I’ve only ever read two of Mary Gaitskill’s story collections: Bad Behavior, her first (published in 1988), and Don’t Cry, her latest. Both are highly charged works of fiction — strong, full of sexuality, intensity, and intelligence. After reading both of these collections, I have come to the conclusion that if I ever had the chance to meet Mary Gaitskill I would be quite intimidated. Her writing is tough and confident, somehow masculine and feminine at the same time, which doesn’t make it feminist — it makes it authentic.

Don’t Cry is Gaitskill’s first collection of short stories in over a decade. It is reminiscent of Bad Behavior but all grown up, like an impossible, literary love child of Alice Munro and Michel Houellebecq — raw, yet, calm and sophisticated. Gaitskill is bold enough to write what many think (or do) but don’t dare speak about.

The title story is about two women who were friends in their youth, when waitressing and doing drugs, but are now approaching their fifties. Janice became a professor and Katya bounced around among careers and has decided to adopt a baby from Ethiopia. The story is told by Janice, who recently lost her husband to Alzheimer’s (he was almost 30 years her senior) and accompanies Katya to Africa. Two narratives are crossed (adopting a young child and losing a childlike husband) with ease and without cliché — not always an easy feat.

Janice is stuck in a numbing purgatory of her life and Katya is running around Ethiopian adoption agencies teeming with life, however fragile. Gaitskill readily makes the reader aware of this: “Being here [Ethiopia] is like being in biblical times and modern times at the same time. Like all times are happening at once, and people are just walking back and forth between them.” We are forced to see babies dying of AIDS; mothers too sick to take care of their children; cities plagued by political unrest, gunfire, absurd bureaucracy; and malaria contrasted against these two women that will be able to escape that chaos —  a contrast that can often be uncomfortable.

“Don’t Cry” is by far the best story in this collection of ten stories but there are other notables. “An Old Virgin” tells the story of a recovering addict, Laura, who is facing the death of her father. She works at a medical clinic and meets a middle-aged patient who is a virgin. She is in awe and feels a strong sense of respect for this woman she doesn’t know:

She [Laura] was forty; she tried to imagine what it would be like to be a virgin. She imagined walking through the supermarket, encased in an invisible membrane that was fluid but also impenetrable, her eyes wide and staring like a doll’s. Then she imagined her virginity like a strong muscle between her legs, making all her other muscles strong, making everything in her extra alive, all the way up through her brain and into her bones.

Gaitskill often writes with the body. Putting the intellect and the physical together seems like an obvious connection but it rarely falls flat (as in this story where we are confronted with the inevitable loss of one’s father and the protection of a stranger) and, as readers, we are more aware of a painful, uncomfortable, or sexual situation.

“The Arms and Legs of the Lake” tells the story of several passengers — two Iraq war veterans, a magazine editor, the conductor, and a couple on a romantic getaway — on a train ride into upstate New York. Each has his own story until they are brought together by a simple but immediate moment. It’s another uncomfortable story (and yes, Gaitskill knows that for some reason we want to be uncomfortable), where we are shown the sadness of post-traumatic stress disorder:

Now there was the man across the aisle, talking to himself and nodding. Now there he was in the dark field, holding a loaded gun pointed at nothing. There were all the people criticizing him for not getting a job, for being cold to his wife, for yelling at his son, for spending so much time looking for a dead dog. He put away his iPod, shouldered his pack. They didn’t get it, and he didn’t blame them. But alone in the field or in the woods, looking for his dog, was when he could feel what had happened in Iraq and stand it.

Among the really great stories are those that are, at best, out of place. Often these stories shy from the physical and tend to be more abstract. In “The Agonized Face” a journalist attends a literary festival and goes to a reading by a feminist author. The story unfolds as her reaction to this reading and the character’s feelings about being a feminist. As a woman, I found it interesting; but, most often it felt like an essay framed by a story. It was hard not to imagine the author lurking somewhere at this fictional festival.

A similar effect happens in “Mirror Ball”, a story of a man and a woman who have a one night stand. The narrator seems distant from the characters, at times addressing them by the characteristics of their souls: Gentleness, Forbearance, Instinct. The physical gets left behind, almost intentionally ignored, and the story is trying too hard to walk around it.

Gaitskill shines when she combines the visceral with the intellect. With most characters, we know when they sleep, when they are sick, when they eat, when they are sleeping together — or with themselves. Often the simple acts of humanity can be mundane, but Gaitskill’s direct approach makes them interesting by creating forceful characters. They don’t apologize; yet, we are still sympathetic. Gaitskill reveals her characters through frank, rough language — let’s just say Gaitskill would fit right in with old-timey sailors — but it is not gratuitous. It’s real and Gaitskill is skilled enough to make it intelligent.

 

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