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INTERVIEWER
What were you reading in the period when you started to write more seriously?
GAITSKILL
When I was out on my own and not going to school, a lot of junk—though some high-end junk, like Looking for Mr. Goodbar. I was living in Toronto then, so my attention was on Canadian writers—Leonard Cohen, Margaret Atwood. I also had a thing for D. H. Lawrence, whose writing seemed more passionate and more raw than most of the stuff I was reading—although even as a kid I could see the comedy in the Sturm und Drang over sex. I liked Erica Jong’s first novel. And Tom Wolfe—I don’t mean the old guy, I mean The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
Later, I loved Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, Joy Williams. I didn’t want to like Norman Mailer, but I secretly did. I could sense, although I didn’t have words for this at the time, something bigger underneath the misogyny—a willingness to go deep into what I’ve called, in an essay about him, “the lava of essential forces flowing beneath human life.” Plus, he wasn’t worried about offending people or being ugly or gross or anything—he was like an animal. I think I secretly figured he had to be that way, to get to the lava.
INTERVIEWER
Did you keep working all these different jobs right up until you finished the collection?
GAITSKILL
Yes—I didn’t quit working until I’d sold the paperback rights. I eventually became a freelance proofreader, which paid much better than the Strand, so I had more uninterrupted blocks of time. I tend to think of the period in which I was writing Bad Behavior as being really long, and it was probably six years altogether, but I actually wrote a lot of the strongest stories between the ages of thirty and thirty-two—“Romantic Weekend,” “Secretary,” “Heaven,” and “Trying to Be.” I started Two Girls, Fat and Thin during that period, too, although I didn’t get that far into it then. I didn’t really have a writing routine—I’ve never had one—but it was easier to get work done when I didn’t have to wait until eleven at night.
I also drew a lot of inspiration for Veronica from the place where I was living, a very isolated area in Marin County, and from a canyon I used to walk in out there, which was so fecund and alive—you felt a living, humorous, playful intelligence in extraordinary motion even though, to the human eye, everything was still. I’d moved there because I didn’t want to be in New York anymore. After I published Bad Behavior, I’d had a parasite, giardia, for a year without knowing it, and had lost a tremendous amount of weight. I was feeling very unwell physically, and also confused about my place in the world. I had wanted so badly to be published, I had wanted the media attention I’d gotten, I had wanted people to read my work, but internally, I didn’t know how to handle it. I didn’t know how to behave at parties—everyone seemed to expect me to be so sharp and sophisticated, and I was not. Before that, I’d gone out mostly by myself and had dated sometimes, but it never really worked out. I hadn’t had much of a social world—I was on the outskirts of different scenes, with friends here and there but no real group. Suddenly people started seeing me as some cosmopolitan creature of downtown New York, but I wasn’t really.
No, mostly because I have no idea how to do that. And I’m not a very money-minded person—I didn’t know how to manage my finances at all when I started. At some point in the nineties Mike Tyson went bankrupt and all these assholes were screaming about what a profligate moron he was, and I remember thinking that they didn’t know what they were talking about. Tyson probably had had no instruction on how to deal with money, except maybe some from Cus D’Amato, and he had way more cash dumped on him than I did. If you’re not used to it, it’s unreal to you. My advance for Bad Behavior was five thousand dollars, and at the time I thought that was a lot—I wasn’t planning to quit my job, but I thought it was cool that I could pay off my student loans. Then the paperback sale was seventy-five thousand, and there were foreign sales as well—I thought I’d made it, and I didn’t understand how quickly that money would go. I started using credit cards, and by the time I was thirty-six, I was fifty thousand dollars in debt. I didn’t get totally out of debt until just a few years ago.
I supported myself by teaching and, for a while, by writing magazine articles, because in the nineties places like Elle, Mirabella, and Vogue liked to hire fiction writers. People would ask me why I’d written something silly like “On Choosing Not to Dye Your Hair,” and I’d say, “They pay two dollars a word.” A lot of the things I’ve written have been because I needed the money. The one thing I said no to was when The New York Times Magazine asked me to write an article for their fashion issue about getting dressed for a party. They wanted me to assess my figure coldly and critically, analyzing the pros and cons of each part of my body and how it looked in different clothes. I said, “Are you kidding me? You don’t think women have enough problems? Whose idea was this? I’d be happy to come over to his house”—and it was a he—“and coldly assess his body part by part.” I checked later on to see if they’d found anybody to do this, and saw that instead they’d had a man—my former boyfriend, in fact—write about a beautiful suit his girlfriend had bought him. Anyway, that was the only time I ever said, I don’t care if I need the money—I’m not doing that.
lol
“They are, aren’t they?” Sylvia sighed. “I think it’s good that they’re getting the Christian message through entertainment. Did you listen to the Donut Man when you were younger? Kathryn from women’s group recommended it. There’s so much programming for kids that, if you really think about it, doesn’t offer a lot. It’s not character-building.” She said “character-building” tentatively, like a child, then repeated, more boldly, “There’s so much that isn’t character-building. I mean, just look at this world.”
Natalia did look: trees scored wavy lines into the sky, HELL IS REAL said a billboard, and then the billboard was gone. Sylvia kept talking.
damn lol this is how i think
“Oh, conversion, being born again. For me it was the first time I felt like I could really, truly see since I stopped writing. I used to be a poet, you know. It helped me think.” Sorrow pricked Natalia at the idea of writing—which she intended to do, though hadn’t yet—becoming something someone “used to” do.
Nick lifted both hands as if he were going to bless her. Instead, he picked up the mango. He bit just to the side of the mouth shape she’d made in the flesh, once, and once more. Once, he’d cradled newborns who squalled at the fresh bright world—at what point did children cease to be small gods? When did they become people to escape?
“That might just be the shadows.” Nick gestured at the branches overhead; she obligingly studied the web of oak and moss she saw every day. He sat at the pool’s edge, disturbing its surface with small kicks, and stared downward. She felt like an intruder. Only since her father left had she realized how much she didn’t know—how arrogant she’d been to believe she alone had a chambered self. An inner life. When Nick slid all the way in and under, she picked up her books.
“Sit down.” He began to unmake the towers and arrange the pieces on the board. “What’s your favorite color?” Not waiting for her to answer, he said, “I forgot something.”
“What?” Her favorite color was the blue of his robe. He flicked off the light and left the room without replying. Two minutes, six minutes. She raised the blinds so that moonlight crisped the edges of shadows. Time goes slowly, too, she thought, and stood to leave. Then he reappeared. “I thought you went to bed,” she said.
i like this
The beer was disgusting. She didn’t want to say that. When she had so many thoughts, why was there so little that could be said? He was staring at the nothing hanging between them. The beach umbrella. Something strained within her, a pressure like that of the Holy Spirit when it overtook a person. That had only happened to her once so far. Then, in the sanctuary, someone had caught her as she fell, coaching her to let go, let go. So she obeyed. A new person in her body, someone who was not the babysitter, placed chilled fingers on his wrist. He covered her fingers with his.
ahhh omg