Mary Gaitskill - Somebody with a Little Hammer: Essays

The Mare

Dont Cry

Veronica

Because They Wanted To

Two Girls, Fat and Thin

Bad Behavior

Da Capo Best Music Writing 2006 (editor)

A Lot of Exploding Heads
On Reading the Book of Revelation

The Trouble with Following the Rules
On Date Rape, Victim Culture, and Personal Responsibility

A Lovely Chaotic Silliness
A Review of The Fermata by Nicholson Baker

Toes n Hose
A Review of From the Tip of the Toes to the Top of the Hose by Elmer Batters, and Nothing But the Girl, edited by Susie Bright and Jill Posener

Crackpot Mystic Spirit
A Review of Invisible Republic: Bob Dylans Basement Tapes by Greil Marcus

Bitch
A Review of Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women by Elizabeth Wurtzel

Dye Hard
A Review of Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates

Mechanical Rabbit
A Review of Licks of Love by John Updike

Ive Seen It All
Thoughts on a Song by Bjrk

And It Would Not Be Wonderful to Meet a Megalosaurus
On Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Remain in Light
On the Talking Heads

Victims and Losers: A Love Story
Thoughts on the Movie Secretary

The Bridge
A Memoir of Saint Petersburg

Somebody with a Little Hammer
On Teaching Gooseberries by Anton Chekhov

Enchantment and Cruelty
On Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie

Worshipping the Overcoat
An Election Diary

This Doughty Nose
On Norman Mailers An American Dream and The Armies of the Night

Lost Cat
A Memoir

I See Their Hollowness
A Review of Cockroach by Rawi Hage

Lives of the Hags
A Review of Baba Yaga Laid an Egg by Dubravka Ugresic

Leave the Woman Alone!
On the Never-Ending Political Extramarital Scandals

Masters Mind
A Review of Agaat by Marlene van Niekerk

Imaginary Light
A Song Called Nowhere Girl

Form over Feeling
A Review of Out by Natsuo Kirino

Beg for Your Life
On the Films of Laurel Nakadate

The Cunning of Women
On One Thousand and One Nights by Hanan Al-Shaykh

Pictures of Lo
On Covering Lolita

The Easiest Thing to Forget
On Carl Wilsons Lets Talk About Love

Shes Supposed to Make You Sick
A Review of Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Icon
On Linda Lovelace

That Running Shadow of Your Voice
On Nabokovs Letters to Vra

I did not have a religious upbringing, and for most of my life Ive considered that a good thing; Ive since come to know people who felt nurtured by their religious families, but for a long time, for me, religious upbringing meant the two little girls I once walked home with in the fourth grade who, on hearing that I didnt believe that Jesus was the Son of God, began screaming, Theres a sin on your soul! Youre going to Hell! Religious upbringing meant my friend who, as a kid, was repeatedly exorcised in her mothers fundamentalist church and who still had nightmares about it at forty-five; it meant a thirteen-year-old boy who once told me he believed that God would punish his sexually active classmates by giving them AIDS. When I watched The Exorcist in theaters when it first came out and saw adult moviegoers jump up and stumble toward the exits, retching and/or weeping with fear, it was to me yet another example of what a bad effect a religious upbringing could have.

My mother, to her credit, told me that God is love and that there is no hell. But I dont think I believed her. Even though I have very little conscious religious anxiety, since childhood, I have had dreams that suggest otherwise: dreams of hooded monks carrying huge, grim crosses in processions meant to end in someones death by fire, drowning, or quartering; of endless liturgies by faceless choirs to faceless parishioners in cavernous dark churches; of trials, condemnations, sacrifices, and torture. When I wake from these dreams, it is with terror. Such things have actually occurred, but I still have no idea why they are so deeply present in me. Horror movies and creeping cultural fear are obvious sources, but my unconscious has taken these images in with such kinetic intensity and conviction that suggestion and vague historical knowledge dont seem to have been the cause.

When I was twenty-one, I became a born-again Christian. It was a random and desperate choice; I had dropped out of high school and left home at sixteen, and while Id had some fun, by twenty-one, things were looking squalid and stupid. My boyfriend had dumped me and I was living in a rooming house and selling hideous rhodium jewelry on the street in Toronto, which is where the Jesus freaks approached me. I had been solicited by these people before and usually gave them short shrift, but on that particular evening I was at a low ebb. They told me that if I let Jesus into my heart right there, even if I just said the words, that everything would be okay. I said, All right, Ill try it. They praised God and moved on.

Even though my conversion was pretty desultory, I decided to pray that night. I had never seriously prayed before, and all my pent-up desperation and fear made it an act of furious psychic propulsion that lasted almost an hour. It was a very private experience, one that I would find hard to describe; suffice to say that I felt I was being listened to. I started going to a bleak church that had night services and free meals, and was attended heavily by street people and kids with a feverish, dislocated look in their eyes. And, for the first time, I started reading the Bible. For me, it was like running into a brick wall.

I was used to reading, but most of what I read was pretty trashy. Even when it wasnt, the supple, sometimes convoluted play of modern language entered and exited my mind like radio musicthen, of course, there was the actual radio music, the traffic noise, the continual onrush of strangers through the streets I worked, the slower, shifting movements of friends, lovers, alliances, the jabber of electricity and neon in the night. All of which kept my mind and nervous system in a whipsawed condition from which it was difficult to relate to the Bible.