‘People confuse sadness with darkness’: the complicated world of Mary Gaitskill

In the early 1990s, the American novelist Mary Gaitskill suffered an abrupt awakening. ‘I lived in New York, I didn’t have a television, I didn’t listen to the radio. I didn’t even read magazines or newspapers very often. I was really too preoccupied with my own existence, which was hand to mouth a lot of the time,’ she says. ‘But when I was a little better off, I began to pay attention. I did get a TV. I did listen to the news a lot. And I was just like, holy shit. What a weird fucking world.’

What particularly astonished her, she says, is how central the fashion industry had become: ‘Models had always been glamorous figures, but it was suddenly they were the most important thing any woman could possibly aspire to be. They were just the most important female figure in the world. And it was kind of ridiculous.’