![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I just finished Bad Behavior, which is a group of short stories by Mary Gaitskill. I thought I was going to hate it. I loved the movie Secretary, which is LOOSELY based on one of her short stories, and Gaitskill thought it was too nice and "Pretty Woman"-like. Her ideas on S&M seemed rather narrow-minded from her interviews (and she seemed a bit pompous) and I thought it was going to be a batch of dark morality tales about women doing bad things and having awful sex but I really wanted to see what the short story "Secretary" was like and ...
I really liked the book! I didn't think the stories were dark at all. Sure, it was a bunch of women doing bad things, but SO much of modern literature is that, anyway. At least her loser characters are interesting and sometimes funny and sometimes even heartbreaking.
I don't know if it's for everyone, but I dig it. I'll probably get another one of hers soon. Probably not Veronica, tragic-dying-of-AIDS stories I think need another decade or so to become not-exhausted again. Maybe Because They Wanted To or Two Girls, Fat and Thin after I read Atlas Shrugged (the fat girl is a disciple of "Determinism" - wink wink).
Man, it's just amazing when you expect something to suck and it totally doesn't.
I really liked the book! I didn't think the stories were dark at all. Sure, it was a bunch of women doing bad things, but SO much of modern literature is that, anyway. At least her loser characters are interesting and sometimes funny and sometimes even heartbreaking.
I don't know if it's for everyone, but I dig it. I'll probably get another one of hers soon. Probably not Veronica, tragic-dying-of-AIDS stories I think need another decade or so to become not-exhausted again. Maybe Because They Wanted To or Two Girls, Fat and Thin after I read Atlas Shrugged (the fat girl is a disciple of "Determinism" - wink wink).
Man, it's just amazing when you expect something to suck and it totally doesn't.
Tags: