Constant Reader discussion

Our next story is "Tiny Smiling Daddy" by Mary Gaitskill. You can find it in our anthology, The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction. I also found another source for it through the NYTimes at https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytim... This story was first published in her collection, Because They Wanted To: Stories in 1997.

Mary Gaitskill has had a far more interesting life than the short introductory information in the anthology might lead you to believe. Her Wikipedia article is worth reading. I looked at it because of the references to Wayne County and Detroit. She graduated from the University of Michigan in 1981. She also had a counter culture life as a teenager that probably contributed to her understanding of the situation in the story.

The thing that most impressed me in this story is that it is told from the viewpoint of a man who would normally be so unsympathetic, at least to me. But, Gaitskill lets us see how bewildered and isolated he is in his world, really not understanding how any of these situations came to be. She also gives us a glimpse of his own unhappy childhood and distant father. It would be bad enough if he didn't understand the world at large, but the person he seems to love most is the one that he understands the least. Children before adolescence can be so lovable, usually in thrall to one or both parents. A woman once told me that if my two sons stayed like that, I would likely never let them go and she was probably right.

Kitty was obviously going through an adolescent process of distancing herself from her parents which bewildered them. A simple thing like not setting the table sparked problems. But, in the last few lines of the story, we learn how totally the father rejected her because of her sexual orientation. And, Gaitskill doesn't leave us with a happy ending. This is the sad story of problems in a parent/child relationship that will probably never be resolved.

Did you find yourself sympathizing with the father or at least understanding him? He's not an easy character but Gaitskill manages to really let us see him in all of his loneliness and confusion.

I’m hoping to see some reactions to this story here. It’s an interesting one.

I just read it. There's so much there.

As he seemed to realize eventually, teenagers almost always have a period where they are truly awful to their parents. Gratitude for all the care that went into their raising doesn't tend to come until much later in life, sometimes even after the parents are gone.

The story did a great job of depicting an old-school man, with his prejudices and vulnerabilities, and almost non-existent social skills. I think that many men are trapped by their own upbringing and nature in this way. His wife seemed to understand and love him.

It's likely not easy to write a short story that lets the reader see the humanity of all the different people in a conflict, and this one is well done.

I also thought that she portrayed a uniquely old school male and did it in a way that made me forget her as a writer. That is a quality that I particularly admire in authors, that ability to get inside the skin of someone totally unlike themselves.