YouSaid · the spoken record

Mary Gaitskill

lines on the record: 54
first: 2022-11-02
most recent: 2022-11-02
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Actually, substack is probably more labor intensive, but that would be a quick way to get to know me pking one of them and reading that.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is a very strange mentality to me. And also, she could have if she'd emailed me and said for her to be called they there, I would have done it. She said she was afraid to do that because I was just such an aggressive person. I don't understand that. She didn't even try. I don't believe she was cringing in terror before my incredibly aggressive personality because she would know that if she complained about that to the administration, they would have been all over me. So that's a mentality that I see a lot now that it's not just that they want to be called the different pronoun than has been the norm for a long time. It's that somebody like that person will act as if they have no power in the situation and that they're too afraid to say anything to you or unable for whatever reason. That is bewildering to me. And I encountered that type, not just in terms of pronouns, but just generally. People who don't seem to feel they can express themselves and then blame you for it.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tell you stories about that, so I understand the impulse, but this sort of really nitpicking minute over policing of language is just a nightmare. And also, you know, the idea that most trans students are not like this. Most trans students, if you use the wrong pronoun, they're like, they'll correct you, but they don't really care that they get it. You just forgot. But one person I had recently didn't actually clarify, you get a piece of paper with their picture how they want to be referred to in terms of pronouns, how they identify. She did not identify as a trans person. She identified as non-binary and she did not specify what pronoun. So some people who identified that way aren't particular about it. They're fine with how you're responding to them, how they present. She presented as a female. So I called her that and she didn't correct me. In her student evaluation, she was really angry that I didn't support her trans identity. Well, she didn't identify that way. So it's like.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just so rattled by seeing it, and they didn't quarrel with it eventually, as I explained, read the whole piece. There's a lot of context to this, but they're so reactive to certain words, or even the word retard, it appeared in a story. And they were upset by that. And I'm like, it's a story about kids. They would use that word. And it's just like they want everything to be so, I don't know what the right, policed. They're so afraid of the use of certain words and terms and exploring certain mindsets that is very difficult for me. I mean, if you present it in the right way, they're usually okay, but you have to go through so much presentation that I just find I don't understand why they think that's going to make the world a better place. I understand the impulse. I respect the impulse to want to make the world a better place and to stop insulting and attacking people who are already being insulted and attacked. I understand where it came from. There used to be a lot of unchecked gross racism sometimes in schools.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My god. Well, they've gotten really, they're upset. They're really sometimes quite aggressive and they really need you to express things in a very conformist way. A lot of people, not all students. Some students really are still very open-minded and questing and want to know a lot about a lot of different ways of looking at things. But some of them are very rigid now. And really, like I handed out a piece of writing by an African American critic, very well known named Hilton Olls. He was writing about Flannery O'Connor, who he loves. And in the first page, you see the N-word. And they didn't know that he was African American right away. And they saw the N-word. And one of them says, on the first page, there's the N-word. And I'm like, I mean, honestly, I think in fiction, personally, I don't have a problem with anybody's in that word. But, you know, my God, he ought to be able to use that word. And they were.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, by the fact that I up until recently, I just quit teaching, but up until recently teaching and having to clarify my thoughts about why I think something is important or why I think a piece of writing is working or not or writing about writing, you know, just the writing. You have to use your mind quite a lot.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a lot of different ways to be in the workplace, that there was a workplace that allowed people to be themselves in a big way, to dress however they wanted, and that that can really work for some people. And it can work for some customers. Some customers like that kind of environment where you walk in and you might be dealing with somebody dressed in their pajamas and their hair standing out to there and weird makeup and who's going to say, go find it yourself.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Advantage of that. And you know, not everybody is going to be able to deal with that. So, like, wait, put the brakes on. I don't like this. We don't like this. So I think that's a natural reaction.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I guess I see the downside of it, how confusing it can be. I actually started to see that in the 90s. I didn't see that in the 70s and 80s. I was very into permissiveness and, you know, the more freedom, the better. Not that I didn't recognize there were dangers always, but I began to see that in the 90s it was beyond physical danger that it could be very confusing to some people. And even to me, I began to see how it had been confusing to me. It took me a while to understand. And I'm also seeing now how repulsive it can be to younger people. There's always a matter of balance. Like for my generation, it was so uptight and so rigid and so locked in to tradition that it was awful. So that's how the kind of extreme permissiveness happened. But then I think there's been a reaction to the extreme permissiveness. And wait a minute, this is not okay to just be saying whatever you want and grabbing people. And there's a real downside to that. The most powerful people are going to, not even socially powerful, but physically powerful.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To have this kind of romantic fantasy set forth, and they wanted to know that the woman cared about it or that she was just in it because she was really into it and liked them. And I didn't know that. And some of them could be really crude and gross, like at late night if they came in drunk and they could be horrible. But that I already knew. I knew that men could be ugly and gross and”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The most popular women were women who were either very flirtatious. Some of them were very plain. They weren't that pretty, but they clearly loved being there. They loved the attention. They would look at the men. They would smile at them, and the men would feel like, you know, she's a girl I could date. She likes me. And they really enjoyed that. They enjoyed the fact that she enjoyed what she was doing. And then there were the beauties. There were some beautiful women who weren't so flirtatious, but they cared about what they were doing. There was one girl really beautiful, like really just gorgeous woman. And she didn't make eye contact. She didn't flirt, but she was really obviously into creating this mystique. She put a lot of effort into her show. She used feathers and feathery boas, and she thought about her music. And the men loved her because the same reason they felt she was really into what she was doing. And she wanted to do it for them. And I learned that, that men could be really, they weren't just about tits and ass. They wanted.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, first, I should say that the kind of strip club I was working in was quite different from what people most think of now. It wasn't like a lap dancing place. There was only one woman on stage at a time. So it wasn't like there were three women and they were moving through the audience and, you know, having a lot of physical contact with men. There was no pole dancing, which I think is awesome, by the way. Pole dancing can be quite amazing. The women didn't have to do that. It was nowhere near as demanding. They just basically went up on stage by themselves, walked back and forth, smiled at people or didn't, and created a persona. And what I learned, I guess, in this very particular setting, this would not apply in kind of a lap dancing venue, that men can be quite romantic about women in that situation. They sometimes would fall in love with a persona that a certain woman would have. And the women would create, not all of the women. Some women just went on there. They danced around, did their thing. That was it. But the most popular strippers, it wasn't about being beautiful. Nobody had artificial breasts.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nope, it was mainly because I was older. I didn't share the experiences like I had gone to community college first, and even then I got into it older because I didn't graduate from high school. And so I came with different background in most people. I had lived on my own for years. I had had experiences that most people undergraduates. I didn't hang out with most undergraduates at all. I was friends with older people who were either graduate students or were people who were just hanging out in Ann Arbor because they'd graduated and they hadn't figured out what else they wanted to do. But even them, I just came from a completely different place. I had worked as a stripper. I had had just a very different experience. I didn't come from high school and coming right from my parents' house to the university. But some of the people who were living, you know, in Ann Arbor didn't come from that either. They had also been supporting themselves in the world for a while as well.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because they're not going to be working while they're in that program, or they're going to be teaching to make up for the fact that they're not paying. That's hard. The best case scenario, they learn a skill that they can later use. But if they're not a person who ever wants to be in academia, they never get a teaching job. That's a worthless skill. It's a demanding of their energy. And again, they're going to get into debt one way or the other. And they may get nothing out of this. And they've gone into debt and basically wasted two or three years of their life. That's a danger. And I think a lot of people don't realize that I may not be a person who can get something out of this and I do not have to go through this program. You don't have to do that to be a writer. And I think many people, I've heard people say this. You've got to do this if you want to be a writer. That, I think, is really destructive.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People do not belong in those programs. It's not going to help them. It just confuses them. I would not have liked to writing program when I was younger. It would have simply confused me. Some people do not thrive in a workshop environment. It intimidates them. There are certain people who will dominate the workshop just naturally. Some people kind of fade in the background. Some people don't like that. Some people, though, it's great. They love it. They love the quick feedback. It focuses them on their work really well. They thrive. So some people, it's great for. But what I have come to think is negative about it is the fact that people think they've got to do it. And even some editors, I think, expect that people have gone through this program. And that, I think, is quite destructive because of the reason I just said for some people, they don't do well in it and it doesn't help them. And it's expensive. And even if it's not expensive, a lot of programs do have a lot of leeway. They let people in with a lot of stipend and a lot of help. But still, it's going to cost them money.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it depends on the person. I hate to keep saying that, but I really believe that. I've come to have a more negative opinion than I used to. My first was aware of it in the late 80s, early 90s. I thought it was fine. I thought my basic attitude is if you are going to be a writer, a writing program isn't going to hurt you. It may not help you that much either. But it's, you know, if you're going to be a writer, why not? Sure, you could take it. It's not going to ruin you or may not help you that much. But I always thought it was silly people saying it's going to ruin American writers. It's going to make it uniform. They're going to be grinding out people cookie cutter. That, I don't think, is true at all. Writers who work in these programs, you're not interested in making people write like you. You couldn't. Why would you want to do that? It's impossible and it would be exhausting to try. And people are going to respond to your comments differently. That's ridiculous to think that. First, I do want to say that also my basic feeling about them at the beginning was some”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sometimes I do. I don't think about it mostly, but sometimes you know I'll walk by a place I was familiar with and be like, oh, I wish things were like that still. I wish I could go back to that time, maybe 10% of the time.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, my own personal ground rules are, well, it depends if you're speaking to the person or not, or also if you know how to find them. I've once at least in a”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, the problem is as you get older, you're probably going to be covering more of your body. You would be less visually appealing on old skin. But if you want to get it just purely for yourself and no one else will ever see it, I guess you're never too old, but I don't really have an opinion”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lady Deadlock is a very erotic figure. Her intense female strength, her intense masking, the idea that she's always hiding something, she's like a Diana Rig figure in the Adventures. Emma Peel. You know, older people might get that reference. She's super elegant. And the lawyer, the guy Tulkinghorn, I think his name is, who decides to expose her, like their conversation is quite highly eroticized in a kind of S&M way. Or I'm trying to think of somebody else. The name is escaping me. Edith Wharton, one of her books I remember House of Mirth, the interplay between the male characters and the female heroine, it definitely you get a sense of masculine power and feminine response. I remember being subtly eroticized, Henry James. Oh my goodness, everybody knows Stern of the Screw is heavily eroticized. So I think there's quite a lot you can do with very subtle means without overtly referring to sexuality.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, and I think that even Victorian novels, it's there, like the first thing that pops into mind is Bleak House. You don't think Dickens is a sexual writer at all, but he is. He doesn't do it explicitly. But Lady Deadlock, have you read that book?”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know because it's something that I would take for granted. So it's hard to understand it really. I think you're talking about what I described on one of my substays as sort of an inner weave that I think good work has. It's almost like a vision of life that the writer isn't even aware of when they're writing it because it's so integral to them. But if they are connecting their vision of life with their actual style, the words they choose, it can be quite strong, like Nabokov has that incredibly. So almost all great writers have it and even good writers have it.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I should. I'm very poorly read for a writer, actually. I actually love the Naked and the Dead. It's nowhere near as sophisticated as this other writings or as weird, but it's quite powerful and beautiful, especially the opening innocence of this soldier who's getting off the boat and has no idea what he's walking into and get shot within moments. Anyway, I really liked Armies of the Night. And it's a horrible book in some ways, but I really have enjoyed American Dream. It's so kooky. Some other ones that I finding difficult to call it. Oh, the fight I thought was very interesting. I don't know if I think it's great. It's interesting and has some great moments.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Haven't read all of them. I haven't read, for example, the executioner song, which some people think is his best, although other people think he actually got somebody else to write that. I have no idea.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Guarding him are oafish figures, stupid offish figures like animals almost. And you'd have to read it to see how he accomplishes this. But it's quite remarkable. But it also to me, it's such a complex story. It's almost like a dream that it almost exists outside any kind of rational thinking. And it comes from that deep place that for nature comes from almost. But it's also to me about how people, really not all people, but there's a big part of humanity that craves irrational authoritarian governance. That's part of what I think makes it powerful. I think it's why people vote for dictators and why people support dictators. Some people crave that it's beyond dominance. It's just someone telling them what to do. Some people want that. And it isn't about masochism in a sexual way. It's beyond that. It's very weird.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is basically broken. And the main character is a guy who just loves this machine, thinks it's the most beautiful, holy thing in the world. And he's enraged because the liberals in his society are trying to banish the punishment and he's trying to persuade the visitor to write something or to say something that will make them realize we must maintain this sacred institution of torturing people to death in front of a crowd, including children. And I mean, that sounds familiar right away when you think of like medieval times or, you know, times in history when people have been tortured to death, including in this country, lynching and witch burning for the amusement of a crowd or the edification of a crowd. And what's amazing is he makes the officer who's pushing for this weirdly sympathetic. That's one of the amazing things about it, that even though he's evil in some way, he believes in something in a way that nobody else seems to. And the prisoner and the guard, the person.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Gosh, I need to really think these things out before I can answer them, Will. But I think it's very much about, again, for those of you who haven't read it, it's a terrible story in a lot of ways. It's a totally fantastical idea of someone from another country coming to visit a penal colony with absolutely bizarre society, seemingly, although it's quite recognizable if you think about it. It's quite real. But the prisoners there have a set of impossible rules. They're governed by an elite set of people who have plenty of money and leisure. And if they break any rule, which for example if you're supposed to sit outside an officer's door and wake up every half an hour and salute him and if you fail to do that, then you have to be strapped face down onto this machine which will very slowly over a period of 12 hours or something right with needles on your back, the rule that you've broken. And sometimes they'll just write it and other times they'll write it until you're dead, until your body.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I haven't seen it for a long time. It's certainly not as good as the novel. I think it's very hard to put that novel in film.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're sister, with your brother, with your friend, with your parents, this really complex relationship of feelings of love with all these other really dark elements. I think that's ultimately what makes it so powerful.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Get enabling you to feel their humanity in the way they respond to the world around them. And also the way it makes you feel in this extreme case, like Humbert is a monster, but he also has elements that we can recognize. Like, I can't say a developed answer quickly, but I wrote about it, how I feel that it makes us, again, in that very subtle, subliminal way without thinking it out, unless you have to write an essay about it, that it makes you understand the relationship of pure feelings of love with all the terrible things that people are too, the rapaciousness, the jealousy, the cruelty, the greed, the selfishness, all of those things that human beings have can also be at very close proximity to our desire for love and our drive to love other people. And it can be really hard for everybody, whether you have a pedophiliac impulse at all. And it can be”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably the same reason it's intriguing for a lot of people. It's one thing, it's incredibly beautiful and the beauty is not simply decorative. It's to take you to a really deep place, again, like that physical reality that I've talked about before. He has an extraordinary ability to render the complexity of the physical world and to deepen whatever his story is about by really drawing you into that and making you understand the vastness of the world and also how it's informing all of the people and the feelings, that the weirdness of the complexity, like the yearning of, say, Mrs. Hayes and Humbert and Lolita for some kind of profound connection and why it's leading them to behave in the horrible ways. Lolita's innocent. She's a kid. She's not developed enough to be horrible. But the adults, what they're doing and what their needs are that's drawing them into these intricate ways of just evil, actually.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Getting overstimulated, a lot of younger people like former students emailed me and said, Yeah, that's how I feel. That surprised me.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Here's the down part of it to get the quick responses does sort of supercharge my mind in a way that's both good and bad. It's stimulating, but sometimes it's stimulating in a way that's weird, like it's kind of jangling, like it's almost like your brain electricity is crossed with other people's and it's just kind of like it's too much and it doesn't have the grounding quality that it would if you were actually seeing those people and talking over drinks or something. There's a physical reality that comes from just being with people, even if there's a lot of stimulation, there's something that's hard to articulate that's an animal quality of comfort if you're really with them. Even if you're quarreling with them, it's still that grounded real quality and you don't have that when you're just communicating online. And it's just this kind of electrical connection, which is to me a little jarring. And I think it is for a lot of people. Like I thought maybe it's just because I was old and not used to it. But when I published that, I need to stop because I'm.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But it's also there's another thing I've learned that people can also be much more polite for exactly that reason. You don't really know who you're talking to, so you don't want to quickly assume something about what they're saying. Like if I'm with the person and they say something, one, I feel like I have to respond quickly. Two, I may jump to conclusions based on old habits or old ideas about the type of person I'm looking at. If I don't have any of those cues, it's just something they're typing. First, I don't have to respond quickly. And two, I've sometimes started to be really sarcastic in my responses to people. And then I've looked at it and realized, I don't know if this person is meaning to be sarcastic to me. I don't know if this person is joking. Like somebody said something I almost typed, I hope you're joking. You're joking, right? And then I looked at it again and realized, I don't know that he is. So I want to clarify. I'll ask a question first before I come in with an immediate response. And I've noticed.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have learned something, but I'm not sure I can articulate it quickly, it's been refreshing to me to be in a writing situation where I'm not so careful about what I say. I go over it sometimes and see I've made ridiculous mistakes in terms of dropped words or incorrect grammar, but it's worth it because it's freeing to have that kind of uninhibited flow with people. And I don't know if I can say exactly what I've learned, but it's definitely been something. And also it's been interesting for me to see how social media can be very positive in some ways. I've always been extremely wary of it. It's the first time I've been on anything like social media. But there's a kind of politeness to it, like the thing about social media that everybody knows is that allows people to be really awful in a way they wouldn't in person because it's, you know, it's easy to be really insulting and gross if you don't even have to look at the person's reaction or, you know, deal with the fact they may want to punch you in the face.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For me, it said I feel like I have to respond. It's not even that I feel I have to. I know I don't have to, but if somebody says anything at all interesting, I want to respond. It's very difficult for me not to respond because I'm curious, especially if it's somebody who's saying something that is very different from people I know in life. Like I have a couple of people on my subsec who comment every now and then. They don't usually speak in a political way, but occasionally they do. And I learn they're actually Trump supporters. I know very few. Well, I know one person who may be sort of a Trump supporter-ish person, but I know very few people like that. So I'm right away quite curious about that person. I don't engage them politically usually once I did. It's interesting to me if I don't know a type of person to have that opportunity to connect with them a little bit that way.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Again, that would depend on the person. I think for some people, it might actually be very helpful to them for a while. If it helps them connect eventually.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Clone it, I could not understand that is the same cat. I just know it's because it looks like the cat is, it's not the same thing. It's just, I can't grasp how anyone could see that as the same animal.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Depends again on the situation. Like, I looked for the one cat that I lost for months probably about a year, possibly even more than that. No, I think I actively looked for maybe nine months, but I was still keeping my eye out for months after that. There was another cat I lost. Most of my cats, when I lose them, they find that they come back. But there was one I didn't. And that was really terrible. And I looked for a long time. Then there was another one I didn't look as long for him and I'm not sure why maybe a couple months.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you like to ask big questions. I could answer that if you presented me with an individual. I can't answer that. I mean, I'm not, that's not my field for one thing, but even if it was, I don't know. I mean, I think the broadest answer that a lot of people, including professionals, would agree with this. Problem is this can't be implemented. If there was a way to limit social media, I think that would help. If there was a way to get people more physically active and more grounded in their body. But, you know, you can't like have mass meditation classes for teenagers and I can't picture that at all. You could try, but see, people are so different. Like some kid might be very amenable to the idea of learning some kind of meditation technique or breathing technique or get interested in martial arts or something like that, but you can't sort of say this is what everybody needs to do. I think if there was a way to get people more grounded in their bodies, that would help and not so fixated on social media. But the problem is that I think no one can figure out how to implement something like that.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I thought that was a wonderful remark, but it's important to note the tone of voice that he used. He was a southern queer gentleman with a very lilting, soft voice. I was complaining about something or other. And he goes, people are horrible. They're stupid and they're crazy and they're mean. And the sooner you realize that, the better off you'll be. The more you go into start enjoying life. And I just laughed because partly it was obviously he was being funny. It was a very gentle way of allowing my ranting and raving and acknowledging the truth of it. I mean, gee, I don't know how anybody could deny that. I mean, look at human history and some of the things that people do. But it was being very spacious about it and just saying, look, you have to accept reality. You can't expect people to be perfect or to be your idea of good or moral all the time. You're probably not either. This is what it is.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, thank you for one, for the observation. It comes naturally to me. It's the way I do understand the world. And I understand people that way too, like by looking at them that way. Not entirely understand them by their words and actions as well, but I think people tell the truth with their face much more than they do with their words and their tone of voice and the way they move their body. But also to me, that's a bigger world than the social world in a sense. It's a very mysterious world that we come from this sort of raw matter. And the social world's certainly important, but it exists in that bigger world. So to me, that's where I'm more naturally attuned. The social world comes out of that, in my opinion. And I feel like I claim to understand that natural world, I don't understand it as like a biologist would certainly, but I'm just very natural for me to go there. Although I have developed it as well. I have consciously developed it as well.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not sure because of that very reason that I don't think I understand, say the education system, that's the one I understand the best because I've taught in universities. But even that, I don't pay much attention to the bureaucracies of those things. I could learn about them. But in a profound level, they don't interest me. And I wouldn't want to write a story about that world probably anyway, or whole novel story maybe. But other settings like I simply don't know enough about them. And it would take a very long time to research them adequately. And I have seen people write about things like that that I don't think they know about them either and it doesn't stop them, but I think that would be the main difficulty I had with that. And to me, it's not the highest possible goal. I mean, it's a high goal. And there are people who do it brilliantly and I admire those people, but I don't feel like you must do it if you want to be.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, this is too complicated. That's too big a question, but it's certainly true that I'm often confused in social situations. Those are very different from sitting by yourself and writing. I can have a great deal of clarity if it's, you know, either a character I've completely invented or I'm writing partly from life, partly from fiction, or it's a essay about something that really happened. I'm just completely in my own point of view. I understand my own point of view, usually pretty well. But that's very different if you're in a room even with two other people and you're dealing with other people's, not just their point of view, but their whole psyche and presence and how the tone of voice. And plus then on top of that, if you don't know them, there's social rules and conventions. Those are what I have trouble with. I often don't read those correctly, though I'm much better at it than I used to be. So anyway, they're two different things. So that's how I may come off as, in fact, may be very knowing in my own writing, but it takes me a while to understand what's going on socially sometimes.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Doing the best I can. I was once with the woman in her house, and her son was there, and he was a big, strong kid like 21 or something and being really worked out and it was a strong guy. And she was trying to tell him to be careful about something and, you know, bad people in the world knew, I'd like to see somebody who could, he used the F word, fuck me up. And I didn't say anything, but I'm like, oh, it take us somebody with a gun and you're dead. And he doesn't know that and he doesn't feel that. He probably knows it in his head because he's so strong in the moment. He's not always going to be like that.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's just a construct, really. And I think that's scary for people. I hope I'm not answering it too great length. It's just a big question.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's hard to remember the context. Perhaps I meant because we're all weak little creatures finally, even the strongest of us is going to either die violently or age and get sick and become face to face with our weakness and the fact that we have no idea who we are, what we're doing here. We're not aware of that most of the time because we're just moving around in the world. on the deathbed things we think we're really important may not matter very much our personality may not matter very much everybody is very connected to their personality well i guess maybe a few people are not either by design either because they want to look past their personality or they're crazy and their personality is disintegrative but most of us are really into our personalities and i think at certain points in life even say you were really sick or we're really disadvantaged we've been beaten badly by somebody or something we realize our personality is actually quite fragile”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People, I want the reader to feel them, and that's something that's more unconscious almost. But I think I want to create almost a feeling that you're in the room with that person. And instead of dismissing them quickly, you open your psyche and just feel them. That's ideally what I'm wanting to achieve.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, part of what I want to do in writing about some characters, not so much Velvet's mother, but also people like Ginger, the other woman in the story who seems to have a much better life, who actually does have a much better life. She's kind of a lost soul in a way. And with somebody like that, I'm not trying to literally tell people how they should understand them, but what I want is to acknowledge that many people like that exist. Like also, I think part of Velvet's mother's problem is that she doesn't fit in with her own community. She, in a way, is like ginger. They're both kind of oddballs. They're both very sensitive people in their own ways. And there are many, many people like that on earth that for whatever reason have a great deal of trouble fitting into their world around them. And even if it's not a bad world, and that's really hard. And it's not that I'm trying to say here are the reasons why, and you should understand, but it's more like I want you to feel those.”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you say the fictional portrayals, you mean in the heads of the unhappy people or literally fiction like somebody like me would write?”
2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source