Powers of Observation

I am now six stories into Mary Gatskill's nine story debut collection Bad Behaviour (1988), and the question of when these stories were written, and in which New York City, is on my mind.

Unlike most collections (debut or otherwise), none of the stories in Bad Behaviour were published prior to the original Poseidon Press edition, making it difficult to associate them in time and space.

Oddly enough, the story of Susan returning to New York (after arriving there some ten years before, as a U. of Michigan grad, only to leave NYC for Chicago four years later), could put "Connection" in Lou Reed's 1973 as much as it could put it in Lydia Lunch's 1983. (I keep forgetting that Gaitskill was born in 1954, not more recently.)

"Connection" is a fine third-person story that plays its trick with great effect: the seemingly normal-to-neutral visitor returns to a city for "a gorgeous wallow in sentimentality," where she thinks (secretly wishes?) she sees her frenemy Leisha as a "young bag lady," and from there we learn that if anyone is capable of going off the rails, it is Susan -- the only difference being that one is extroverted (Leisha), the other introverted (Susan). Each is as the other accuses them to be, which is to say selfish. From the start we learn that they were, for a time, dating the same person. (Are they, too, the same person?)

"Secretary" is the seventh story in Bad Behaviour, the one that was "made into" the 2002 film. I remember seeng the film when it came out and falling for Maggie Gyllenhaal. That's about all I remember. Maybe reading the story will return me to what I forget about the film? (A film I learn after peeking at its synopsis that is billed as a comedy?) Maybe reading the story will re-enforce what I already know about Mary Gaitskill's pathological honesty, her extraordinary powers of observation.