Somebody with a little hammer Essays

Review by New York Times Review

SOMEBODY WITH A LITTLE HAMMER: Essays, by Mary Gaitskill. (Vintage, $16.) In her first collection of nonfiction, Gaitskill, ever prescient, tackles everything from date rape to politics to her own creative process. Gaitskill borrows from Anton Chekhov for the collection's title; in a way, the essays serve to remind "that unhappy people exist, that however happy he may be, sooner or later life will show him its claws." THE LEAVERS, by Lisa ??. (Algonquin, $15.95.) Ko's novel opens with the disappearance of Deming Guo's mother, Polly, an undocumented Chinese immigrant in the Bronx. Deming is adopted by a wellintentioned white family, but he is soon called back to China to investigate the mysteries of his life. This novel of migration is a story of belonging, home, loss and identity. THE BEST MINDS OF MY GENERATION: A Literary History of the Beats, by Allen Ginsberg. Edited by Bill Morgan, with a foreword by Anne Waldman. (Grove, $20.) Between 1977 and 1994, Ginsberg gave 100 or so lectures about the cultural movement he helped lead. Morgan has condensed these addresses, organizing them around the figures Ginsberg discusses: Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso and Ginsberg himself. THE BARROWFIELDS, by Phillip Lewis. (Hogarth, $16.) An Appalachian family's saga is at the center of this debut novel. Henry Aster grows up in North Carolina as the son of a brilliant, troubled man, but once he leaves for college his ties to home become ever weaker, and he breaks his promise to remain close to and protect his younger sister. Years later, Henry grapples with the specter of his father's alcoholism and other demons. The tale is ultimately one of a troubled's family redemption, and of the miracle of forgiveness. THE FIRST LOVE STORY: Adam, Eve, and Us, by Bruce Feiler. (Penguin, $17.) A reconsideration of the Genesis story attempts to scrub away its sexist taint, instead casting Eve as a curious and modern woman, and her relationship with Adam as a healthy, dynamic marriage. Our reviewer, Rich Cohen, called the book "the literary equivalent of breathing life into a figure made of clay." FAST: Poems, by Jorie Graham. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $15.99.) Graham, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, explores the erosion of the body, the environment and even the nation, in writing from a time of trauma: Her parents were dying, she was receiving cancer treatment and the country was in tumult. Our reviewer, Adam Fitzgerald, called the collection "an autopsy of self and nation in the face of overwhelming loss."

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 30, 2019]

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Review by Booklist Review

One can't help but feel a little sentimental about how much things have changed since Gaitskill (The Mare, 2015) wrote many of the essays in this impressive collection. Worshipping the Overcoat: An Election Diary starts: When I saw Sarah Palin speak at the Republican National Convention, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. Gaitskill's pro-Obama leanings come through loud and clear; fast-forward eight years, and one suspects that the current political landscape might invite a very different response from this talented, highly regarded fiction writer. Readers might be tempted to skip around here, since a significant portion of the book contains book reviews and other assorted articles, which occasionally makes it feel like everything but the kitchen sink is thrown in. But Gaitskill's many die-hard fans will delight in the offerings, especially the searching mini memoir, Lost Cat, which is not just about a beloved pet but the people she holds close. Particularly on point is The Trouble with Following the Rules, about date rape and victim culture. Gaitskill's biting tongue and literary pyrotechnics make for a delightful combination.--Apte, Poornima Copyright 2017 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

This collection of essays spanning two decades has the same fearless curiosity about the human psyche that Gaitskill (The Mare) exhibits in her fiction, along with the same unerring precision of prose. The broad range of her reviews, which cover art and literature from the Book of Revelations to Gone Girl, are united by her demand for complexity, her fascination with "enchantment and cruelty" (the title for her piece on J.M. Barrie), and her disdain for sentimental complacency. Early reflections tease and knead language into towering baroque shapes, but essays such as "The Bridge," on her visit to Saint Petersburg, and the astonishing "Lost Cat," on losing her pet, Gattino, settle down to the work of attentive, metaphor-rich descriptions. In later essays, Gaitskill's dryness veers toward the acerbic, shearing through the reductive and the bowdlerized. Even those essays which start with the broadest of subjects-myth, religion, literature-repeatedly turn inward, drawn by Gaitskill's interest in complicated inner landscapes, her favorite theme of "the innately mixed, sometimes debased nature of human love," and her unyielding "moral empathy" for the perversity of the human condition. The surprising, nimble prose alone is a delight, and the pages burst with insight and a candid, unflinching self-assessment sure to thrill Gaitskill's existing fans and win her new ones. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Novelist and short story writer Gaitskill's (The Mare, Veronica, and others) first collection of essays spans the years 1994-2016. All of the pieces were previously published in magazines (e.g., Book Forum, Village Voice) or as book introductions (Charles Dickens's Bleak House). They are wide-ranging, from reviews of novels (e.g., Joyce Carol Oates's Blonde, Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl), movies (e.g., Secretary, video artist Laurel Nakadate), and music (e.g., Talking Heads, Bjork), to personal essays on grief, power, rape, and victim culture. Gaitskill has a straightforward, precise, sometimes blunt style that steers clear of cliché and sentimentality yet doesn't shy away from difficult subjects or painful observations. Many of the entries are brief, only three or four pages, with a few longer ones. "Lost Cat" reaches roughly 40 pages and is among the best in the collection. VERDICT Some of the older essays feel a little dated, but overall, this anthology offers a variety of thoughtful and thought-provoking pieces. While this is probably not the best introduction to Gaitskill's writing, fans will surely be eager to read it. [See Prepub Alert, 10/24/16.]-Stefanie Hollmichel, Univ. of St. Thomas Law Lib., Minneapolis © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Glimpses of a writer's life through a miscellany of reviews, anecdotes, and musings.In the title essay, fiction writer Gaitskill (The Mare, 2016, etc.) recalls teaching Chekhov's short story "Gooseberries" to an English class at Syracuse University. Living in an apartment in a run-down section of the city, struck by the contrast between her poor neighbors and affluent students, she thought about reading a passage from that story, spoken by a character who warns against complacency: "At the door of every contented, happy man somebody should stand with a little hammer, constantly tapping, to remind him that unhappy people exist" who deserve attention and care and that the good life may suddenly turn terribly bad. She never read the passage, deciding it was too simplistic, but the sentiment it expressesa visceral sensitivity to the darkness of the human conditionunderlies many of the strongest pieces in an up-and-down (mostly up) collection. In one essay she recalls the "desperate human confusion" that led to her becoming a born-again Christian at the age of 21; in another she struggles to understand what occurred in an experience she has described to herself as date rape. By far, the highlight of the collection is a long, haunting memoir, "Lost Cat," which weaves together memories of her adopting, and losing, a skittish kitten; her father's death; two children from a troubled home who visited with her and her husband from the Fresh Air Fund; and her ongoing relationship with one of them and his sister. The children were difficult and yet to Gaitskill seemed superior to her "not because of anything innate, but because of their exposure to brutal, impossibly complex social forces that they were made to negotiate every day of their lives." Other essays offer details of the author's own difficult youth: she ran away from home at 16 and spent years on the streets, at one point becoming a stripper. "I was promiscuous, even aggressively so," she admits. Gaitskill has not published a memoir, but this collection makes that prospect tantalizing. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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The Trouble with Following the Rules   On "date rape," "victim culture," and personal responsibility   In the early 1970s, I had an experience that could be described as "date rape," even if it didn't happen when I was on a date. I was sixteen and staying in the apartment of a slightly older girl I'd just met in a seedy community center in Detroit, where I was just passing through. I'd been in her apartment for a few days when an older guy (he was probably in his mid-twenties) came over and asked us if we wanted to drop some acid. In those years, doing acid with strangers was consistent with my idea of a possible good time, so I shared a tab with them. When I started peaking, my hostess decided she had to go see her boyfriend, and there I was, alone with this guy, who, suddenly, was in my face.   He seemed to be coming on to me, but I wasn't sure. LSD is a potent drug, and on it, my perception was just short of hallucinatory. On top of that, he was black and urban-poor, which meant that I, being very inexperienced and suburban-white, did not know how to read him the way I might have read another white kid from my own milieu. I tried to distract him with conversation, but it was hard, considering that I was having trouble with logical sentences, let alone repartee. During one long silence, I asked him what he was thinking. Avoiding my eyes, he replied, "That if I wasn't such a nice guy, you could really be getting screwed." This sounded to me like a threat, albeit a low-key one. But instead of asking him to explain himself or leave, I changed the subject. Some moments later, when he put his hand on my leg, I let myself be drawn into sex because I could not face the idea that if I said no, things might get ugly. I don't think he had any idea of how unwilling I was--the cultural unfamiliarity cut both ways--and I suppose he may have thought that white girls just kind of lie there and don't do or say much. My bad time was made worse by his extreme gentleness; he was obviously trying very hard to turn me on, which, for reasons I didn't understand, broke my heart. Even as inexperienced as I was, I could see that he wanted a sweet time.   For some time after, I described this event as "the time I was raped." I knew when I said it that the description wasn't accurate, that I had not said no, and that I had not been physically forced. Yet it felt accurate to me. In spite of my ambiguous, even empathic feelings for my unchosen partner, unwanted sex on acid is a nightmare, and I did feel violated by the experience. At times I even elaborately lied about what had happened, grossly exaggerating the threatening words, adding violence--not out of shame or guilt, but because the pumped-up version was more congruent with my feelings of violation than the confusing facts. Every now and then, in the middle of telling an exaggerated version of the story, I would remember the actual man and internally pause, uncertain why I was saying these things or why they felt true-- and then I would continue with the story. I am ashamed to admit this, because it is embarrassing and because it conforms to the worst stereotypes of white women. I am also afraid the admission could be taken as evidence that women lie "to get revenge." My lies were told far from the event (I'd left Detroit), and not for revenge, but in service of what I felt to be the metaphorical truth--although what that truth was is not at all clear to me, then or even now.   ***   I remember my experience in Detroit, including the aftermath, every time I hear or read yet another discussion of what constitutes "date rape." I remember it when yet another critic castigates "victimism" and complains that everyone imagines himself or herself to be a victim and that no one accepts responsibility anymore. I could imagine telling my story as a verification that rape occurs by subtle threat as well as by overt force. I could also imagine casting myself as one of those crybabies who want to feel like victims. Both stories would be true and not true. The complete truth is more complicated than most of the intellectuals who have written scolding essays on victimism seem willing to accept. I didn't even begin to understand my own story fully until I described it to an older woman many years later, as proof of the unreliability of feelings. "Oh, I think your feelings were reliable," she replied. "It sounds like you were raped. It sounds like you raped yourself." I didn't like her tone, but I immediately understood what she meant, that in failing to even try to speak up for myself, I had, in a sense, done violence to myself.   I don't say this in a tone of self-recrimination. I was in a difficult situation: I was very young and unready to deal with such an intense culture clash of poverty and privilege, such contradictory levels of power and vulnerability, let alone ready to deal with it on drugs. But the difficult circumstances alone do not explain my inability to speak for myself. I was unable to effectively stand up for myself because I had never been taught how.   When I was growing up in the sixties, I was taught by the adult world that good girls did not have sex outside marriage and bad girls did. This rule had clarity going for it, but little else; as it was presented to me, it allowed no room for what I actually might feel, what I might want or not want. Within the confines of this rule, I didn't count for much, and so I rejected it. Then came the less clear "rules" of cultural trend and peer example, which said that if you were cool, you wanted to have sex as much as possible with as many people as possible. This message was never stated as a rule, but, considering how absolutely it was woven into the social etiquette of the day (at least in the circles I care about), it may as well have been. It suited me better than the adult's rule--it allowed me my sexuality at least--but again it didn't take into account what I might actually want or not want.   The encounter in Detroit, however, had nothing to do with being good or bad, cool or uncool. It was about someone wanting something I didn't want. Since I had only learned how to follow rules or social codes that were somehow more important than I was, I didn't know what to do in a situation where no rules obtained and that required me to speak up on my own behalf. I had never been taught that my behalf mattered. And so I felt helpless, even victimized, without really knowing why.   My parents and my teachers believed that social rules existed to protect me and that adhering to these rules constituted social responsibility. Ironically, my parents did exactly what many commentators recommend as a remedy for victimism. They told me that they loved me and that I mattered a lot, but this was not the message I got from the way they conducted themselves in relation to authority and social convention--which was not only that I didn't matter but that they didn't matter. In this, they were typical of other adults I knew, as well as of the culture around them. When I began to have trouble in school, both socially and academically, a counselor exhorted me to "just play the game"-- meaning to go along with everything from social policy to the adolescent pecking order--regardless of what I thought of "the game." My aunt, with whom I lived for a short while, actually burned my jeans and T-shirts because they violated what she understood to be the standards of decorum. A close friend of mine lived in a state of war with her father because of her hippie clothes and hair--which were, of course, de rigueur among her peers. Upon discovering that she had been smoking pot, he had her institutionalized.   Many middle-class people--both men and women--have learned to equate responsibility with obeying external rules. And when the rules no longer quite apply, they don't know what to do--much like the enraged, gun-wielding protagonist of the movie Falling Down , played by Michael Douglas, who ends his ridiculous trajectory by helplessly declaring, "I did everything they told me to." If I had been brought up to reach my own conclusions about which rules were congruent with my particular experience of the world, those rules would've had more meaning for me. Instead, I was usually given a set of static pronouncements. For example, when I was thirteen, I was told by my mother that I couldn't wear a short skirt because "nice girls don't wear short skirts above the knee." I countered, of course, by saying that my friend Patty wore skirts above the knee. "Patty is not a nice girl," replied my mother. But Patty was nice. My mother is a very intelligent and sensitive person, but it didn't occur to her to define for me what she meant by "nice" and what "nice" had to do with skirt length, and how the two definitions might relate to what I had observed to be nice or not nice--and then let me decide for myself. It's true that most thirteen-year-olds aren't interested in, or much capable of, philosophical discourse, but that doesn't mean that adults can't explain themselves more completely to children. Part of becoming responsible is learning how to make a choice about where you stand in respect to the social code and then holding yourself accountable for your choice. In contrast, many children who grew up in my milieu were given abstract absolutes that were placed before us as if our thoughts, feelings, and observations were irrelevant. Excerpted from Somebody with a Little Hammer: Essays by Mary Gaitskill All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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