She appeared in a loose-fitting, dirty-gray pink cotton shirt, making her thin body look even smaller with the thick fabric holding her frail shoulders together. Gaitskill walked with her shoulders back. Though we were packed into the auditorium, touching thigh to thigh and using our free Skidmore College folders to fan ourselves under the domed fluorescent lights overhead, when she passed we shivered into each other. She had skin like bleached canvas stretched tight over her sharp cheekbones and giving way to two constantly pursed lips. Her eyes, almost as white as her straightened hair brushing the top of the loose t-shirt cowering around her neck, scanned us, leaving our spines shuddering from the ice in them. I thought I had a seen a ghost.
No many how many times I took her picture, it wouldn't quite come into focus. She floated down to the podium, and she settled, her body hunkering down among the desktop computer, her fingers pinching the stack of white papers she had brought with her. She glanced out as us as though she had asked a question, and we stared back at her with gaping faces as an answer.
Mary Gaitskill is creepy. She's creepy for taking the Fifty Shades of Gray style story of a secretary bending over a the wooden desk of her boss, letting him strike her until she is aroused by his own violent ejaculation. She takes what we read shitty fanfiction about, and she gives us a girl who is lying in bed with the covers pulled up, unable to summon the strength in her body to get dinner. Gaitskill exposes something about our own twisted bodies, our own twisted ways of reaching inside of others and taking something precious. In "The Secretary," maybe it's the sense that we can somehow do better for ourselves but not saying a word when someone metaphorically spanks us into submissions. Maybe in "A Romantic Weekend," we've had people who have gagged and tied us in stifling relationships. Gaitskill shakes out our dirty laundry onto the clothesline for the neighborhood to see, and when we try to slip back into our over-sized clothes, the air makes them as cold as I felt just watching her walk by.
Unpacking these stories is supposed to be emotional. I want to know what struck you. What was difficult to read about? How did you react? Gaitskill is brilliant, present, and detailed. Tell me what drew you in. More importantly, tell me what made you uncomfortable.
Also, here's a video of Peg Boyers and Mary Gaitskill reading at the program I went to over the summer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmY49CkOsUs. It's long. Don't watch the whole thing. Fun fact: The man introducing Peg Boyers is Howie. Gaitskill starts to read at 39:30. She laughs in the video. It's strange.
These stories by Gaitskill can only really be described as haunting. Something about the image of a grown woman in her parent's basement curled up on the couch looking at the Barbie dolls she used to play with or the man and his prospective "slave" talking about their parents is just scary and unsettling. It doesn't seem like life could actually be the way that Mary Gaitskill writes it, but I don't think it's that impossible. I think she's just very, very good at writing scenarios that we really hope never happen to us or anyone we know but that we know could happen. And that may have happened already. I think what really makes these stories so terrible are how unsolvable these characters problems are, to the point where it's hard to even tell what they are. All of them are obviously dissatisfied, but it's impossible to say with what. This vague sort of dissatisfaction that Gaitskill creates surrounding both of the stories that is the most unsettling part about them. Nothing gets resolved in the end. There are no happy endings but no real unhappy ones either. The characters go from point A to point B and back to point A without actually realizing anything or changing or even grappling with their problems. They come close, but by the end of both stories, the characters are right back where they started.
ReplyDeleteMary Gaitskill is not someone who sees the positive in relationships and people. Everyone in her stories are messed up people who never get better. And that’s ultimately what she writes most about. It’s very much a swerve to have characters who go through all this trauma and when it seems like they’re about to make a breakthrough, they stop. Nothing is really resolved and we as readers are left disgusted by the consequences of these awful people. But even the tormentors in Gaitskill’s stories, the lawyer and the man in “Romantic Weekend” (I don’t think he gets a name), are just as screwed up as their female counterparts. And her gender politics reflect this twisted view, the men are sadistic and sex-hungry, the women are submissive (to an extent). In this respect, Gaitskill is tearing apart Fifty Shades of Gray as a whole. But while this is all very fascinating, her actual stories didn’t hit me that hard. I was disgusted, sure, not a huge amount. And I found this exaggeration in the men-women interactions to be unrealistic. That’s probably part of her intent, but the fakeness of her stories still takes me out of it. What woman would really take being sexually abused by her boss like Deb does in “Secretary”? And I doubt people would vacillate between hate and love like the two in “Romantic Weekend” do. I wouldn’t mind the fakeness of the stories, but I get the feeling Gaitskill is trying to make some broader, societal critique and if that’s the case, these stories need less exaggeration.
ReplyDeleteI was initially surprised when I read these stories. Firstly due to the fact that they were featured in the textbook, which I found pretty funny. Secondly, from looking at pictures of Mary Gaitskill, this is not the type of work I would expect her to write. I mean, she kept my attention, kind of like watching a shark attack or car accident. Talk about judging a book by its cover. In her stories, it seems that she doesn't really support healthy sexual relationships between a man and woman. Every example of a relationship shown in this story are something that is detrimental to both parties. Such as Deb and her boss and the men and women in "Romantic Weekend." This all seemed pretty out there for me. It was the definition of an unhealthy relationship and the acts that these people performed on each other just made reading feel weird. You essentially have these 2 dimensional characters interacting with each other and they go through struggles and events that would normally change most people, but these characters go through no real change, therefore experience no character development. This kind of makes the stories feel as if they had no real point or effect on the reader. I liked the fact that she put interesting characters in extraordinary situations, but because of the fact that there is no outcome observed, the stories feel moot.
ReplyDeleteSo we keep talking about how Gaitskill doesn't work towards the positive, but She has managed to corner that dark part of humanity that we've all been forced to acknowledge, the dirty, uncomfortable taboo that sex had become as a result of the WASP traditions imposed in the United States. These relationships aren't healthy, nor attractive, but there is a realness to the characters and their reactions to what is happening. Look at the way the characters interact with each other. There is a very haunting something that comes from the characters, but unlike the popular smut we've been privy too, these characters are what carries the emotions of the piece. I feel like these pieces are some sick joke, a beautifully written sick joke. God Bless Mary Gaitskill.
ReplyDeleteWhat I admire most about Mary Gaitskill is that she is able to make something so haunting so realistic. The way she used her words, the sheer content of her piece left me with chills down my spine that I couldn't seem to shake afterwards. What so haunting as Catherine puts it in her entry is that Gaitskill writes so close to home. So much so, that when you are reading her piece, you think "Yeah, that could actually happen..." In "Romantic Weekend", there is nothing healthy at all about the affairs shown between the men and women. The erotic detail alone is unsettling but still convincing. The overall tone of the piece startled me as the reader because frankly I didn't know what to feel. I was almost too shocked to even feel anything. I felt the same in "The Secretary" with Deb and her boss. This piece totally blew Fifty Shades away, there is just no comparison. It was dark, violent, completely disturbing in every context. How Deb could allow herself to be sexually abused in that way was beyond me as the reader but it only added a layer of mysterious to what Gaitskill was trying to convey. She brings forth this realism that we don't like to acknowledge in life and I think that is what makes her work truly startling.
ReplyDeleteFor me these stories are so realistic. Yeah its not all sunshine and rainbows, but life rarely is. Life is the down and dirty, love and hate, and inexplicable emotions. I see a delicate hand behind these stories. The erotic nature of these stories is not so overt into tacky but just enough for what the story needs. These stories are supposed to make you feel uncomfortable. You are supposed to become confused by the back and forth of emotions in "Romantic Weekend." Specifically with that story, it is not about the supposed relationship between two people but rather how our expectations for one another are almost always wrong and falling of those expectations taint every interaction from that point on. With "The Secretary," I have found that everyone remembers it as the one where the girl got spanked by her boss, but I find myself most often recalling the elephant ears shared between Deb and her mom, and the ending, as she sits among the rot of her childhood. In her repressed emotions, Deb was never able to accumulate to the 'adult' world and the job thrust her emotions out of balance and it leaves her wanting the safety of her simple repressed view of the world.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading Mary Gaitskill’s selections, particularly “Secretary.” When I began reading it, I thought the tension in the story would settle on the family or the inner character flaws of closed off Debby. I did not anticipate that Debby’s nature would drive a further upset in the sexual harassment her boss relayed on her and the extent it would go. Gaitskill perfectly developed the character of Debby so that we understood her but also felt moved by her change in the end of the story. I was struck first by the repeated negative tone of this story, appropriately coming from Debby’s perspective. This gives the author first hand knowledge of Debby’s outlook on the world created in the story and gives viable reasoning behind conversations between Debby and her boss or Debby and her mom, when they encourage her to open up and feel more. The tone was depressive early on and I could feel that echoing off Debby. It made me uncomfortable to hear from her perspective the sexually violent acts of her boss but it made me increasingly uncomfortable to see her initial reaction was confused yet aroused. He used her sheltered, quite, closed self against her. And at the place she was at, she didn’t have the voice to speak up, walk out, and get angry. She closed further, from her family and from her own self. Still, I loved reading this because of Gaitskill’s writing. Its funny how a story so uncomfortable and saddening could by its technique and esthetic be so beautiful and poignant that I look past the plot itself when determining how I feel about the story.
ReplyDelete"Secretary" may very well have been my favorite story so far. There were moments where I found myself disgusted by Debby and then that disgust turned to her boss and in the end it just vanished. Mary Gaitskill wrote about a situation that may seem very odd to most of us, something dark and foreign, and made us feel it. She put us in that office with that lawyer, she bent us over, she spanked us and ejaculated on us. More over, she showed us that some women do not react the way we would expect in those situations. Debby was taken advantage of sexually and just so happened to get some sexual enjoyment from it. She even went on to masturbate to the thoughts of what her boss was doing to her. Gaitskill took something most of us don't understand, finding pleasure in sexual misconduct, and put it right in front of us. Debby's masturbating doesn't negate the fact that she was a victim in that office and neither does the fact she refused to speak to the reporter that called her to ask about her ex-employer. Debby, as well as the other characters Gaitskill wrote, are very human and are not purely anything. They make the reader question what they feel about the piece and as a result, what they feel about situations like this in real life.
ReplyDeleteI preferred Secretary by Mary Gaitskill. I found myself originally dreading reading the stories after hearing that she was creepy, and the stories would be as well. I dragged my feet, really not wanting to be creeped out, but found myself surprised that I didn't realize I hadn't taken a pause or put it down until I was finished reading it. Her other story didn't draw me in as well, but I definitely had found both immensely difficult to read. In "Secretary" Gaitskill is detailed. She doesn't let pass any one significant, or seemingly insignificant element in the story. The section I found hardest was the aftermath of the incident. The scenes in the office went by so quickly I found myself numb simply because her wording allowed me to read through it so fast I didn't have time to react. She used one of Anne Pancake's tricks of submersion. She focuses on the one element of rape/abuse in the workplace, but hides a lot about the sister and the family, going to psychologists, the role mental illness has taken in her life, the co-workers, his reputation, and so many other seemingly important issues weren't focused on. We as the reader dealt with things as she did, focused on things in her mind which I feel drew me in. Even though I did get somewhat creeped out and extremely uncomfortable upon multiple readings, I think the author's ability to make us relate so much to a character many (including myself) cannot relate to.
ReplyDelete"Secretary" was particularly disturbing to me, not so much because of the situation itself (which was certainly alarming) but more so, Debby's reaction to these alarming events. On page 308, Debby discusses the one time she felt disturbed about what was happening at the office. She was at home with her parents and her father was yelling at her mother saying he wanted to work for a circus where people paid to throw money at him. From this Debby seemed to have become self-aware of her own situation at work and said, "I looked at my father and felt a sickening sensation of love nailed to contempt and panic" But perhaps what disturbs me most in Gaitskill's writing is her jarringly accurate description of people. On page 302, "He took my hand with an indifferent aggressive snatch. It felt like he could have put his hand through my rib cage, grabbed my heart, squeezed it a little to see how it felt, then let go. "Come into my office," he said. Immediately Gaitskill has equipped the reader with enough details to accurately explain the Lawyer and his role in this story. Just as "my mother waited for me in the car. She smiled, took out a crossword puzzle and focused her eyes on it, the smile still gripping her face" accurately provides intimate details on Debby's mother. In doing so, the reader "knows" these characters, we connect to them. What's more, we know people just like them.
ReplyDeleteSo I had some trouble reading this. I'm in no way a prudish person, but the sexual violence of these pieces was really disturbing to me. While I agree with the other students about her ability to write well (not that I have the right to judge that anyway, I guess), I actually couldn't finish Romantic Weekend. I don't think that's ever happened to me before, and it's not like I have some squeaky clean literary history (I mean, I like Philip Roth. Enough said.) I don't know...that's sort of where my input lies with these pieces. I guess it's cool that her writing provoked such a response in me, but I'm really uncomfortable with these stories. I'm all the more disturbed that, as other people pointed out, this kind of thing does happen.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely loved Mary Gaitskill's stories, and it wasn't because of all the sex. I loved how dark they were, but not in a scary movie psychopath way. The people and scenarios in these two short stories seemed so real. I feel like most stories give us a view of real life through a filter that makes it seem brighter, or at least the end seem brighter, or even through a filter that makes it all darker than it really is. But I feel that these two stories just showed the world for what it is. It's dark and disgusting, not all of it but more than any of us want there to be, and there isn't really that happy ending or resolution that stories have taught us there must be. Because it is so real, my reactions to the story were real. (This might be partially because I saw the movie for Secretary without even knowing it until I read more of the story.) But I found myself not just sitting here reading the story and thinking "man, that's not cool" but instead actually felt disappointment and revulsion to the situations, which is hard for me to do with the "darker" stories. I think this is so relatable, because it is sort of a common fear and desire. People generally fear being overpowered yet crave it (S&M much?), but it takes those fears and desires and shows us what happens when they might actually occur, a mix of excitement and fear and shame.
ReplyDeleteBoth of Gaitskill's stories were disturbed, and I felt like the main female characters in both stories were almost interchangeable. Both are rigid, plain women who present a collected, passive exterior to their male counterparts. The difference is that in the firs story, the main character is looking for something dull and predictable. When she is presetned with something erotic and unexpected, she doesn't handle it well because it contradicts the identity she has built for herself. She sees herself as the plastic Barbie, just stiff and placid, and doesn't know how to conduct herself when she begins to feel like something more (in a vey messed up situation.) In the second story, the female character is almost looking ifor excitement, especially sexual excitement, but instead she is met with a twisted, cruel man who only wants to use her for his own demented purpose. Both stories deal with women struggling to rise above submission -- to have their physical actions match with their stronger mentalities -- and it's difficult to say if either completely succeeds. And that for me is what is most disturbing about these stories.
ReplyDeleteI thought that these stories were very true to life representations of the strange experiences that occur in some of our lives.
ReplyDeleteSecretary was a story that really made me think, and since I think there are some good descriptions of A Romantic Weekend out there, I'm going to focus on the first story for this post. My first impression was that this story leaves a very numb feeling in its wake. I loved how Mary Gaitskill contrasted the main character's quiet and watching demeanor with that of her family, a discrepancy that is carried out for the entire story, extended into her experience with the lawyer. What I thought was interesting was how the violent spankings, her numbness, and her arousal were all intertwined. Part of me thinks that after the spankings she masturbates to supplement the feeling of degradation and lack of worth that she feels, while another part of me thinks that maybe the is actually aroused by the spankings because it affirms her lack of worth that is established by the family dynamic that she has at home. I guess you could say that to a certain extent both are true, that she is quiet because she feels worthless, and being spanked confirms this for her. I think that she masturbates to revel in the affirmation of her lack of worth or maybe even her loss of self, but she cant climax because of the tragedy of this fact. There's also a family dynamic in there as well that must be considered. As the story progresses, she grows more and more distant from her family. She grows so distant in fact that at the end of the story she says that she feels like she is outside, looking in on herself. I guess my question is why is she afraid to speak? I feel like this growing fear that is reenforced by her experience with the lawyer is what causes her distance with her family.