February 19, 2008
MFA students welcome visiting writer Gaitskill
Mary Gaitskill, author of 2005’s Veronica (Photo by Jeff Watts)
It’s not every day that aspiring authors have a critical darling in their midst, but that was the scene at the Battelle-Tompkins atrium last Wednesday, as 30 MFA students welcomed Mary Gaitskill.
Author of Veronica, one of the New York Times’ 10 best books of 2005, Gaitskill chatted with students about the writing process before giving a reading as part of the Department of Literature’s Visiting Writers Series.
A finalist for the National Book Award, Veronica is narrated over the course of a single day by Alison, a former fashion model, who spends her days cleaning offices and reflecting on her glamorous youth and friendship with Veronica, an older woman who died of AIDS. Though the bittersweet book is really about Alison, Gaitskill said she always knew the book would be named Veronica.
“It’s just a very ornate sounding name, with a lot of sounds that are both soft and hard, and to me, that suits the book and it suits the character,” said Gaitskill, who based the character of Veronica on a close friend who died of AIDS.
A professor of English at Syracuse University, Gaitskill wanted to be a writer at age 16.
“I always loved to read, though I would read those trashy books you’d find in the supermarket checkout line,” said the soft-spoken Gaitskill with a gentle laugh. “I really didn’t start to read what you’d call ‘literature’ until I was 21 or so.”
Having tried to publish her work since the age of 23, Gaitskill, a graduate of the University of Michigan, made her literary debut in 1988 with Bad Behavior, a collection of nine short stories chronicling sexual obsession and drug addiction. One of the stories, “Secretary,” became the basis for the 2002 film of the same name, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal as a secretary who embarks on a sadomasochistic relationship with her lawyer boss.
Although Gaitskill’s works often explore such topics as prostitution, addiction, and sex, the author, herself a former stripper and call girl, shuns the title of “erotica writer.”
“If, before I started speaking with you tonight, I took out a gun and placed it on the table next to me, you probably wouldn’t remember anything about my talk except the gun,” she explained. “Sex is like the gun on the table. Once you’ve been labeled [an erotica writer], that’s all people see.”
During her hour-long conversation, Gaitskill also detailed her bizarre 1996 meeting with novelist J.T. LeRoy, who claimed to be a male teenage prostitute and drug addict dying from AIDS. In one of the most notorious literary hoaxes of recent years, LeRoy—who also befriended such Hollywood A-listers as Gus Van Sant, Marilyn Manson, and Smashing Pumpkins front man Billy Corgan—actually turned out to be a middle-aged woman, Laura Albert.
“Many people were understandably very, very angry,” said Gaitskill, who shared the same agent as LeRoy. “I’d never seen someone with so much charisma, but at the same time, I always sensed something was very weird. I was actually relieved to finally figure out what it was.”
The Visiting Writers Series continues next week, with a reading by Alison Smith, whose debut memoir, Name All the Animals, was the winner of Barnes and Noble’s 2004 Discover Award for Nonfiction. The event is slated for 8 p.m., Feb. 27, in the Butler Board Room.
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