Bad Behavior

On Mary Gaitskill, and the age of TMI

I’ve never really had a persona as a writer. By the time I started publishing books, at 39, it seemed a bit too late. These things are best developed in one’s early twenties, before you start finding yourself ridiculous.

Nevertheless, persona is important for artists of all stripes. It’s an identifier, a brand, and if successful, even a whole legend.

Style is related to persona, but the two aren't the same. Both are partly or wholly constructed, but style is where the craft comes in. Persona is more about understanding public image, and how to manipulate it to one’s advantage. For some novelists, style is more important than anything else. For others – Rachel Cusk comes to mind – you can’t help your style, it just is, and the question of which form you pour it into is more important.

In the Substack and social media age, artists are very available, always ‘on.’ Gone are the days of prolonged periods of silence, which would have the effect of catapulting audience excitement when something new arrived. That was the era of mystique, which has been sorely lacking in recent years, but will doubtless return. It was more exciting to be a fan when you had to work hard to find things out.

Our own era has been one of too much information. There’s nothing more depressing, for me, than finding out that a favourite writer has identikit, earnest or pompous political views, expressed on a social media platform. I like artists to say mad, provocative or original things, like Michel Houellebecq occasionally does – or to say nothing at all. Reading about Mary Gaitskill recently, I came across something she said when questioned about the BDSM elements of her fiction: ‘I don’t think much of Sade as a writer, though I enjoyed beating off to him as a child.’ That’s the spirit.

I was reading about Gaitskill because I’ve become a big fan of hers. This began last year, when I read Veronica, her masterpiece. Narrated by a troubled fashion model turned cleaner, the novel tells the story of a complex friendship with the brash, initially off-putting Veronica, who contracts AIDS from her promiscuous, bisexual boyfriend.

I’d come across Gaitskill’s novella, This is Pleasure, because of the stir it caused around #MeToo, which it dissected with cool precision and brilliantly realised characters. That the New Yorker published a piece of fiction partly critiquing the movement, at the height of the culture wars, is a testament to how good it is. I enjoyed it, but I loved Veronica. Along with David Szalay’s Flesh, it’s the best novel I’ve read in the last couple of years.

When I’d finished it, I read Gaitskill’s infamous essay about being raped. This sort of radical honesty can be a key component of great writing, but only, of course, when delivered via mastery of the craft.

More recently, I read Bad Behavior, Gaitskill’s debut – a collection of short stories. Here, a series of characters in ’80s New York haunt nightclubs, obsess over former friends, carry out sex work, or stay up for days on amphetamines. (And it must surely contain the only piece of fiction to feature a heartbreaking salad.)

The final story centres on the death of a son, which, as an increasingly sappy parent, had a potent effect on me (incidentally, much like that of Flesh.)

A little obsessed, and Googling Gaitskill, I came across her Substack. In her ‘about me’ section, she described how Bad Behavior had been born of a desire for ‘connection.’

This is what made me think about persona, and the effect of what an artist says in public. ‘Connection’ seemed strangely trite, in light of Gaitskill’s gimlet-eyed, addictive fiction. Not that it spoiled anything for me. And it was, when I thought about it, demonstrably true. The characters were seeking connection, just in highly inadvisable ways.

It was just slightly at odds with the view I’d developed of her persona – that crucial bonding process between artist and fan. In this case, she’d seemed disarmingly, almost brutally honest, but also poised and thrillingly imperious.¹ Talk of ‘connection’ seemed something worryingly close to the #bekind age.

Something else Gaitskill wrote in that intro relates to the age of too much information, of being always ‘on.’ ‘Because most of my writing energy needs to be for my fiction I will sometimes… go very low volume or even disappear for a few months.’ This, too, relates to a truth. Jonathan Franzen took a lot of flak for saying: ‘It’s doubtful that anyone with an Internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction,’ but he was probably right. Perhaps if you have enough talent, you needn’t worry about persona at all.

Reading Mary Gaitskill made me wonder why I don’t read more women writers.² The ones I love – Didion, Rachel Cusk, Joy Williams – share Gaitskill’s coolness and precision. But her stories burn with vivid characters, danger, tragedy, sex and humour. All the good stuff.

In this stretching summer, I suddenly found myself tired of news, of politics, of the endless daily churn. I wanted to lose myself in Mary Gaitskill, and the sun-drenched noir and fatal decency of Gene Hackman in Night Moves. I’ve turned off the information, for now at least. Far better to be in the company of the thing itself.

Photo credit: Tabitha Soren

1. Gaitskill has written about the distinction between self and fiction on her Substack: ‘I’m primarily a fiction writer and in that mode I feel that whatever I write about is protected by an invisible but radiant forcefield delimiting the realm of art and dreams; people can say whatever they want, but they can’t quite get at you because… while they might think they can see you in there, really they can’t.’

2. Most of my novel-reading female friends seem to stick to women writers. Some I urged to read Flesh didn't like it. 'So frustrating, this guy,' they said of its protagonist.