\n

“I sense that you are a very nice but complex person, with wild mood swings that you keep hidden. You just shut up the house and act like there’s nobody home.”<\/p>\n

“That’s true,” I said. “I do that.”<\/p>\n

“Well, why? Why don’t you open up a little bit? It would probably help your typing.”<\/p>\n

It was really not any of his business, I thought.<\/p>\n

“You should try to talk more. I know I’m your employer and we have a prescribed relationship, but you should feel free to discuss your problems with me.”<\/p>\n

The idea of discussing my problems with him was preposterous. “It’s hard to think of having that kind of discussion with you,” I said. I hesitated. “You have a strong personality and … when I encounter a personality like that, I tend to step back because I don’t know how to deal with it.”<\/p>\n

He was clearly pleased with this response, but he said, “You shouldn’t be so shy.”<\/p>\n

When I thought about this conversation later, it seemed, on the one hand, that this lawyer was just an asshole. On the other, his comments were weirdly moving, and had the effect of making me feel horribly sensitive. No one had ever made such personal comments to me before.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And so. In her own way … this girl knows what she needs. And she ends up choosing it.<\/p>\n

There are no victims in a Mary Gaitskill story.<\/p>\n

This is a tough thing to get … but that’s one of the reasons why Gaitskill is such an important voice. Because she gets it. Her writing idol is Nabokov, and it’s obvious why. She has that kind of complexity, that kind of relentless honesty about sexual impulse and how often it goes completely against what society says it should want.<\/p>\n

But it’s not for the CONTENT of her stories that I love her, although that is one of the reasons why she got so much attention. They’re shocking stories, if you don’t read that kind of stuff, or if you have no contact with that totally fringe element of society. But I’ve known a couple of prostitutes in my day (I mean, not THAT way – ha – but just people I knew – women who supported themselves by stripping – also one of my best friends was a prostitute once upon a time) – and I’ve known a lot of strippers … So I guess I’m not all that shocked by some of her stories. You know, shocked by what these people go through, but also – part of the appeal of her stories is the commonplace way she writes about them. They are not mystical weird creatures who live completely weird lives. They are not all raging pathetic drug addicts. Some, sure, but not all. Gaitskill doesn’t write about them with the hushed sense of “wow … check out THESE people …” It’s all very bland, and normal – which is part of the horror of it. They have apartments, they go get Starbucks in the morning, they maybe want to go to art school, or law school … You know, regular. Of course there’s a lot of CRAP there as well … the stories!! And the reasons WHY women make the choice to live that life are as random and diverse as the reasons why anybody does anything. So … the content isn’t really the draw, although I know it is for a lot of people – because it’s a part of the population that isn’t really, uhm, known. Except Biblically, of course. Still, though – it’s totally peripheral. Under rug swept. Existing, but not acknowledged openly.<\/p>\n

The draw for me is her writing, which still never ceases to stun me. She’s the kind of writer where occasionally I have to put down the book, after some particularly good sentence, and just sit with it for a second. She’s that good.<\/p>\n

I have not read her latest novel – Veronica<\/a>\"\"<\/i> – which was a finalist for the National Book Award this year. I have heard certain critics describe it as a masterpiece, which is rather thrilling. After Bad Behavior<\/i> made such a huge splash – she came out with her first novel: Two Girls Fat and Thin<\/a>\"\"<\/i> – which I remember not being wacky about. It might have been partly because of where I was at in my life at that point. I had just moved to Chicago, and was living in my little grey-carpeted studio apartment – and I shivered with adrenaline and possibility – but also – I wasn’t really in a mood to concentrate<\/i>. I remember vividly the books I read from that time in my life – as I remember everything about that time in my life (the music I was into, the food, the clothes) … I read The Passion<\/a>\"\"<\/i> by Jeanette Winterson – now THAT was a book I could click into – and I read <Lives of the Saints <\/a>\"\"<\/i> – by Nancy Lemann (a marvelous comedic book – made me laugh out loud – if Flannery O’Connor had a slapstick sensibility, she would have written this book – wonderful) – I read State of Grace<\/a>\"\"<\/i> by Joy Williams (terrific. But kind of stream-of-conscious – poetic – didn’t make TOO many demands on me – I have since gone back and re-read it and found: wow, I didn’t get SO much of this the first time around!! It was because I was so self-absorbed that everything I read HAD to somehow speak directly into my experience. That was just the mood I was in.) And for whatever reason – two Girls Fat and Thin<\/i> was a letdown – I felt alienated by it. And it upset me. The sado-masochistic stuff seemed crueller than in Bad Behavior<\/i> – I felt really sad reading this book. And I was NOT into feeling sad. I was NOT into feeling upset or contemplative. I described that part of my life a bit here.<\/a> I feel the need to go back and read it again – just to see if my first impression was right. I have talked to other Gaitskill fans who loved it – so I think it might have been me.<\/p>\n

She has also come out with another collection of short stories called Because They Wanted to: Stories<\/a>\"\"<\/i> which I just finished – and loved. LOVED. I posted an excerpt from one of the stories here<\/a>. The last story, a four-parter called “The Wrong Thing” made me cry. It’s one of her few first-person narratives – and the VOICE! It’s so specific. So … upsetting (if you’re not in the mood for it.) 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.<\/p>\n

Here’s an excerpt from the story I mentioned above – the four-parter called “The Wrong Thing”. I found this story almost unbearably sad. I read it recently and I have felt like I have been on a bit shaky ground these past couple months … and maybe 5 or 6 pages in, I had to make a choice … should I go on with this? Should I keep reading? I decided Yes, I would. But I went slowly, and I was very gentle with myself as I did so. My friends will know what I mean. I didn’t let my mind wander into my own life experiences too much as I read, I didn’t let myself identify too much with the narrator – even though my heart and soul felt completely exposed by that story – but I kept a bit of distance, which seemed necessary in order for me to be able to complete the story. It’s a testament to Gaitskill’s writer – and my regard for her – that even with such an un-balancing experience – I finished the story, and sat for a bit, profoundly moved. It was as though someone had pressed their finger into my skin – and for a second, the skin didn’t bounce back.<\/p>\n

Here’s the opening of that story:<\/p>\n

Today the clerk in the fancy deli next door asked me how I was, and I said, “I have deep longings that will never be satisfied.” I go in there all the time, so I thought it was okay. But she frowned slightly and said, “Is it the weather that does it to you?” “No,” I said, “it’s just my personality.” She laughed.<\/p>\n

It’s the kind of thing that I enjoy saying at the moment but that has a nasty reverb. I want it to be a joke, but I’m afraid it’s not.<\/p>\n

Last week a woman I have not spoken to for years called to tell me that someone I used to have sex with had died of a drug overdose. I was shocked to hear it, but not especially sorry. He’d had a certain fey glamour and a knack for erotic choas that was both exhilarating and horrible, but he was essentially an absurdly cruel, absurdly unhappy person, and I thought that, in the end, he was probably quite relieved to go. I had not seen him in ten years, and our association had been pornographic, loveless, and stupid. We had had certain bright moments of camaraderie and high jinks, but none of it justified the feelings I’d had for him. Even now he occasionally appears in my dreams — loving and tender, smiling as he hands me, variously, a candy bar, a brightly striped glass ball, a strawberry-scented candle. In one dream he grew wings and flew to South America with me clinging to his back, ribbons flying from our hair and feet.<\/p>\n

“I know he hurt you,” my friend said. “But I think he hurt himself a lot more.”<\/p>\n

“Yeah,” I said. “He did.”<\/p>\n

When I got off the phone, I sat still for some moments. Then I got up and dressed for the party I was about to attend. It was a birthday party for an acquaintance, a self-described pro-sex feminist who had created a public niche for herself as a pornographer and talk-show guest. I put on a see-through blouse, a black bra, a tiny black skirt, high-heeled boots, and a ratty black wig I had found in the bargain bin of a used-clothing store.<\/p>\n

I took a taxi to the party, and the driver, whom I had engaged in conversation, commented on my clothes. “I just wondered,” he said, “why you’re dressed so, well, so … I mean …”<\/p>\n

“You mean like a slut?”<\/p>\n

“Uh, yeah.” He glanced in his rearview. “Not that I’m saying anything.”<\/p>\n

“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s because I think it’s fun. It’s not a big scary sex thing. It’s an enthusiastic, participatory kind of thing. Besides, I’m thirty-nine, and pretty soon I won’t be able to do it anymore, because I’ll be an old bag.”<\/p>\n

He nodded thoughtfully. “Well, that’s cool,” he said. “It’s just that you don’t seem like the type who needs the attention.”<\/p>\n

His comment was so touching that it made me feel maudlin, and feeling maudlin made me feel belligerent. “A guy I used to be involved with used to criticize me for not dressing slutty enough,” I said. “He said I wasn’t much of a girl. He’d probably like what I’ve got on, but the little jerk is dead now.” I dug around in my bag for the fare. The driver’s eyes flashed urgently in his rearview.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Happy birthday Mary Gaitskill – I look forward to all the books you have yet to write.<\/p>\n

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