TWO GIRLS FAT AND THIN

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Summary: TWO GIRLS, FAT AND THIN: a caricature of Rand's Objectivism
Review: A reader may reasonably hope, in the opening chapter of TWO GIRLS, FAT AND THIN, that novelist Mary Gaitskill, with skillful writing talents, will develop her characters into something more than mere opposites drawn together by a fated interest in the controversial philosopher, Anna Granite. Realizing that Granite is the counterpart of the real-life Ayn Rand, one hopes that Rand's philosophy of Objectivism (or Granite's Definitism) will be the central point and that the 'fat' Dorothy will ultimately thrive as a model Objectivist (Definitist), while the 'thin' Justine will either fail as the antithesis or eventually capitulate in her philosophy and prosper as well. The means to this end could acceptably be serious or comically satirical. As it turns out, the novel is a caricature: an exaggerated portrait depicting some truths of Objectivism yet distorting others. In the end, distortion reigns.

Although Dorothy and Justine seem to be opposites, their differences are less serious than their similarities. We see, through alternating chapters, the backgrunds and stories of each girl unfold. Justine and Dorothy both suffer neuroses developed as an aftermath of childhood abuse, rape, and/or incest. They are socially maladjusted. Misfits. Their keening thoughts and relationships with men waver between hatred, love and fear.

Gaitskill's venture into the sordid details of rape, masochism, and malignant sex, might be enough to disgust and turn away the faint hearted. The story, by itself, seems nothing more than a vehicle to sell the lives of two sick girls. But, a reader familiar with Ayn Rand's novels and the philosophy of Objectivism, will find redemption in Gaitskill's observance of Rand's ideas and the cleverly drawn parallels between the fictional and the real.

Anna Granite - a rock solid name for the solid as a rock Ayn Rand. Granite's books THE BULWARK and THE GODS DISDAINED are Rand's FOUNTAINHEAD and ATLAS SHRUGGED. Objectivism becomes Definitism. Nathaniel Branden, with whom Rand had an extramarital affair, becomes Beau Bradley. Even Alan Greenspan, a one time follower of Rand, is depicted as financier Knight Ludlow. The characters' lives follow the pattern of their real life counterparts.

The reader's hopes of a Rand-like character, evolving in the story, are buoyed by the exhortations of a Definitist named Bernard: "I am taking as my model Jesus Delorean Dilorenzo Michaelangelo in THE GODS DISDAINED. Maximum achievement, the highest you are capable of. None of this 'well, maybe I can't.'" But, hopes are dashed. Bernard disappears into the story. And none of the other characters become super heroes or super achievers. Perhaps that is the nature of a caricature - distortion of the truth. Dorothy and Justine are victims of their past and of society. They are misfits made for each other. Was the discovery of their true selves "the highest they were capable of"?

Rating:
Summary: Good Plot, Bad execution of the Plot
Review: Does Mary Gaitskill always have to over-write? It was hard for me to even get past the first paragraph of the first chapter because she went on and on about the laundromat where Dorothy first sees Justine's card on a bulletin board - which has nothing to do with the actual story.

Some parts where truly good, as they focused on the girls childhoods, but then I found the author going off on tangents again. The ending left me with a really unpleasant feeling. While this novel has it's moments of clarity, it's mostly rambling. Something I found enteresting - Dorothy is the one who is the definitist, concerned with strength, yet she is one of the most pathetic and weakest characters I have ever come across. While Justine is portrayed as the 'masochist' she is the strongest of the two.

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Summary: It's funny, and disturbing, because it's true ...
Review: Mary Gaitskill's Two Girls, Fat and Thin is a brilliantly satiric but nonetheless disturbingly realistic story of how cults appeal to the alienated and confused precisely by providing them with a sense of belonging and simple answers to complex questions. And, given the mixed messages they receive daily about gender, sexuality, identity, empowerment and the body (see any issue of YM, for example, or, for that matter, Cosmopolitan), it's hard to imagine anyone with greater potential for alienation and confusion that the adolescent American female. In Gaitskill's hilariously parodic roman a clef, the two girls of the title, "fat" Dorothy and "thin" Justine, are taken in by the "Definitivist" philosophy of one Anna Granite, in a transparently veiled, hysterically accurate spoof of Ayn Rand's "Objectivism." Anyone who's suffered through Rand's didactic, overwrought novels will be delighted by such details, such parodies within the parody, as Granite's fictional fictions, The Bulwark and The Gods Disdained. And given the essential similarities between Granite and Rand, Definitivism and Objectivism, Gaitskill's novel makes it difficult to see how anybody takes the latter seriously, although the Rand cult continues apace nonetheless (see Jeff Walker's excellent study, The Ayn Rand Cult [LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1999]). It's funny, and disturbing, beacuse it's true ...