New Yorker Fiction Review #294: "Minority Report" by Mary Gaitskill
One of the great debates that rages within me is over how much the "context" of an artwork should matter. Regarding the short stories I review on this blog, it has generally been my attitude that the work should stand on its own. Rarely do I read the author's comments in the accompanying "This Week in Fiction" interview until after I've written my review. I like to read and think and write about a story without the burden of having to know the writer's intentions for it, or anything else about it. Sometimes, however, the back-story or context of a short story is unavoidable, such as in the case of "Minority Report" by Mary Gaitskill.
"Minority Report" is an expansion on a 1988 short story written by Gaitskill, called "Secretary." In "Secretary," a 17 year old girl -- Debby Roe -- is dominated and sexually abused by her much older boss, a lawyer in private practice. Having not read "Secretary" I can't get too much into detail on that short story. But what I do know is that in "Minority Report" Gaitskill re-tells and expands upon the original story, setting it in Debby's point of view and taking the reader through many more decades of her life, leading up nearly to the present day.
This story is more than 10,000 words long and covers more than 40 years in Debby's life, starting at the time of the sexual assault and staying with her up through her mid-fifties. Sexual assault is an extremely difficult thing to write about (let alone live through) and I'd be lying if I said I feel super comfortable as a man writing about this topic, even writing about a short story that deals with this topic. What I'm getting at is, this is not an easy story to review in a conventional sense, not only because of the subject matter but also because of the sheer scope of the story.
What I can tell you -- without any tentativeness or disclaimers -- is that Mary Gaitskill is an incredibly skilled writer. Her prose has that peculiar way of receding, making you forget that you're reading a story; no small feat over 10,000 words. Furthermore, her handling of the interior life of her character is honest and pitch-perfect.
Consider the following lines, in the second paragraph of this story, as Debby describes the fact that she dreams about the man who assaulted her, even years and decades after the assault took place:
"These dreams of him--and thoughts, I have also had thoughts and memories triggered by things as random as a singer's voice or the subplot of a TV show or a movie or even a cartoon--are like a weather system passing across the distant horizon of my outermost self, but they affect the local barometric pressure and the color of the shared sky."
Ironically, this is the line in the story that feels the most like "writing" and the one that I had to read at least twice in order to fully comprehend. But I feel that it is one of those lines that gives the reader the keys to understanding the story. I like when writers do this.
The use of the title "Minority Report" ties to the character's viewing of the 2002 film by the same name, which makes her cry and forces her to relive -- in a waking vision -- the sexual assault all over again. Given that the story is titled "Minority Report" I would have expected the film to have occupied a greater place in the story. In fact, to be honest, I feel as though naming the story after the movie is a bit clumsy, even if -- in the companion interview (which I did actually read prior to writing this) -- Gaitskill explains the double-meaning behind this title, relating to a legal term.
In the film Minority Report (based on a Phillip K. Dick short story (we're getting way meta now)), clairvoyant beings dream of crimes that will be committed in the future (Pre-Crimes) and then the police go and arrest the would-be criminals. At least, that's how I remember it (for a short story, this one is causing us to have to do a lot of homework). But in the world of the story, we have Debby dreaming about an event that has passed, not something which has yet to happen. However, these are incidental details.
I think what Gaitskill is trying to get at in this story -- way beyond the statement on the damage that sexual assault can bring upon a person throughout their entire life -- is the spiritual notion that our past, our present, and our future, are always "happening to us" all at once. We are simultaneously victims, by-standers, and perpetrators of our fates and -- furthermore -- there is very little rational sense to be made of any of it.
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