Mara would like it noted that she adores Mary Gaitskill’s writing, and fears her incisive judgment more than she fears death.
Yours is an unlikely friendship.
She’s good at it, but she’s not good enough.
You work as a proofreader, staying up all night hunched over desks. It’s dull work. You like dull work. Your co-worker sits next to you, pining. His hands do not match the rest of his body. You pity him.
You remember the days you wore white lipstick and teased the boys, you and your best friend, a little slip of a thing with dark hair and a cruel mouth who always sat sideways, in a twist.
You ran away from your home in the suburbs of Detroit when you were sixteen. You went to New York or San Francisco. You dabbled in sex work. You dabbled in modeling. You dabbled in having sex with people allegedly more talented than you were. You were subject to all kinds of cruelties and indignities. You tell people this as a matter of course, an hour into meeting you, usually too loudly and at a diner. They look shocked, and by now, that look of shock comforts you. You sip your black coffee. It’s burned. You like it that way.
Someone is slouching and chewing.
A man is pissing somewhere a man doesn’t usually piss.
Your mother always resented your beauty.
You often reflect, dispassionately, on your troubled childhood.
You often reflect, dispassionately, on your shattering first sexual experience.
You often reflect, dispassionately, on your tumultuous relationship with an older man.
Your current lover has an uncanny ability to turn anything into a bondage tool. It’s actually quite impressive, but you are rarely impressed.
You think more about your lover’s wife and children than you do about him.
Every person in this college town is either too ugly or too beautiful. You pity them.
A man is yelling about what the young people are wearing these days. Maybe he is your father. Maybe he is a former john. Maybe he is a homeless man passing you on St. Marks Place. Maybe he is all of them in one.
Everyone is offering you cocaine.
Everyone is offering you amphetamines.
You are at a fetish bar, and you are terribly bored.
An elfin man has made you cry.
She’s judging you. You trusted her.
He has a foreign name, and he does all the wrong things, but he cries at all the right movies.
It’s not the worst thing that’s happened to you.
You are simultaneously much better and much worse than everyone you know.
Men are monsters. You pity them.
*
(image via)
Mara Wilson! On the Toast! This is a great day!
Mara!!!! It’s a good day to be a Toastie!
Men are monsters. You pity them.
Another candidate for the list of possible Toast slogans.
This line rivals “One man, one bullet” from Fury Road in terms of slogans I want tattooed on my person in a heart, or possibly a dagger.
I’ve never heard of Mary Gaitskill but now I am DYING to read one of her novels. Where do I start?
Me neither!
I suggest starting with Veronica. I saw her read from her latest novel (the Mare) a while back and literally went straight from the reading to a library so I could read something of hers, which turned out to be Veronica. I would say it was a good/emotionally devastating choice. If you are not prepared for that she’s got great short story collections which are also devastating but come in smaller doses.
I’m more of a short story girl, so I recommend starting with Secretary
The New Yorker published one of her stories and you can read it for free online: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/02/14/the-…
It is REALLY disturbing and triggering about violence against women. I don’t think this is the best thing she’s every written, but I have read it more than once and it’s always stuck with me.
While I was looking for that story I found this great interview with her about the story.
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/mary-g…
I remember her book of short stories, Bad Behavior, as being really great – but as people said about other works of hers, I’m sure there’s some pretty disturbing stuff in it so be warned.
she’s SO GOOD. I have a long-distance friendship with somebody from college and I told him his new chapbook read like a dystopian Mary Gaitskill, he didn’t know who she was, and I nearly told him to stop writing. She’s so great. I prefer her short stories to her novels, personally, and ‘Because They Wanted To’ is my favorite, Veronica is particularly bleak, if you like that sort of thing.
Well this is perfect.
I had not read any Mary Gaitskill before this summer, when I was at a thing where she was speaking and teaching. I became both hypnotized and terrified upon passing her in a hallway immediately before the reading (I was not entirely sure who she was except the fact that her eyes were like delicate, soul-dissecting lasers suggested she was probably important). Then she actually read and I realized that it had been a grave error to have spent my time doing things other than reading what she has written.
This makes me want to read Mary Gaitskill’s. They sound magnificent and life-changing.
Also, hi, Mara! So nice to see you writing on The Toast!
When I saw the excerpt from this on twitter I was thinking of Elizabeth Gaskell and I was so confused, like none of this happened in North and South that I can remember?
When I saw the excerpt from this on twitter I was thinking of Elizabeth Gaskell and I was so confused, like none of this happened in North and South that I can remember?
This is fabulous.
This is amazing and fantastic. And very well done
I have never read any of Mary Gaitskill's work, but this list and a cursory googling means I pretty much have to now. She sounds amazing. Cruel-mouthed best friends remembered through a white-lipstick-tinted lens of nostalgia? Elfin men who make you cry? Pretty much everything she says about desire and power? YES PLEASE.
But be warned that the short story "Secretary" is darker and grubbier and altogether less charming than the movie that's very loosely based on it! (This isn't a criticism, just a neutral observation. It's a great, creepy, ugly story.)
Delurking to say that “Two Girls, Fat and Thin” is partially about a woman who was a follower of a character named Anna Granite who is a very, very thinly disguised Ayn Rand, and thus is extra relevant to Toast interests. Gaitskill’s takedown of Objectivism is masterful and until the Ortberg era, unrivaled.
Also, “Bad Behavior” was so important to me when I was in my twenties and I will always love it best. I went to hear her read ages ago, in Philly, and the guy who introduced her (a professor, I think?) did everything but drop to his knees and worship her. It was awesome and awkward and she seemed a bit surprised by all the groveling, but gracious.
Everything you just said, exactly! “Two Girls, Fat and Thin” narrowly beats out “Bad Behavior” for me, but only because it was excerpted in the first High Risk Anthology which some very cool, underrated girl gave me for my 16th birthday. Probably the best thing anyone did for me kind of like ever. Wish I could find her and thank her for literally everything I have read since that book, especially Mary Gaitskill.
“a little slip of a thing with dark hair and a cruel mouth”
That’s how I want people to refer to me now.
Also, MARA WILSON HOLY SHIT!!! <33 The Toast is the greatest place on internet Earth. Or regular Earth.
“You are simultaneously much better and much worse than everyone you know.”
it me. Never has a line so thoroughly summed me up. I clearly have to read a Gaitskill book immediately.