This page uses content from the Mary Gaitskill biography page on the English version of Wikipedia and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. This list of authors can be seen in the page history. Rotten Tomatoes disclaims any and all warranties as to the accuracy or reliability of the content.

Mary Gaitskill (born November 11, 1954 in Lexington, Kentucky) is an American author of essays, short stories and novels. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Esquire, The Best American Short Stories (1993), and The O. Henry Prize Stories (1998). She married writer Peter Trachtenberg in 2001. As of 2005, she lived in New York City; Gaitskill has previously lived in Toronto, San Francisco, and Marin County, CA, as well as attending the University of Michigan where she earned her B.A. Gaitskill has recounted (in her essay "Revelation") becoming a born-again Christian at age 21 but lapsing after six months.

Gaitskill made her book debut in 1988 with the short-story collection Bad Behavior, having been trying to publish her work since the age of 23. Her fiction typically is about female characters dealing with their own inner conflicts, and her subject matter matter-of-factly includes many "taboo" subjects such as prostitution, addiction, and sado-masochism. Gaitskill says that she herself had worked as a stripper and call girl. She showed similar candor discussing her being raped in her essay "On Not Being a Victim" for Harper's.

The film Secretary (2002) is based on the short story of the same name in Bad Behavior, although the two have little in common. She characterized the film as "the Pretty Woman version, heavy on the charm (and a little too nice)," but observed that the "bottom line is that if [a film adaptation is] made you get some money and exposure, and people can make up their minds from there."

The novel Two Girls, Fat and Thin follows the childhood and adult lives of Justine Shade (thin) and Dorothy Never (fat). Justine works through her sadomasochistic issues while Dorothy works through her up-and-down commitment to the philosophy of "Definitism" and its founder "Anna Granite" (thinly-veiled satires of Objectivism and Ayn Rand). When journalist Justine interviews Dorothy for an exposé of Definitism, an unusual relationship begins between the two women. In an interview, Gaitskill discussed what she was trying to convey about Justine via her sadomasochistic impulses:

Gaitskill's honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002 and a PEN/Faulkner Award nomination for Because They Wanted To in 1998. "Veronica" (2005) was a National Book Award nominee, as well as a National Book Critics Circle finalist for that year. The book is centered on the narrator, a former fashion model and her friend Veronica who contracts AIDS. Gaitskill mentioned working on the novel in a 1994 interview, but that same year she put it aside until 2001. Writing of "Veronica" and Gaitskill's career in Harper's Magazine in March 2006, Wyatt Mason said:

Gaitskill's favorite writers have changed over time, as she noted in a 2005 interview, but one constant is the author Vladimir Nabokov, whose Lolita "will be on my ten favorites list until the end of my life." Another consistently-named influence is Flannery O'Connor. Despite her well-known S/M themes, Gaitskill does not appear to consider the Marquis de Sade himself an influence, or at least not a literary one: "I don't think much of Sade as a writer, although I enjoyed beating off to him as a child."

Bibliography

• Bad Behavior (1988) (stories) ISBN 0-671-65871-9
• Two Girls, Fat and Thin (1991) (novel) ISBN 0-671-68540-6
• Because They Wanted To (1997) (stories) ISBN 0-684-80856-0
• Veronica (2005) (novel) ISBN 0-375-42145-9
• "Revelation," in Communion: Contemporary Writers Reveal the Bible in Their Lives, ed. David Rosenberg (essay) ISBN 0-385-47484-9

External links

• Author interview (2005?) at failbetter.com. Notable for a certain impatience with questions about "writers" as if Gaitskill's being a writer made her an authority on the species.
• Author interview (1994) with Alexander Laurence. Quite candid.
• Author interview (2005) for Barnes & Noble's "Meet the Writers" website. Includes lists of her current favorites in fiction and film.
• Article ("Mary, Mary, Less Contrary" by Emily Nussbaum) in New York magazine (Nov. 14, 2005 issue).
• The March 2006 Harper's had a notable review (not online, it appears) of Veronica by Wyatt Mason that also covered Gaitskill's earlier work. At Slate.com, Mason called Veronica "the best book of fiction in recent memory."
• 1991 Real Audio interview with Mary Gaitskill by Don Swaim
• 2006 Reading report, Gaitskill with Edna O'Brien at 92nd Street Y from BookishLove.net
• The Bat Segundo Show #81 (2006 podcast interview)

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