Mary Gaitskill, over two collections of stories (Bad Behavior and Because They Wanted To) and two novels (Two Girls, Fat and Thin and Veronica), emerged as one of the strongest and yet most delicately nuanced voices in American fiction today. Her new collection, Don’t Cry, will be published by Knopf in March 2009, and if we can assume anything from her earlier work, it will be compelling and painfully precise.

Photo by Jerry Bauer

Six books I love or would love to teach:

1) Laughter in the Dark by Vladimir Nabokov—This is a great book for writing students because it’s what I consider a transition work; you can see Nabokov developing, in an imperfect form, the art that would appear in later work as full-blown genius. His masterworks are such dazzling imitations of the living world that it is ridiculous to talk about them in terms of technique, whereas in this smaller work you can see the ropes and pulleys working behind the charming stage set.

2) Rabbit, Run by John Updike—This is a stunning achievement for a young writer, and as such is inspiring. It is especially beautiful in its linking of the random mundane with the glowing, barely glimpsed unknown. It is also worth studying because it makes any sensitive reader feel for profoundly unsympathetic characters.

3) The Human Stain by Philip Roth—This is a very interesting book to teach as much for its flaws as for its beauty; to me its strength is a great argument for the power of imagery as expressed in descriptions of the physical world. The hectoring quality of the narrative and the (to me) frankly unbelievable nature of some of the characters are dramatically compensated for by moments of deep and powerful evocation of physical life.

4) Snow by Orhan Pamuk—I have not taught this but would like to. I especially love the way he reveals character as one gets to know character in life: slowly, as an accumulation of moments and actions. Pamuk understands and respects the mystery of human beings. He is also very passionate. Of all the books on this list, Snow is the best in the sense that it is the most fully realized.

5) The Victim by Saul Bellow—I have taught this for much the same reason as Laughter in the Dark; as an early work, it is interesting to see in it the development of Bellow’s genius. I also like it for its dark, weighty quality, a tone that many students have difficulty with and mistake for sadness or depression—it’s good to draw their attention to the difference between depression and a deep sense of life.

6) Libra by Don DeLillo—I have taught this only once as a masterpiece of narrative; I particularly drew attention to the way DeLillo uses inner narrative in conjunction with action.


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