Rockport Public Library

Somebody with a little hammer, essays, Mary Gaitskill

eng

no index present

non fiction

Somebody with a little hammer

953597786

Mary Gaitskill

essays

"Engaging, unusual essays written over the last two decades, on matters literary, social, cultural, and personal--from the explosive date rape debates of the '90s to the ubiquitous political adultery of the '00s, from Anton Chekhov to Celine Dion. Here is Mary Gaitskill the essayist: witty, direct, penetrating to the core of each issue, personality, or literary trope (On Updike: "It is as if [he] has entered a tiny window marked 'Rabbit, ' and, by some inverse law, passed into a universe of energies both light and dark, expanded and contracted, infinite and workaday." On Elizabeth Wurtzell: "If this kooky, foot-stamping, self-loathing screed is meant to be, as it claims, a defense of 'difficult women, ' i.e. women who 'write their own operating manuals' . . . all I can say is, bitches best duck and run for cover.") Gaitskill writes about the ridiculous and poetic ambition of Norman Mailer, about the socio-sexual cataclysm embodied by porn star Linda Lovelace, and, in the deceptively titled "Lost Cat, " about how power and race can warp the most innocent and intimate of relationships. Appearing in chronological order, the essays offer their thoughts and reactions, always with the heat-seeking, revelatory understanding for which we value the author's fiction"--, Provided by publisher