Mary Gaitskill: evaluation

Transcript context

…Why are we all to be pitied? You said that in The New Yorker once, I believe. 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 come face to face with our weakness and the fact that we have no idea who we are or what we’re doing here. And we’re not aware of that most of the time because we’re just moving around in the world, but on the deathbed, the things we think were 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. I think, at certain points in life — say you were really sick or were really disadvantaged, or you’ve been beaten up badly by somebody, or something — we realize our personality is actually quite fragile, and it’s just a construct really. I think that’s scary for people. I hope I’m not answering at too great length. It’s just a big question. Yeah, great.…

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