User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
“As if I were a magician, she listened to me tell her about herself: what she was like, what she needed, what she needed to correct… Now she had returned my gift not to me but to an empty room. Now she was one of my accusers.”I valued the idea of this little book more than I enjoyed actually reading it. Author Mary Gaitskill approaches the #MeToo movement in an interesting way. The voice alternates between that of the accused, a charismatic, influential man in the publishing industry (Quin) and his female friend, who also works in the industry and stands by him (Margot). We do not hear directly from his accusers.
I think Gaitskill succeeds in depicting the very real complexities of sexual harassment cases. In my opinion, she doesn’t attempt to sway the reader in a particular direction but to illustrate how these incidents come about, and why some persons tolerate certain behaviors and others do not. I personally thought the guy was a snake, but at the same time understood some of Margot’s views. She recognized his flaws and never denies his rotten conduct, while at the same time she can’t disclaim the value of his friendship. This was far more complicated for her than it was for me. She lived in the gray area; I’m looking at it from the outside where it is much easier to sketch in black and white. This is such a short book that it was difficult to really sink one’s teeth into it. Probably it is best used as fuel for further discussion on the topic. The writing is straightforward and matter-of-fact; no frills here. But that’s not really the point.
“It seems strange to me when I look back on it now. Because I don’t want to laugh. I feel pain. Real heart pain. Subtle. But real.”
Rating: really liked it
This is trying so hard to be provocative, to be like, "There's two sides to the Me Too debate though, isn't there?" Not really, man. If you accept the argument that "women can just say no" (as if, in real life--and unlike in this book--there aren't consequences for that) then it should follow that you can accept the idea that MEN CAN JUST NOT DO THAT SHIT IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Rating: really liked it
This was so complex for such a short story. I have read reviews saying Gaitskill was trying to show both sides of the story in a "#metoo" tale. Maybe she was, but that's not what I got at all. I think she's showing a creep as a creep- fully fleshed out, And a friend of the creep who is trying to reason out with the reader and herself why she is friends with the creep. Why she just doesn't write him off. Why does she put up with his microagressions and inappropriate behavior? Why do some women tolerate it while others do not? Complex! Quick, well written read.
Rating: really liked it
Over the past few years it’s been inspiring seeing how the momentum of the Me Too movement has raised people’s awareness about sexual harassment and sexual assault as well as instigate a lot of discussion about what’s acceptable behaviour (especially in circumstances where power and influence are at play.) So it’s really interesting how Mary Gaitskill has written a novella about the blurry lines between friendship, flirtation and inappropriate conduct. “This is Pleasure” has a dual narrative that gives equal balance to the voices of long term friends Quin and Margot. Allegations of sexually harassment are made against Quin from former friends and colleagues at the publisher he works for and soon more and more women come forward to testify against him. Margot feels compelled to defend her friend, but finds herself questioning whether his habits and behaviour do indeed cross a line. It’s striking how Quin isn’t a stereotypical predator. He’s charming and sensitive, inspiring many women to befriend and confide in him. And sometimes there are cringe-worthy sexual overtones to his conversation which leads to fondling. He’s an entirely believable and recognizable character – as well as Margot who is quick to justify these types of actions with the explanation “It’s just the way he is.”
Read my full review of This is Pleasure by Mary Gaitskill on LonesomeReader
Rating: really liked it
Well, this short story doesn't quite deliver what it promises, and its biggest flaw is probably the non-existent character development, but it's important to hear stories that question female agency in the context of #metoo - it's not about victim blaming, but about taking a closer look at the dynamics involved (are you still following the Johnny Depp drama, e.g.?). Gaitskill's story is provocatively told from the perspectives of Quin, a powerful book editor in New York who has been sacked for harassing women, and his friend Margot, also a successful editor, who tries to frame his behavior in a favorable context, although she does feel anger towards him (please note that Quin's middle name is "M." (Maximillian), and all chapters by Margot have "M." as a headline - go figure).
Quin does not rape women or progress to touch them if they tell him to stop, and, as far as we know, he hasn't slept with the women in question either. Rather, he is a narcissist who enjoys manipulating women, getting them to share their secrets and making them ask him for advice - and often, he crosses the line, verbally and physically, by asking sex-related questions in a workplace environment or touching women inappropriately. Still, as he is influential and perceived as free-spirited and amusing, Quin gets away with it. It's only when the first woman speaks out that many of those who have tolerated his behavior and/or profited from it before start turning against him.
So there we have all kinds of questions: Why wasn't Quin stopped sooner, particularly by his friends? What role did the women play who took advantage, and then complained when it suited them? How can an online petition lead to the downfall of a person before the allegations are proven? All very uncomfortable questions, especially as there are still many powerful men who use their power as a weapon against women.
But the fact that some people dismiss this story as damaging to the #metoo-movement simply because it states that stories of harassment aren't always clear-cut shows that there's still a need to discuss the factor of nuance. Has Quin behaved inappropriately? He clearly did. The question is what it means to whom, and what the consequences should be. This is not a particularly well-crafted story, but the topics it discusses are important ones.
You can learn more about the book in our latest podcast episode (in German).
Rating: really liked it
This would be perfect for a book discussion group because it is perfectly, perfectly ambiguous. You know what you want to think and once you start reading you can't decide if you should be mad or what you should be mad about.
Nuance. Something that a lot of writing and discourse is missing. You'll find it here.
Rating: really liked it
Nope.
Rating: really liked it
Whew. I had no idea what to expect from ‘This is Pleasure’. I’ve never read anything from Gaitskill and quite honestly had no idea what the novella was about when I picked it up. Honestly, I was kind of blind sided by ‘This is Pleasure’. I realised pretty quickly that the entire thing was attempting to be a commentary on the modern #MeToo movement. It tells the story of Quin, who has been accused by several women within the publishing industry of some kind of sexual harrasment/assault of which we are not fully privy to. The novel revolves around the friendship between Quin and Margot, an old friend who doesn’t see too much of an issue with Quin’s behaviour, which I found came across as some attempt to use one positive female perspective on a situation to drown out so many negative ones.
For such a small novella there were so many parts of this I had major issues with. Really, all of it. Gaitskill not only seems to shame other women for their experiences with how much she’s leaned into the angle she chooses to take on this sensitive issue, she also throws absolutely all of her female characters under the bus at every opportunity. Not a single one of these women are believable characters with complex personalities and nuanced motives for the things they do. Each one of these ‘characters’ is reduced to being the absolute worst caricature of some genre of hysterical woman. Some are happy to be flattered until suddenly they aren’t, some are too stupid to realise what’s at stake and there is not one woman in the entire 84 pages doesn't simply feel like a means to try and prove some point rather than an actual, fully fleshed out character.
Literally every single female character in this is absolutely terrible, and each in a distinct way. Firstly, we have Margot. The entire crux of the novella is the complex relationship between Margot and Quin, which feels like it's constructed to somehow explain or justify a lot of his behaviour. Gaitskill goes out of her way to emphasise their relationship and how Quin has always been inappropriate, as if one woman being okay with indulging this man makes it more acceptable. She is shown as being strong enough to draw clear boundaries with him, which again comes across as some strange attempt to show that because she was able to, every other woman in every other position should be able to do so too. Also, as writing her as someone who has been party to plenty of Quin’s inappropriate behaviour over several years, Gaitskill also paints Margot as completely stupid. If you know someone to be capable of questionable behaviour, you’ve literally seen it happen, and then a slew of women come out and accuse him of similar behaviour, why would your initial response be to disbelieve them? I felt so sorry for Margot, trapped in her own internalised misogyny throughout this novel, she seems to imagine every one of these women’s relationships with Quin are exactly the same as hers so is literally incapable of sympathising with anyone. Margot also has no problem judging Quin and Caitlin’s (one of his accusers) relationship and clearly deciding Quin is in the right, but later in the novel it comes out that she’s never even met Caitlin. She has never met this woman, but apparently has no problem making completely authoritative statements about this woman’s thoughts and feelings, and about her relationship with other people.
It’s not only the main female character that suffers from this, it’s literally all of them no matter how minor. Though Margot and Quin’s relationship is the core of the novella and the main vehicle for the story, she also uses each minor character to make the claims more ridiculous each time one is introduced. The one character that Quin definitively crosses the line with when he rubs her nipple in public, is written as not accusing him of anything and actually feeling sorry for him. This is utterly criminal. It’s cruel and pathetic to write such a flimsy female character who throws herself and her own dignity under the bus in order to throw the other female characters under the bus. By making the one person, who from the evidence presented in the novel, should definitively be accusing this man of wrongdoing not do so, she turns the entire novel into a farce. What kind of an argument is, well he touched my nipple but I’m fine with it so I don’t support the other women who weren’t fine with it? The whole thing is utterly juvenile. We also have the author Margot sees at a party after the accusations who apparently is smart enough to write some great novels and be published but is too stupid to read a full list of abusers and make an informed decision. She signs the petition, jumps on the bandwagon, and only realises later Quin is attached to it and feels ashamed. In a cowardly fashion, Gaitskill makes her barely able to admit her mistake even to Margot, and has her pathetically ask Margot to secretly pass on her well wishes to Quin. What a stupid and spineless character. Again, just the worst stereotype of a mindless woman, unable to think for herself and make informed decisions. Gaitskill also completely undermines herself and her own efforts in doing this to every single female character in a total own goal. I’m not sure how in her world these women are supposed to be both simultaneously so completely stupid and yet also should be admonished for not being able to make a critical choice correctly. You can’t have it both ways.
But above all, the thing that aggravated me most about ‘This is Pleasure’ is that this novel had a chance to actually contribute something to this conversation and instead feels so completely diminutive of it. There is absolutely something to be said for questioning the internet mob justice of the #MeToo movement. These are conversations that absolutely should be had and writing a novel that explores these in a carefully considered, nuanced way could really contribute to such an important global conversation. Instead this is a book that only serves to make all women look utterly ridiculous. There is nothing subtle or clever about Gaitskill’s take on this and it definitely felt like a selfish portrayal. 'This Is Pleasure' makes a mockery the Me Too movement and even women in general, turning them into little more than caricatures.
Addendum: I just wanted to add this little note at the end of this review after certain attention it has received. I've been told multiple times since about Gaitskill's particular style as some sort of defense of this novella. I appreciate that people with more knowledge of her work likely have more insight, but I do believe that novels should always be able to stand on their own. If your writing requires context to be successful, it is not successful. I also struggle to see how this actually works as a defense, and I don't see how telling a completely straight portrayal of all the naysaying around the me too movement does anything at all but embolden those who seek to tear it down and clearly, I'm not the only one who felt that way upon reading it. If so many people are simply 'misinterpreting' Gaitskill's point with 'This Is Pleasure', then it may just be that this particular story (at least) was simply not executed successfully.
Rating: really liked it
Mary Gaitskill wanted to explore the ambiguities of #MeToo, so she did it in this short story narrated by a flirtatious, charming, creepy man in the publishing industry and by his friend, a woman, who maybe kind of enabled his creepiness. It's good. It shows the humanity of people who are on the wrong side of this issue without exonerating them.
Rating: really liked it
presents as more complex than it truly is and i don’t think there’s anything particularly subversive or transgressive about inhabiting the headspace of an abuser and/or one of his defenders. that i can find in mere seconds in almost any direction of reality that i look; it exists everywhere, because these narratives have historically always oriented in this one way.
something i would have found far more fascinating is the amorphous space where these accusers have to reconcile desire (whatever that might mean to them) with social/cultural/political compulsion. what does it mean to confront power in miniature (small, lonely, micro interactions with men who don’t realize their own power)? what does it mean to revile these men? to revere them? to feel both and neither? to be torn between what one woman feels is complicity/inaction vs action? imo this was not as revolutionary as it pretends to be.
also why does this author write about asian people that way……….
Rating: really liked it
I had a hard time reading this story and rating it – it strained credulity. There are a number of characters in the story, the main ones being 1) Quin, book editor in NYC, a man who seems to say (and sometimes does) the most raunchy sexually provocative things to females he knows (and some are colleagues…..some are subservient to him in their jobs) and 2) Margot, an editorial assistant who works elsewhere but is his friend. Margot acknowledges that Quin says and does some raunchy things to women but has a decent heart (he has been kind to her). But I mean….here is an encounter between them…they have not seen each other in a while:
"Back in New York, we met at a restaurant that had once been a meeting place for the artistic élite but was now frequented primarily by tourists and businesspeople. We were seated at a deep banquette; Quin told the waiter that he wanted to sit on the same side as me, so that we could talk more easily, and then he was there, with his place setting. I’m sure he didn’t say this right away, but in my memory he did: “Your voice is so much stronger now! You are so much stronger now! You speak straight from the ****(JimZ: I can’t use the word here…regarding female anatomy….call me a prude I guess)!” And—as if it were the most natural thing in the world—he reached between my legs. “NO!” I said, and shoved my hand in his face, palm out, like a traffic cop. I knew it would stop him. Even a horse will usually obey a hand held in its face like that, and it outweighs a human by nearly a thousand pounds. Looking mildly astonished, Quin sat back and said, “I like the strength and clarity of your ‘no.’ ” “Good,” I replied."
It is a totally non-believable story (at least to me) except the part where finally a lawsuit is brought against Quin by a ton of women he has sexually harassed and he loses his job. Quin is married and he does not try to sleep with the women he harasses…he thinks they like it or need it, or that it will help them make them feel better about themselves.
In the inner front dust jacket the following things are written about the story:
• 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.
• 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 the 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.
Final thought: In The New Yorker in the online version Mary Gaitskill was interviewed about the story and it was a very frank and honest interview throughout…after reading it I can see her point of view for why she wrote the story the way she did. I think since this story appears to be available online as far as I know (google the title and “The New Yorker”, it was published in the July 8, 2019 issue), I’d invite you to read it and perhaps read her interview too (https://www.newyorker.com/books/this-...). I changed my rating from “it was OK” to “I like it” after reading her interview. You know what’s unfortunate? That in the book they did not publish the interview with Mary Gaitskill along with the story. That really was revealing and put the story in context.
Rating: really liked it
a very interesting and nuanced take on the #metoo movement, focusing in on how complex and difficult it can be for the women in the lives of the men who are accused of sexual harassment/assault. i think this could spark a lot of conversations around acceptable behaviour, the blurry lines between what is and isn’t appropriate in a friendship, and the costs of women turning a blind eye to some of the misconduct of their male friends/coworkers/family members. i also wonder if this story inspired ‘the morning show’ on apple tv, or vice versa, because they both remind me a lot of each other in terms of what they explore of #metoo.
Rating: really liked it
Women are like horses. They want to be led. They want to be led, but they also want to be respected. You have to earn it, every time. And they are strong as fuck. If you don't respect them, they will throw you off and prance around the paddock while you lie there bleeding. That's what I think.
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This Is Pleasure is a short novella which I read in a few hours. The chapters alternate between Margot and her friend Quin who has been accused of sexual harassment in a #metoo scandal. Both discuss his behaviour to women and the hurt it might havecaused. Margot talks a lot about how he has helped her and others. We don't hear from the women who have accused him.
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I thought Quin was a total creep, who used being quirky as an excuse for behaving inappropriately with women. The fact that he was sometimes nice to people doesn't excuse his behaviour.
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It felt like Gaitskill was trying to make excuses for older men. The "that's how it was in my day"; "they don't deserve to lose their job"; "she could just have told him no" type line. It should never have been allowed to be that way and women deserve to be treated as equals.
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The novella is very well written and easy to read but it's basically victim blaming.
Rating: really liked it
Originally published as a short story in the
New Yorker, this is a familiar reflection on white male privilege and the exploitation of women. What’s somewhat unique is the way Gaitskill alternates between the perspectives of Margot, a longtime friend, and Quin, the publishing house editor who’s been accused of sexual harassment by multiple former female employees. “I flirted. That’s all it was. I did it to feel alive without being unfaithful,” Quin says. You do – at least, I did – come to feel sorry for him, if only because he’s a witty and charismatic Brit who reminded me of Oliver in Julian Barnes’s
Talking It Over and
Love, Etc. Yes, he acted inappropriately; there’s no doubt about that. In the early days of their friendship, Margot had to resist his advances, so she knows firsthand what he’s like. “But did he deserve to lose his job, his right to work, his honor as a human? Did he have to be so completely and utterly crushed?” she wonders. Quin’s theory is that no one can get at Trump, the epitome of this kind of misogynistic behavior, so they’ve gone after the little guys instead. There’s no disputing this story’s timeliness, but I’m not sure it adds much to the conversation.
Rating: really liked it
This is an uncomfortable read.
I read this as it was the characters thoughts rather than the writers thoughts - so while the character is pretty much defending a creepy guy who has sexually harrassed and abused young women it doesn't mean Mary Gaitskill feels the same (I hope). But I loved that sense of unease and it's unnerving qualities. I mean there's great writing here too of course.
