Anything

Abstract:This paper identifies a trope of masochistic literature: moments when a protagonist invites a lover to do "anything" to them. This trope unfolds to reveal the paradoxical structure of masochistic desire, which wields abstraction as a negation of fantasy, while attempting to incorporate that negation back into fantasy itself. Mary Gaitskill's short story "A Romantic Weekend" explores the painfully unstable subjectivity that arises from this masochistic investment in impossibility; ultimately, Gaitskill suggests, it is only through aesthetic experience--and in narrative fiction specifically--that this form of desire remains livable.