STAUF: A Tragedy - Mary Gaitskill with artwork The Shift by Jill Mulleady

In Mary Gaitskill’s wild Faustian tale STAUF: A Tragedy, therapist Tina Stauf is tormented by her sense of inadequacy in dealing with a society on the verge of collapse but still nurses hope for transcendence. While visiting her fundamentalist family to witness an exorcism, however, she rejects not only their religion but also her own psychoanalytic training. Enter the seductive Mephista, who promises truth of a kind—if Stauf will only sign her life away in electronic ink. Matched with an artwork by Jill Mulleady, the publication is part of Gagosian’s Picture Books, an imprint conceived by author Emma Cline and dedicated to publishing fiction by leading writers alongside contributions by celebrated contemporary artists. Known for her explorations of memory and transformation, Mulleady combines references to historical painting with images taken from popular culture and her own life, moving between observation and flights of allegorical fancy. In her painting The Shift (2026), she depicts a lifetime’s worth of people and encounters massing above a figure lying naked on the threshold between life and death.