The Devil's Treasure
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A rare work of criticism, memoir, and mythography from an author “aware of all the hidden chambers of the heart.” (Greil Marcus, New York Times Magazine)
Mary Gaitskill is unique among American novelists in “her ability to evoke the hidden life, the life unseen, the life we don’t even know we are living.”* In this searching biography of the writer’s imagination, Gaitskill excavates her own novels, revealing their origins and obsessions, the personal and societal pressures that formed them, and the life story hidden between their pages. Using the techniques of collage, The Devil's Treasure splices fiction together with commentary and personal history, and with the fairy tale that gives the book its title, about a little girl who ventures into Hell through a suburban cellar door.
The result is an answer to Gaitskill’s critics and, simultaneously, the best book we have about contemporary fiction, the forces ranged against it, and the forces that bring it into being.
“Even among other artists attracted to weakness as a theme, [Gaitskill] is rare in being able to look at it on its own terms. She doesn’t treat it like a curiosity, like Diane Arbus, or a chink in the armor that might let in faith, like Flannery O’Connor. She isn’t afraid of it, like Muriel Spark; nor does she insist its depictions rouse us to action, like Sontag. She looks—just looks—and sees everything.” —Parul Seghal, New York Times Magazine*
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Gaitskill's curious new project (after the novella This Is Pleasure) looks back on four of her previous novels and a memoir, splices them with critical self-reflections, and threads the needle with a short work in progress. The slight frame story concerns a seven-year-old girl named Ginger who journeys to hell through a hole in her backyard. As she makes her way back home, she encounters nightmarish reflections, demonic strangers, and Satan himself. But the bulk of the book is excerpts from past books including Veronica (2005), about a budding fashion model, and The Mare (2015), concerning two girls who come of age in upstate New York, where one visits from Brooklyn over the years as part of the Fresh Air Fund, and ride horses together. Hence the reader has several versions of troubled suburban girlhood, haunted or abusive fathers, and barbed early friendships, bordered by long sections in which Gaitskill reflects on her use of the themes, recalls the conditions and intent behind the books' composition, and responds to her critics. As an experiment, this doesn't quite come together. At its best, it functions as a showcase for Gaitskill's powerful back catalog, but more often the indulgent structure fails to hold and obscures her intent. While her insights will prove valuable to her most ardent fans, everyone else can take a pass.
