Mary Gaitskill Interview: The Believer Issue 02.09

I sometimes feel like I come off like Ed Wood talking about Orson Welles (as depicted in the film Ed Wood) whenever I'm talking about writers and how they've conducting their lives: that is to say, earnest and more than a little embarrassing.

In any event, this Mary Gaitskill interview was good—and I don't have much more time tonight to devote to this subject than to say that. Personal highlights included (but were not limited to):

• Sentiment as false-feeling.
• Her notion of what a wife is, and more importantly the, frankly, heartwarming post-print-publication addenda.
• The bit about repetition in Dickens and the proceeding tangent on (essentially) everyone's natural tendency towards apophenia.
• The differences between guilt and shame.