Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill, Mary Gaitskill, Mary Gaitskill (Editor)
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(Paperback)
- Pub. Date: May 1989
- 208pp
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Product Details
- Pub. Date: May 1989
- Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
- Format: Paperback, 208pp
- Series: Vintage Contemporaries Series
- ISBN-13: 9780679723271
- ISBN: 0679723277
Synopsis
Now a classic, Bad Behavior made critical waves when it was first published, heralding Mary Gaitskill's arrival on the literary scene and her establishment as one of the sharpest, erotically charged, and audaciously funny writing talents of contemporary literature.
Set in Manhattan's Lower East Side and peopled with working-class drug addicts, intelligent hookers, stable housewives, smug yuppies, and sensually deprived professionals, Bad Behavior depicts a cruel and tender world where romance and modern perversity go hand in hand. Gaitskill delivers powerful stories of dislocation, longing, and desire that depict a disenchanted and rebellious urban fringe generation groping for human connection.
Annotation
Powerful stories of dislocation, longing and desire depicting a disenchanted and rebellious urban fringe.
George Garrett
With her first published gathering of stories, ''Bad Behavior,'' we meet a vital and gifted new writer, one whose work has an unusual importance at this time....None of the nine excellent stories is, by any means, trendy; all of them would be a challenge to any editor I know. For one thing, you actually have to read these stories and to let them happen to you before you rush to judgment. Technically, they are lean and quick and spare, tightly controlled. Ms. Gaitskill gives them the added psychological dimensions of flashing memories and dreams and fantasies to compete with their well-evoked perceptions. That she manages to accomplish these things within the confines of contemporary stories that move along as quickly and gracefully as anybody's is a small miracle. Style always works for substance, and she can and does give you plain writing or fancy, as needed....This is such a built collection, structured so that each story leads into the next, creating a new world. It is a collection I urge you to read and to read right - from beginning to end. -- New York Times
More Reviews and RecommendationsBiography
From short stories like the S&M-tinged "Secretary" (the inspiration for the indie film of the same name) to her 2005 National Book Award-nominated novel, Veronica, Mary Gaitskill's words are often etched on a dark canvas -- but still manage to illuminate. "Gaitskill is an unforgiving writer, harsh, caustic and raw," reads the National Book Award judges' citation. "All that masks the enormous accomplishment of her work, the ability to use the dark to cast light."
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