This is Pleasure
by Mary Gaitskill
Buy on Amazon"In this powerful short fiction, Mary Gaitskill--whose searing honesty about gender relations has been legendary since the appearance of Bad Behavior in the 1980s--considers our moment through the lens of a particular #metoo incident. The effervescent and well-dressed Quin, a successful book editor and fixture on the New York arts scene, has long been one of Margot's best friends. When several women in his field accuse him of inappropriate touching and remarks, Gaitskill builds the account of his undoing through Quin and Margot's alternating voices, allowing readers to experience Quin as a whole person--one whose behavior toward women could be hurtful and presumptuous on the one hand, and keenly supportive on the other.…
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"Also grappling with power dynamics between the sexes, Mary Gaitskill’s novella This is Pleasure was an extraordinary exploration of issues thrown up by the Harvey Weinstein case and wider #MeToo movement. Written through the eyes of a woman whose male friend’s career implodes following accusations of sexual harassment, Gaitskill wallows in the muddy waters of sexual morality. It also led me back to Bad Behavior , the thrilling short story collection that made her name and spawned the BDSM rom-com Secretary , starring Maggie Gyllenhall . Another super-hit was the New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino’s debut collection of essays, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion , which happily lived up to the hype. Light on her feet but intellectually heavyweight, she turns an exacting, almost academic eye upon popular culture – analysing ego and identity in the age of social media; what she calls the self-optimisation industry (using her devotion to barre as a case study); her experience on an early reality TV show; and how growing up in a Texan superchurch tapped into the same longing for euphoria and losing oneself as later expressed through taking MDMA. Highly recommended."
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