Published May 1994
I am the ideal reader for send-ups and satires of Ayn Rand and Objectivism; having never succumbed to the charms of what seems like every other libertarian's favorite dogmatist, I am not in the least offended when her inflated reputation is punctured. Indeed, I rejoice. And so it was that I eagerly plunged into the pages of Mary Gaitskill's first novel, Two Girls, Fat and Thin (Simon & Schuster Trade, 1991, 304 pp., $18.95), which had been reviewed elsewhere as Ayn Rand's worst nightmare, as something that definitely did not take her values seriously.
The first chapters deliver on this expectation. Justine Shade, a journalist, is interviewing followers of Anna Granite,
author of The Bulwark and The Gods Disdained, and formulator of her own, individualistic philosophy, Definitism.
This is fun, but facile, and the novel quickly moves away from satire and on to its main theme: women who were sexually molested as children.
Much to my surprise, the novel is surprisingly sympathetic with its putative target. After three hundred or so pages relating the rather sordid stories of Shade and her chief subject, Dorothy Never, a fat, somewhat defensive Definitist, Shade discovers that Dorothy has handled the legacy of sexual abuse much better than she has (though she tends to feel superior, since Dorothy still defends much of Anna Granite's peculiar philosophy). The moral of the story seems to be that a cultish ideology can help a person cope with the sufferings and indignities some young people must endure. Broken egos can be repaired by a healthy dose of egoism, fragile selves strengthened by selfishness.
But Gaitskill does not moralize. She tells a story. She begins the book by quoting Vladimir Nabokov, and apparently emulates that Russian-American novelist, not Alice Rosenbaum (Ayn Rand): there are no Galt-like sermons. She is a fine writer, though not in Nabokov's league. For most readers, however, her novel pleases in ways that Nabokov's never do: it is much more straight-forward, written in non-quirky language, and attentive to humdrum depths rather than the glittery surfaces and subtle ironies that the Russian-American master made his stock in trade. Gaitskill elicits her readers' sympathies for her protagonists, something Nabokov occasionally toyed with, but never without a twist. Two Girls, Fat and Thin, for all its playfulness, is in no way avant-garde.
The biggest problem with the novel is its rather odd construction: Dorothy's story is told in the first person, Justine's in the third person. I found this confusing and pointless. Maybe I missed something, but I suspect that Ms Gaitskill was simply trying for some effect that is not yet within her powers to obtain.
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