I will admit that it can, on occasion, be a little tedious to sit through a writer’s assessment of a book, a film, a piece of art, without having had any experience of it yourself. Readers won’t have always engaged with what writers are writing about, but the best critics inspire their readers to not only read everything they write, no matter the topic, but also to seek out that which they so passionately discuss.
Mary Gaitskill’s essays, conveniently collected in a new volume, are a masterclass in exactly this. The collection is divided into three sections, and it is the latter two, entitled Watching and Listening, and Reading, that contain responses to film, music and literature; Talking Heads, Linda Lovelace, John Updike, Celine Dion, Chekhov, and the film adaptation of her short story Secretary are some of the subjects covered here.
I was familiar with some, but certainly not all. It didn’t matter; there is a force in Gaitskill’s writing that compels one to listen intently to everything she has to say, before moving on to assessing, on one’s own terms, what she has spoken about. A personal example: for nine years I have had a copy of Lolita on my book shelf, but it was Gaitskill’s generous piece on the novel included in this volume that spurred me to pick it up.
The contents of the first section (entitled Living) are more wide varying, but the chapter I imagine will be of most interest (and, to be honest, use) to general audiences is Gaitskill’s essay on victimhood and sexual assault. Originally published in Harper’s in 1994, it is a remarkably honest attempt to parse through an experience of unwanted sexual advances, an admirably thorough examination of what it means to be responsible for oneself, and a strikingly compassionate explanation for why so many fail in this regard.
The original essay is available for subscribers to read on Harper’s website, but an updated version with frank revisions is included in Oppositions. Some of the volume’s other essays are also available online, so one could, in theory, pick and choose. But reading the pieces as they have been compiled in this collection is a mentally invigorating experience. Gaitskill’s clarity of thought coheres wondrously as the pages go on, and one comes away with a sense of deep enrichment for having encountered it.
