This Is Pleasure
A Story
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This Is Pleasure
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Narrated by:
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Nan McNamara
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Ralph Lister
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Written by:
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Mary Gaitskill
About this listen
Starting with Bad Behavior in the 1980s, Mary Gaitskill has been writing about gender relations with searing, even prophetic honesty. In This Is Pleasure, she considers our present moment through the lens of a particular #MeToo incident.
The effervescent, well-dressed Quin, a successful book editor and fixture on the New York arts scene, has been accused of repeated unforgivable transgressions toward women in his orbit. But are they unforgivable? And who has the right to forgive him? To Quin’s friend Margot, the wrongdoing is less clear. Alternating Quin’s and Margot’s voices and perspectives, Gaitskill creates a nuanced tragicomedy, one that reveals her characters as whole persons - hurtful and hurting, infuriating and touching, and always deeply recognizable.
Gaitskill has said that fiction is the only way that she could approach this subject because it is too emotionally faceted to treat in the more rational essay form. Her compliment to her characters - and to her readers - is that they are unvarnished and real. Her belief in our ability to understand them, even when we don’t always admire them, is a gesture of humanity from one of our greatest contemporary writers.
©2019 Mary Gaitskill (P)2019 Random House AudioWhat the critics say
“This insightful fictional take on a #MeToo scandal offers fresh perspectives and avoids easy answers... Gaitskill’s willingness to ignore common wisdom and consider controversial and complex questions from different viewpoints is a true literary pleasure.” [Kirkus Reviews (starred review)]
“Gaitskill never stops at surfaces... She believes - maybe reluctantly - in the absolute primacy of human connections, no matter what a mess we tend to make of them.”(Chicago Tribune)