“Joey felt that his romance with Daisy might ruin his life, but that didn’t stop him.”
This line from the story Daisy’s Valentine opens Bad Behaviour, a collection of nine short stories by Mary Gaitskill, set – and written – in 1980s New York – and it sets the tone perfectly for what the following 200 are all about: characters, so desperately bored and lost in their urban, neoliberal world, they crave various sexual adventures for the story, not the connection. They crave to ruin their lives, anything to feel something.
In this collection you find stories of unsuccessful affairs, attempts at sexual subjugation, unromantic getaways, prostitution, and drug abuse. You find protagonists who might be considered to live on the fringes of society, but Gaitskill shows they are actually firmly situated at its heart. These stories centre the lives and desires of those lost and lonely in the big city, disillusioned and obsessive. We move between male and female points of view and all of her characters are vividly drawn, but what makes these stories alive and exciting – and what has turned this collection into something of a cult classic, especially amongst young and aspiring female writers – are its women. They are brazen and forceful, wild and strong. We get a ruthlessly honest glimpse into the minds of these women, experience their feelings as they confront a world not made for them. They use their sexuality to define their place in the world and even where that fails (as it inevitably will), they are never without agency. At times, these stories can feel cold in how sharply analysed they are, but there is a tenderness in how frankly Gaitskill lays bare the characters’ emotions with all their facets. Her’s is a clear-eyed account of the world she observed, a world of self-obsession and a lack of empathy.
Through all this, Gaitskill’s prose is excellent. Brilliantly clear and often unexpected. She writes stunning sentences, in particular where it comes to bodies. This whole collection is very bodily, it’s visceral. She is a fantastic storyteller, constructing these short tales very successfully. Short yet mighty they carry the weight of a novel each, without a word being wasted.
This edition is published by Penguin Modern Classics, 2018.
First published 1988.