Bad Behavior

Book #34 on my reading list this year was Mary Gaitskill's Bad Behavior.


Bad Behavior is a sterling collection of relationship-related short stories including "Secretary" the inspiration for the Maggie Gyllenhaal film. It's subversive, sincere and at times funny, but most of all it's just darned good writing.

Interview in Bomb Magazine
A B-side

Secretary

Film #14 was Secretary.

My NetFlix rating: 3 stars
Jamie says: My two favorite MG's, Maggie Gyllenhaal & Mary Gaitskill
RIYL: Twisted indie films

Official site
Rotten Tomatoes reviews
Wikipedia

Veronica

Book #34 on my reading list this year was Mary Gaitskill's Veronica.

Although I didn't find the plot of Gaitskill's novel super compelling, her writing style is pure beauty. A blurb on the back of the book posits that 'People write their whole lives in the hopes of coming up with just one sentence that rises to the level of this book'. That may be a bit of hyperbole, but it's surprisingly plausible. Composed of raw, succinct sentences that ooze with emotion Veronica often reads like great poetry. Every couple of pages or so I found myself going back and re-reading paragraphs that were just too good to read once.

The book was nominated as a 2005 National Book Award Finalist, which apparently has made it somewhat popular with the peeps. On our trip to Austin I was astonished to see it for sale in one of those little magazine kiosks in the airport. It's been awhile since I've seen a modern fiction book I was reading on sale at an airport. For all I know it was probably an Oprah's Book Club selection too. Sigh. Indie cred fading, fading, gone. Anywho, most likely due to the book's popularity there's no shortage of online reviews, discussions, etc. on the internets. You can find several reviews here and Slate's alway excellent review here.

Bonus points to Gaitskill for having the most hard core author headshot I've ever seen.