You can read this story here: http://forums.interestingnonetheless.net/display.php?tid=15208
And you can buy the collection here:
I was impressed in this story by the way Gaitskill delves so completely into the old man’s thoughts and perspective, even though it is written in third person. We immediately get a sense of his vulnerability, which makes us empathize with him – his dream is that all his friends who had died or gone away “had really been there all along, loving him.” At the same time, this subtly clues us in that he might have the type of stubborn, unapologetic personality that alienates friends; perhaps part of why he has lost some friends has been his own fault.
Gaitskill also does a great job of creating well-rounded characters. This is not a story about “good” people and “bad” people, but rather real people, trying to make their way through their days, doing things they are proud of and things they regret. Kitty is not purely a victim – she is shown saying hurtful things, like calling her mother a “stupid bitch,” and we can feel her father’s pain that she would publish this story about him and their relationship in a national magazine. We can feel how violated he feels. Yet we can also recognize what a difficult time Kitty has had, with a father so violently unaccepting of her lesbianism. We remain firmly in the old man’s perspective, and this adds to the emotional power of scenes in which he is abusive to Kitty because he glosses over them so quickly – for example, on page 311 when he remembers punching Kitty and trying to shake the conviction from her face. Then the narrative moves on, while we are left reeling from this disclosure. But Gaitskill never judges her characters – even after we find out about the father punching Kitty, it is difficult to fully cast him in the role of “bad parent” because we are in his head, and we recognize how bewildered and frustrated he is by this daughter he can no longer reach or understand. To me, this story is not really about Kitty’s pain growing up – she seems happy and healthy now – but rather about the father’s loneliness and isolation, made even more poignant because he is the one who has cast it on himself by being so angry about Kitty’s sexual orientation.
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