Author Spotlight
When the Whip Comes Down: William Deresiewicz Reviews Mary Gaitskill’s Don’t Cry
There's a heaven above you, baby.
I read “When the Whip Comes Down” in The Nation yesterday, and I think it’s well worth sharing, not so much because it matters whether Deresiewicz “likes” Mary Gaitskill (he does) or the new book in particular (he doesn’t), but because I think the piece itself is a shining example of a particular kind of critical writing, more or less in its optimum form. Though he’s fit his thoughts into a review-length essay, I think Deresiewicz has given us a valuable piece of criticism-proper. You come away from the review with a substantially enlarged and nuanced understanding of Gaitskill’s work, even if you’ve read it all before (and I have, except for the new one). I also think any aspiring critic looking to hone her skills (and I’ll go ahead and count myself among this number) stands to learn quite a lot from reading Deresiewicz and understanding how he works. After you’ve read “When the Whip Comes Down,” you should click-through on his name at The Nation website and check out his previous work for them. Critics are like any other kind of writer–if you’re lucky enough to find a good one, read up.
“How Wood Works: The Riches and Limits of James Wood” (11/19/08)
“Homing Patterns: Marilynne Robinson’s Fiction” (9/24/08)
“Fuku Americanus” – on Junot Diaz (11/08/07)
Tags: Mary Gaitskill, the nation, William Deresiewicz
“But here Gaitskill drifts out of her depth, into realms of experience–compassion, redemption, transcendence–she doesn’t intuitively grasp or know how to represent”
That is horseshit.
“Old themes like sexuality and identity are taken out for another trot; new ones like maternity and connectedness are haltingly attempted”
OMG! Horseshit.
“”The Arms and Legs of the Lake” offers a triple dose of writing-seminar clichés.”
“her inability to imagine minds unlike her own even more painfully’ and then this-
“The interior monologues are priceless.”
So which is it? Priceless but, she’s unable to “imagine minds unlike her own”? This is the most confused bit in the whole piece.
I hate this review, Justin. Sorry. One guess is the reviewer is too young to enjoy growing up with Gaitskill’s work. Obviously, I could be wrong about that, but the ideat that the stories “Don’t Cry” and “The Arms and Legs of the Lake” are bad is so – stupid. And wrong. They are brilliant, beautiful stories. Stories any of us can only dream of writing. Really.
This review reminds me of Anatole Broyard- a man with so much power in his life as a reviewer, capable of ruining the careers of the likes of RIchard Yates, and God knows who else. He was a complete failure as a writer himself, so his only sad and wrong idea of comfort, was to take down those who were better than him. Think about that.
Sorry-I just find this so sad. I rarely read “criticism”. This is why. It too often has nothing to do with the work (here’s another example. James Atlas’s biography of Saul Bellow, the only good thing about that was Lee Siegal’s dismantling of it in Harpers) and way too much with the critic’s ego.
“But here Gaitskill drifts out of her depth, into realms of experience–compassion, redemption, transcendence–she doesn’t intuitively grasp or know how to represent”
That is horseshit.
“Old themes like sexuality and identity are taken out for another trot; new ones like maternity and connectedness are haltingly attempted”
OMG! Horseshit.
“”The Arms and Legs of the Lake” offers a triple dose of writing-seminar clichés.”
“her inability to imagine minds unlike her own even more painfully’ and then this-
“The interior monologues are priceless.”
So which is it? Priceless but, she’s unable to “imagine minds unlike her own”? This is the most confused bit in the whole piece.
I hate this review, Justin. Sorry. One guess is the reviewer is too young to enjoy growing up with Gaitskill’s work. Obviously, I could be wrong about that, but the ideat that the stories “Don’t Cry” and “The Arms and Legs of the Lake” are bad is so – stupid. And wrong. They are brilliant, beautiful stories. Stories any of us can only dream of writing. Really.
This review reminds me of Anatole Broyard- a man with so much power in his life as a reviewer, capable of ruining the careers of the likes of RIchard Yates, and God knows who else. He was a complete failure as a writer himself, so his only sad and wrong idea of comfort, was to take down those who were better than him. Think about that.
Sorry-I just find this so sad. I rarely read “criticism”. This is why. It too often has nothing to do with the work (here’s another example. James Atlas’s biography of Saul Bellow, the only good thing about that was Lee Siegal’s dismantling of it in Harpers) and way too much with the critic’s ego.
Well I haven’t read the new book, so I don’t know whether I agree with Deresciewicz or not, but what attracted me to the review was its structure–the assessment of her entire body of work, and the concision and thoroughness with which he presents the world in which that work was created and then developed. If you want to tag him for something, it’s the obvious anti-religious/supernatural bias, which is at the heart of his review. If he wasn’t so closed to the idea of those things having the potential for weight and value in the first place, then the question of whether or not she successfully achieves that gravity would still be an open one. As it stands, I see it as closed to him before he even begins.
But that’s his position, and he’s entitled to it. Look at who he compares her to- Ruskin, for one, and later to Wordsworth. Those aren’t random grabs from the name-check bag. It’s not a mistake that he places her in the company of the majors of the major league, and if you re-read the review you’ll notice that his assessments of how her work functions contains some of the most astute observation and unalloyed praise she’s likely to have ever gotten (or ever get) in her whole career.
You don’t have to agree with his verdict, but if you think his problem is he’s either too young or too uninformed to be reading her, you need to take another look at the actual piece. His thesis, like it or lump it, is a very powerful one, and there’s a clear line of argumentation that runs straight from the first sentence to the last.
Check out some of the other pieces I linked to–ones about writers you care less about. The James Wood piece is especially solid.
Well I haven’t read the new book, so I don’t know whether I agree with Deresciewicz or not, but what attracted me to the review was its structure–the assessment of her entire body of work, and the concision and thoroughness with which he presents the world in which that work was created and then developed. If you want to tag him for something, it’s the obvious anti-religious/supernatural bias, which is at the heart of his review. If he wasn’t so closed to the idea of those things having the potential for weight and value in the first place, then the question of whether or not she successfully achieves that gravity would still be an open one. As it stands, I see it as closed to him before he even begins.
But that’s his position, and he’s entitled to it. Look at who he compares her to- Ruskin, for one, and later to Wordsworth. Those aren’t random grabs from the name-check bag. It’s not a mistake that he places her in the company of the majors of the major league, and if you re-read the review you’ll notice that his assessments of how her work functions contains some of the most astute observation and unalloyed praise she’s likely to have ever gotten (or ever get) in her whole career.
You don’t have to agree with his verdict, but if you think his problem is he’s either too young or too uninformed to be reading her, you need to take another look at the actual piece. His thesis, like it or lump it, is a very powerful one, and there’s a clear line of argumentation that runs straight from the first sentence to the last.
Check out some of the other pieces I linked to–ones about writers you care less about. The James Wood piece is especially solid.
His piece is so condescending ; “taken out for another trot”, “priceless”- which I finally get is meant sarcastically– and so on, that I have no interest in reading anything he writes. This is not criticism to me- it is a bitchy book review, cloaked in his knoweldge of her entire body of work. If he has no interest in the subject matter she engages in- suffering and compassion being the main themes in all of her work, from Bad Behavior onward, which he seems to actually not get–then how can this be criticism?
Yes, he structures his article well and it is very thorough. That means little to me. It is a heartless, dumb well structured piece in my mind and reminds me very much of all sorts of silly magazine stuff, like Caitlin Flanagan’s work for the The Atlantic Monthly ( I no longer read it, largely due to her contributions). What I mean is- education often disguises the thing it was meant to cure. I have no doubt he is a well educated man, one well trained for the job he has.
Broyard very eloquently dismissed Yates’ work. He was in love with his eloquence. But what matters is how wrong he was, regardless of how beautifully he expressed himself.
justin, i’ve been wanting to ask you this since you started that excerpt thingy, and this post seems like a good time to do so:
would you go out with me?
and secondly, would you do us (me) the favor of sharpening your teeth as a critic by giving us (even a brief) run-through of your bubbling-over enthusiasm for ‘sometimes my heart…’? i have yet to grasp (for the most part) any personal or aesthetic worth in the excerpts thus far, and would appreciate if you made your enthusiasm transparent and articulate so that i might perceive with reason what i am unable to perceive with poesy, and perhaps then discern whether my dislike is purely subjective or not.
justin, i’ve been wanting to ask you this since you started that excerpt thingy, and this post seems like a good time to do so:
would you go out with me?
and secondly, would you do us (me) the favor of sharpening your teeth as a critic by giving us (even a brief) run-through of your bubbling-over enthusiasm for ‘sometimes my heart…’? i have yet to grasp (for the most part) any personal or aesthetic worth in the excerpts thus far, and would appreciate if you made your enthusiasm transparent and articulate so that i might perceive with reason what i am unable to perceive with poesy, and perhaps then discern whether my dislike is purely subjective or not.
keith- the short version is that i think ellen’s poems are quirky, often quite funny, and emotionally very raw. i have fun reading them, and only wish she’d had more fun writing them–though sometimes i suspect she’s having a little better of a time than she lets on. anyway, her poems remind me a lot of my favorite richard brautigan poems, and he’s not the greatest poet whoever lived, but I like him. He’s good for other, maybe smaller reasons–but still real ones, at least to me. EK’s work also reminds me of the most un-self-conscious and fruitful periods in the lives of certain genres of music, like really early anti-folk or emo.
For more than that, I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait until later this year. I’m planning to write a longer piece of criticism about this book, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be doing that for Octopus, so I’ll be working on it over the summer.
thanks for asking, btw.
keith- the short version is that i think ellen’s poems are quirky, often quite funny, and emotionally very raw. i have fun reading them, and only wish she’d had more fun writing them–though sometimes i suspect she’s having a little better of a time than she lets on. anyway, her poems remind me a lot of my favorite richard brautigan poems, and he’s not the greatest poet whoever lived, but I like him. He’s good for other, maybe smaller reasons–but still real ones, at least to me. EK’s work also reminds me of the most un-self-conscious and fruitful periods in the lives of certain genres of music, like really early anti-folk or emo.
For more than that, I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait until later this year. I’m planning to write a longer piece of criticism about this book, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be doing that for Octopus, so I’ll be working on it over the summer.
thanks for asking, btw.
I dunno, I didn’t think this was a hit piece at all. It would have made me want to go read her previous books if I hadn’t already. I thought the career overview was useful–thanks for posting this.
I dunno, I didn’t think this was a hit piece at all. It would have made me want to go read her previous books if I hadn’t already. I thought the career overview was useful–thanks for posting this.
[…] website the top story is an essay by William Deresiewicz, for whose critical writing I expressed much love in a previous post. Here’s a meaty little excerpt from “Adaptation: On Literary Darwinism.” Human […]