Because They Wanted To

by Mary Gaitskill

'A perfectly formed set of stories about alienation in modern times' Independent
'Mesmerizing - almost ecstatic' The New York Times

Mary Gaitskill's coolly compelling, quietly devastating stories explore the messy complexity of relationships between lovers, families and friends. An unsettling encounter on a plane; a tentative affair between an older woman and a younger man; the chasm between a father and his each expresses our longing for, and our fear of, human connection.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Feminism, Literary Fiction, Literature, Contemporary, Queer

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Mary Gaitskill is an American author of essays, short stories and novels. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Esquire, The Best American Short Stories (1993 and 2006), and The O. Henry Prize Stories (1998). She married writer Peter Trachtenberg in 2001. As of 2005, she lived in New York City; Gaitskill has previously lived in Toronto, San Francisco, and Marin County, CA, as well as attending the University of Michigan where she earned her B.A. and won a Hopwood Award. Gaitskill has recounted (in her essay "Revelation") becoming a born-again Christian at age 21 but lapsing after six months.

Reviews

[el · Rating 4 out of 5]

the queen of taboos and psychosexual dread!!!! did it before the other girls tried doing it better (and failed). approached it with a curiosity that renders the deeply unsettling rich and complex, rather than the edgy-for-edginess'-sake register that's become so commonplace in anglophone litfic (particularly the subset following disaffected sex-obsessed women). a collection that doesn't feel like it focalizes or venerates men to the exclusion of women, in spite of the heavy presence of men on the page. if you read an emma cline collection, then try this, you'll never want to go back, because it quickly becomes obvious this is the blueprint all the girls are working off of. everything else pales in comparison.

gaitskill stages her interpersonal encounters out of what seems to be a genuine fascination with the how and why of our 'unseemly' habits or inclinations. her work isn't purely aesthetic. it isn't the product of commodity fetishism, where you can tell every image or article of clothing is meant to signal a certain contemporary class affiliation—and one the writer hopes will buoy their book as a stylish status-affirming 'product.'

i don't think i enjoyed this collection as much as bad behavior, but i really fell in love with gaitskill's gesturing this time around, where before i'd found her gravitation towards describing bodies and their every minute movement comical. i get it now, and i appreciate the skill it requires to make symbols on the page become muscles and ligaments and joints, to convincingly fill out a conversation in a way that enhances our understanding of character rather than stunting or inhibiting it. she's a masterful study. i can imagine her taking notes while sitting in public spaces, that's how precise her gesturing is.

i especially loved the last section of this collection, where we got a rare and extended first person romp. i get why gaitskill is a lover of third person narratives (it's her strength), but the change of pace at the end was a welcome one. really enjoyed this (and i continue to love her delillo-esque prose, in all its psychological abstractions + knifepoint precision).

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very, very rarely, would I come across a collection of short stories that is flawless. A lot of the time it's a case of some really impressive ones, but also a few that don't stand out as much, and it's no different here. I was haunted and mesmerized by Gaitskill's novel Veronica, and more than half of these twelve stories kind of put me in the same place. Gaitskill writes for grown-ups, there is no doubt about that. Her writing is frank, raw, and when it comes to relationships and sex, she isn't afraid to show the shocking cruelty that can lurk within the human condition, and that sex can be just as damaging in a relationship as it is pleasurable and unblemished. I don't want to paint a picture that makes this book to be a complete grim-fest, as there are moments that can be jovial, but most of the time she does put the reader in an uncomfortable place: you wouldn't be human if you weren't. I likely would have gone higher than four stars had this been eight stories and not twelve. Gaitskill can also overwrite at times, but one thing she isn't guilty of is being sentimental. One of the most unsentimental and brutally honest writers I've ever read actually, and for that I applaud her. When it comes to adult themes some writers impact you like that of a toy car, but with Gaitskill it's like being hit emotionally by a monster truck.

[Allison Floyd · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Today the clerk in the fancy deli next door asked me how I was, and I said, 'I have deep longings that will never be satisfied.'"

Oh, Mary Gaitskill, you always do this to me. You begin a story like that, and it's brave and honest and true, and then I realize...

I'm shallow. And your stories are depressing. Sure there's a truckload of insight at work here, and occasionally dark humor rears its head, but really, these stories conjure dust bunnies sulking on dull linoleum. Transfixing dust bunnies, but dust bunnies. This collection is like the gentle, lurching violence of a typical bus ride to a destination you don't particularly want to arrive at, but can't avoid.

What you have to say about loneliness, longing, desperation, and the predatory (and sad and silly and tender) aspects of human nature rings true. It does. I relate (too much). I do.

But there are no moors in your stories, Mary Gaitskill. See, in reading this collection, I realized (yet again) that I like my depression dark and dramatic, with plenty of brooding atmosphere. I suppose it's the recovering goth in me. Why settle for quiet desperation when you can have noisy futility? I'll take Wuthering Heights over the withering depths, no matter how deftly rendered (and they are).

What I mean to say is, for me, these stories inspired deep longings, which they left unsatisfied.

[Brent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as good as Don't Cry, but still wonderful. Pardon the cliched language but Gaitskill's writing really brings you into the ether through the abyss. It is lurid and sublime and can be heartbreaking in a bunch of ways you never really experienced as a reader. A real Romantic rooted in the physical aspect of existence. You emerge from the filth knowing that Love Is Real.

In my experience there is no living author who can write music or sex like Mary Gaitskill, which makes perfect sense. She has truly triumphed in expressing in words these things which can be so beyond them.

[nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

"𝘏𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘐'𝘷𝘦 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘥𝘪𝘥𝘯'𝘵 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘣𝘭𝘰𝘸 𝘫𝘰𝘣𝘴."
"𝘐 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 𝘮𝘶𝘤𝘩, 𝘦𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳," 𝘍𝘳𝘦𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘬 𝘴𝘢𝘪𝘥. "𝘉𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘨𝘪𝘳𝘭𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘯'𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮. 𝘌𝘹𝘤𝘦𝘱𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘨𝘪𝘳𝘭 - 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘐 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘨𝘶𝘺."
"𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘪𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶'𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦?" 𝘐 𝘢𝘴𝘬𝘦𝘥.
"𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 - 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵'𝘴 𝘥𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵," 𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘪𝘥. "𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴𝘯'𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘰 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘩𝘯𝘪𝘲𝘶𝘦."

Backwashed dreams untidy with linoleum nightmares and greasy caresses. Dive bar shenanigans and motel desperation.
You get the picture.
You get the grit and tight light-washed jeans that haven't been washed in months.
Messy hair. Seeing the tangles. Getting tangled up with the wrong people and the worst kinds of love. Learning to lust, raw and earnest, young and unforgiving. Everything hurts.
Very little conclusions. But in the end, I'm just a puny little human who wants the same things in the Hilton some miles closer to the city, and I'm here with $15 in my bank account, my stomach hollow of gratitude because I took up sleep for dinner and the gentle breeze mid-afternoon is telling me that the day is light and there is always something blooming across the mountains.

Straight whiskey prose. You read these stories to sit with the characters and love them a bit more because they need it more than you do. You don't read the stories for their ends. Because the ends only speak to a greater worry, perhaps a mother's worry, that this is someone's son or daughter and they're a plenty lot not okay.

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find it curious that the author gets criticized for being rough or unsentimental when her characters are so clearly awash in the complex & conflicted impulses of living.

Her clean, precise writing style works so well against the emotional intensity of the stories. Like trying to be analytical amidst a panic attack.

[katy *ੈ✩‧₊˚ · Rating 4 out of 5]

i love weird dirty psychosexual shit

[angel]

The Orchid, The Dentist, and The Wrong Thing (Turgor) were my favourites

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was so conflicted about this book. I really wanted to like it, but there were a few things that I had a hard time getting past. On the positive side, the author's skill is not in question--she is in a class by herself when describing her characters' innermost thoughts. As a reader, it was nice to feel as if I was discovering an overt fact about the character, when in actuality, the true nature of the character was revealed through subtext. Also, Gaitskill reminds me of Checkov in how detached she is in revealing these facts. She applies the same detachment when describing a rape scene as she does when describing a character sipping water.

That said, I hated all of her characters. And that was not the author's intention. It didn't bother me that they were all seedy--that's cool to read, actually. It's that her characters are always analyzing themselves and speaking psycho-babble to each other, and it read as whiny to me.

Another thing that bothered me was her abuse of adjectives/adverbs. That was distracting for me--it interrupted the flow of the story.

[Cordelia Simmons · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best part about reading a penguin modern classic is being SEEN reading a penguin modern classic

The author encapsulates all the intricacies of relationships- from being in love with only the idea of someone to the loneliness you feel in a crowded room

Loved

[Natalie Konigkin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was gonna give it a 4 until I got to the novella at the end. That was exhausting.
Technically speaking, her writing is good, but so many of the descriptions seem unnecessary that in the end all this technical flair starts to feel like showing off. What I hated the most is how drawn out everything was. Characters would spend half a page lifting their arm or casting a glance at someone. It was like the writer couldn’t settle on one way of saying something so she said it every way she knew how.
That said, there were a couple of stories that were very good and even in the bad ones there were moments of really good writing. So, though I couldn’t wait for the collection to end, I don’t think I can go lower than 3/5.

[Alyssa Knickerbocker · Rating 4 out of 5]

People always use the word "depraved" to describe Mary Gaitskill's characters... there's definitely a lot of really beautiful language describing really disturbing scenarios. I felt sort of impressed and unsettled and driven to write after finishing this. Favorite story: "The Blanket," which follows a twisty little path into a relationship that moves through lust and role playing and intimacy and always seems to be about to send someone over a cliff.

[Gus]

The final story/novella was really good. It's strange because Gaitskill is very articulate in describing minute interaction/transaction between humans but then also communicates how despite this specificity the interactions almost always breed a sense of confusion or ambiguity.

[June · Rating 4 out of 5]

aghhhh I cannot explain the effect Mary Gaitskill short stories have on me. To attempt, I'd say I feel deranged, hopeless about sexual pleasure, and envious of another time period? I thought this collection might be stronger than Bad Behavior in its range of topic, but it still overly focuses on masochism and art (with a lot less focus on sex work than her previous). I particularly liked The Girl on the Plane (nostalgic dialogue between older business man and young woman sat beside each other on plane), The Dentist (a journalist becomes erotically obsessed with her dentist who she believes to be secretly perverse), and The Wrong Thing (a continuous character study on a bisexual poetry professor looking for connection, composed by the last four stories of the collections). Overall, I liked Gaitskill's exploration of male narrators (ex Comfort, Tiny Smiling Daddy) and that she lets them be terrible. Also... there are some wild moments involving sexual fantasy and r*pe? I think Gaitskill finds all sex to be non-consensual at its core, and I agree with her.

story average - 4.17 stars

[ra]

mary gaitskill's work always makes me feel like a pillar of flayed muscle with no skin so. yeah 😃 my favourite story by far was the blanket, though the dentist was a close second. i need to go lie down and groan into a pillow for at least 20 minutes

— “The tenderness was strange and slightly mortifying.”

— '“Oh, she was just a groupie,” he said. “The point is, I didn’t care how beautiful she was. I wanted you.”
When they got off the phone, Valerie buried her face in the T-shirt, rubbing it across her lips and cheeks, helplessly nipping at it with her teeth.'

[Liam · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best collections of stories I’ve ever read. An emotionally alchemical experience; I feel my every gesture and phrase loaded with mercurial potential, with meaning unknown and unknowable.

In reading Gaitskill she’s become, to use her own words, “a blind companion whom I could not fully see or hear but could feel in bursts of secret radiance.”

[Marnie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think more like 3.5 but bc I read a few of the stories before and hadn’t realised when I got the book from the library

[Eleni · Rating 4 out of 5]

That moment between short stories is so weird. I always think - what’s the appropriate, respectful amount of time to wait before turning the page and starting the next one?

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gaitskill has a peculiar imagination-and an inescapably erotic one. While reading, often this erotic charge pulsing through her work was disturbing, invasive. At others, I'll admit I was a bit turned on. I wouldn't say it's for the light of heart; she's frank, she explicit, and she's seemingly obsessed with victor/victim (dominant/submissive) interactions. What I found fascinating about this obsession with sexual powerplays, though, was that Gaitskill's images and style often reflected this idea of penetration. One image that struck me as such was from "The Girl on the Plane"--the narrator imagines the plane lifting off and tearing a hole in the sky. This kind of image threads through the entire collection, so that not only are you invited like a voyeur to look in on characters' kinky fantasies, sexual confessions, and haunting carnal performances, you're treated to these same issues in Gaitskill's writing aesthetic. I really appreciate that; I like when writers manage to reflect their content with their style.

My only qualm? It reads, sometimes, as kitschy--as if she can't really escape this bondage-box, as if her characters are all sort of blurring together and experiencing the same conflicts in different settings. It's a good story, but when you see it reflected again and again through the collection, you wonder when Gaitskill's gonna step out of her comfort zone. There are variations, of course, and there are moments that still linger, despite my finishing the collection early last week. I'm intrigued enough to check out "Bad Behavior" if that gives a better indication of my final thoughts. An enjoyable, if a bit guilty, read. ;)

[Ben Bush]

I'd read the first short story from this collection "Tiny Smiling Daddy" in an anthology and hadn't really been into it but ended up at a reading of hers recently and was super-impressed. It was clear as she read how emotionally engaged she was in her work and during the Q&A she managed to turn really dumb questions into fascinating thoughtful answers, which is such a great skill for that kind of situation. She was polite and almost seemed fragile until someone said something she disagreed with and she was quite intense in her response. I tend to read more thinky rather than emotional writing but this book was exactly what I needed. It made me laugh outloud more than anything in recent memory and yet it's for the most part a very sad collection of stories about the pain and cruelty that people inflict in their attempts to love. I was particularly struck by "The Dentist," "The Blanket" and "The Girl on the Plane," although maybe their somewhat more male focus appealed to me. (I read the second half largely on a flight and it was funny to read "The Girl on the Plane" immediately after sitting down.) To me the story series, which concludes it is maybe the least successful. I think because of its first person narrator, it starts to feel more like thinly veiled autobiography in a way that was kind of unappealing. Also, there may have been in increase in the percentage of abstract adjectives, but even these stories weren't bad. Conversely, the story "Kiss and Tell" which feels more schematic than the others is interesting primarily as Gaitskill thinking about the ethics of using her own life in her writing.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mary Gaitskill is probably best known among the general public as the author of the short story the movie Secretary is based on, to the extent that hers is a familiar name beyond circles of serious readers. While I did enjoy the film, its whitewashing of Gaitskill's story is symptomatic of her undervaluation as a literary artist ("Secretary" the short story ends with a mutual spurning, rather than an increasingly less equivocal human connection among S&M partners). Her work is often almost unrecognizably raw among writers of comparable skill and vision -- the title story of this collection deals with a runaway teenaged girl who leaves the children she is babysitting when it begins to appear that their mother will not return. These aren't stories that lend themselves to Hollywood endings, at least not as Gaitskill has written them. Her work might just hit too close to home. Yet she writes with such clear-headed sympathy for her characters, and presents their most complex emotional states with such accuracy, that the insight her writing provides is matched by the aesthetic pleasure readers will discover in her taut, biting prose. We turn away at our own risk.

[Kells Perry · Rating 2 out of 5]

In general I liked what Gaitskill had to say with the exception of her last story which was comprised of three parts. One theme I especially noticed in this one (though aspects of it showed up in other stories) was her exploitation of lesbian relationships. Time and again, her depictions of lesbians were limited to BDSM, cutting, and roleplay violence. It also depicted lesbians making out with each other even while dating somebody else. Being a lesbian myself, I found it extremely off-putting that the only way she depicted lesbians was living "alternative lifestyles"; it seemed very reductive and ignorant. I'm not saying they're aren't gay/lesbian people out there who are into those things, but to only write about a particular group to the exclusion of everything else is not cool AT ALL. The book would have gotten a higher rating if not for that.

Also, completely unrelated, I really hate the expression she's making in her author photo. It's a cross between pretentious and mysterious.

[Richelle · Rating 1 out of 5]

this book has a lot of disturbing issues. gaitskill writes in a clear, defined, and blunt manner which made me unnerved at times.

[Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scene, dialogue, detail, description. . . . sometimes I want to shake people in my writing workshops and say, "This is how it's done. Read this book five times and then try again."

[Cory · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Today the clerk in the fancy deli next door asked me how I was, and I said, 'I have deep longings that will never be satisfied.'"

[Writer's Relief · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Mary Gaitskill’s short story collection BECAUSE THEY WANTED TO, she uses her quick wit to bring readers into the inner world of her complex characters. Throughout the different stories, Gaitskill tackles difficult subjects head on and captures the human condition as the characters attempt to overcome obstacles between what they know and what they want.

In the title story, “Because They Wanted To,” Elise finds herself caring for another woman’s children while she is stranded in a new city. When the children’s mother does not return, Elise ponders what to do next as her own difficult memories resurface. The phrase “because they want to” becomes more intriguing with each page as readers join Elise on a ride through her present and past that becomes darker as the story progresses. In this story and others about a dentist, a poetry teacher, an estranged father, and more, Gaitskill masterfully brings the characters to life with her crisp prose and unwavering eye for humorous detail.

Published in 1998, these stories age so well that it seems as if the book was written just yesterday. The stories in this collection are just the right length and will easily draw you in—you’ll want to read them all more than once.

[Finn Oldfield · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found that, unlike with Bad Behaviour, because they wanted to doesn’t have half as much to say. You can only read so many “xyz felt sad and happy at the want time, and tall but short and amazed but bored” before you start rolling your eyes at the lavish use of oxymorons as a short cut to a faux interrogation of a character’s emotions.

There is not as much depth swimming through these pages as with her first book, and most of the stories feel like a poor B side/tribute act that struggles to take shape. I did however enjoy “The Dentist” which was a brilliant observation of obsession.

I’ll give some of her other books a go but I’m not as excited to after finishing this one.

3 stars:/

[Zachary Hertz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rating short story collections is always tough. That being said, I think this generally deserves 5 stars, even if I liked some much more than others. My favorites were honestly low-key bad for my mental health (The Blanket hit like a gut punch and I had to put the whole thing down for several days). Still, some beautiful writing with complex characters.

Favorites:
Orchid
The Blanket (!!!)
The Girl on the Plane
Kiss and Tell

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

"My kiss became an escalating slur of useless feeling."

Definitely one of the best books I've read this year. We love toxic relationships. "The Girl on the Plane" is amazing, and the whole collection has a very Sally Rooney-ish vibe, which obviously I simp for. Nearly 5 stars, definitely 4.5.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gaitskill’s writing is precise and compelling. The stories explore the dark and mundane aspects of life in a hypnotic way. Some of them hit a bit too close to home but I really want to read more from her.

TW: rape and sexual assault