Mary Gaitskill’s collection of short stories, Bad Behaviour, first published in 1988, are mostly set in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, New York and are vignettes into lives of, often, young, white-collar workers and aspiring actors and artists suffering social and economic dislocation and despair. Gaitskill’s focus is upon relationships, with economic struggle in the background.
Though sometimes written from the male point of view, women seem to be the primary focus of the stories. Often they are caught in uneven power dynamics but Gaitskill rarely presents simple scenarios of victim and abuser. The abusive men are sometimes depicted as vulnerable, in their own way, or, in the case of prostitution, a party in a transaction. There is an acceptance, at times, by the young female office worker and writer characters of transactional and/or exploitative, sexual relations, perhaps, reflecting a reality that goes largely ignored.
When it comes to moral judgment, Gaitskill seems, often, to be directing the reader to look beyond individuals to the nature of our society: “It was a busy corner; traffic ran savagely in the street, and people stamped by, staring in different directions, clutching their packages, briefcases and huge screaming radios, their faces concentrated but empty.”
Continue reading “Bad Behaviour by Mary Gaitskill (1988) – Review”
Working Experiences 