MARY GAITSKILL is the author of the story collections Bad Behavior, Because They Wanted To (nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award), and Don't Cry, and the novels The Mare, Veronica (nominated for the National Book Award), and Two Girls, Fat and Thin. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Artforum, and Granta, among many other journals, as well as in The Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories.
"Gaitskill's intuition . . . borders on clairvoyance. Her
prescience is agenda-free, but it's her exceptionally discerning
writings on women--Linda Lovelace, Elizabeth Wurtzel, Sarah Palin,
Hillary Clinton--that make one wish she had (or even wanted) her
own syndicated newspaper column." --Kate Bolick, The New York Times
Book Review
"Indispensable . . . Gaitskill has a gift for traversing taboo
territory with a subtlety that's sometimes downright Jamesian . . .
She draws on her personal experience to crack the veneers of the
social codes and sexual ambiguities we all navigate . . . Essential
reading." --Michael Upchurch, The Boston Globe
"It feels refreshing to finally have a grownup in the room, laying
down the law but not really caring whether you follow it or not."
--Merve Emre, The Boston Review "If you have not yet worked through
a thought with Gaitskill, Somebody with a Little Hammer is a
primer. It makes entirely clear how seriously she takes the idea of
fairness, in life and in fiction, and how averse she is to even the
lightest thumb on the scale." --Sasha Frere-Jones, Bookforum "As in
her fiction, Gaitskill sees everything . . . The essays in Somebody
with a Little Hammer . . . further establish her as the important
critical thinker she's always been. Her extreme sensitivity makes
her one of the most reliable witnesses to life in the US." --Chris
Kraus, 4Columns "While Gaitskill is best known for her fiction,
this collection demonstrates her power as an essayist, and thrums
with the same sexual energy." --The New Yorker
"Mary Gaitskill never fails to transport her reader . . . These
essays not only embrace but define their subjects, making you
rethink the way you interact with the things around you in a much
more meaningful way." --Newsweek "[Gaitskill's] explorations are
incisive and unpredictable . . . The emotional centerpiece of this
collection, 'Lost Cat: A Memoir, ' is as fine a personal essay as
you will find anywhere . . . A bracing, terrific new collection."
--Mark Cecil, The Millions
"A voice of reason and sanity, of piercing intelligence and
generous humanity." --Sariah Dorbin, Los Angeles Review of Books
"[Mary Gaitskill] says the things you didn't know needed to be said
until she says them, and only then do you know what you've been
missing." --Emily Simon, The Buffalo News "A cool and formidable
collection." --Dwight Garner, The New York Times "Immersing
yourself in [Gaitskill's] world for a page or three has the bracing
aliveness of throwing yourself into almost-freezing water."
--Margaret Quamme, The Columbus Dispatch
"Expect to never look at any of her subjects the same way again."
--Cosmopolitan "Gaitskill is as original in these reviews and
personal essays, gathered over two decades, as she is in her
fiction; from pieces on Gone Girl and Talking Heads to others on
losing her cat, date rape, and born-again Christianity her
trajectory may seem apparent but she often takes us to unexpected,
revelatory places."
--Paul S. Makishima, The Boston Globe "Gaitskill uses compassion as
a conduit for interpretation." --Larissa Pham, The Nation "Mary
writes with startling, otherworldly clarity, peeling back the
surface of things we might think we understand to peer into the
slippery psychological realities underneath." --Jason Gots, Big
Think "A beautiful, thought-provoking work that cements Mary
Gaitskill as one of the sharpest critical thinkers and most
important cultural critics of our time." --Sadie L. Trombetta,
Bustle "Gaitskill's biting tongue and literary pyrotechnics make
for a delightful combination."
--Poornima Apte, Booklist "This collection of essays spanning two
decades has the same fearless curiosity about the human psyche that
Gaitskill exhibits in her fiction, along with the same unerring
precision of prose . . . The pages burst with insight and a candid,
unflinching self-assessment sure to thrill Gaitskill's existing
fans and win her new ones."
--Publisher's Weekly (starred review)
-------------------- PRAISE FOR MARY GAITSKILL "No writer is
sharper about the fickle exigencies of desire."
--Alexandra Schwartz, The New Yorker "Ambiguity--the inseparability
of light and darkness, love and pain, nurture and destruction,
progress and regress--is her métier. The question she seems to ask
again and again, and with astonishing force . . . is how to feel,
how we do feel."
--Stacey D'Ersamo, The New York Times Book Review "Gaitskill's
prose has never been cold, that's only what it has been called; and
her writing has never been about the absence of emotion so much as
its unapologetic abundance. She resists sentimentality not by
banishing feeling to the white margins with understatement but by
granting emotion enough space to misbehave."
--Leslie Jameson, Bookforum "Gaitskill's strange gift is to unfold
emotions, no matter how petty or upsetting, and describe them with
disarming patience for their stutters and silences, their
repetitions and contradictions. The result often feels both primal
and electric, something like a latter-day D. H. Lawrence."
--Amy Gentry, Chicago Tribune
"Bracing in its rigorous truth-seeking, subtle and capacious in its
moral vision, Gaitskill's work feels more real than real life, and
reading her leads to a place that feels like a sacred space."
--Priscilla Gilman, The Boston Globe
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