YouSaid · the spoken record

Mary Gaitskill

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54

first

2022-11-02

most recent

2022-11-02

sittings or episodes

1

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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

1. “Almost like supercharges any negative situation. Not that I'm blaming the people like Delvid's mother, like I said, is in a bad situation objectively.”

   2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Yeah, but it's not even that thought out. It's just have you ever seen like cats? Like I've had situations where I'm introducing a new cat to a household where there's going to be three other cats. And I've had the situation where like two of the host cats are aggressive and they're ready to fight with the new one. And I've seen two different responses. One, I had a fairly confident dominant cat. She knew she couldn't bite to gets. So her strategy was just to sit down, stretch out her paws and look the other way and yawn. That defused the aggression. But another cat was just super reactive, just howling and fear and don't come near me. Don't come near me. I'll scratch your eyes out. They always went for that cat because of her response. It magnified the aggression. So it's something like that. It's like getting yourself into a position or being prepared to be attacked that can draw not only from people, but almost.”

   2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “What they sort of see is a just non stop barrage of shitty experiences. And so that kind of puts them in a posture that they without certainly without intending to invite that. In terms of velvet's mother, that's not what's happening. She really truly has had a rough life. I mean, if you're in a foreign country and you cannot speak the language and you're in a dangerous neighborhood and you don't even understand the social signals that are being sent by the people around you and you're in a social group that's really looked down on and you don't even know how to respond to that or you have no means to respond to that that's hard and if you put on top of that that she's come from a very rough circumstance i mean there's a little about her backstory there you're going to be in a posture of real defensiveness and just locks in and that makes it very hard to move with any kind of joyous energy which is what our daughter learns in the book in riding horses that that's her exposure to a kind of free and joyous energy which she doesn't get anywhere else”

   2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “Well, could we talk about one character? Because I think they're all different. Like, what is that Tolstoy? All happy families are the same, all unhappy families are different. I don't think all happy people or families are the same either, but I think the reasons that people are unhappy are why they seem to just kind of go to that place really easily are quite varied. I think if I could come up with a general reason, not talking about my characters right now, but talking about people, I think people who seem like they just want to be unhappy or incurably unhappy. It doesn't have to do with what they want. It's usually because they've been hurt very early on. And not just once or twice, there's a kind of persistent pattern of them encountering enormous adversity doesn't have to be social. It can be in their family. I guess that is kind of a social. Basically, they're very injured. And so their strategy for life becomes how to protect themselves or how to cope.”

   2022-11-02 · Conversations with Tyler · Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source