‘In Japan, extreme forms of abuse and violence erupt in artistic expression all the time, in literature, film, theatre, anime and manga in part because they are the inverse of a Japanese sensibility which prizes self-effacement and deplores exhibitionism and because unfettered and unregulated artistic expression is prized in ways which are very different to the cancel culture climate gaining momentum in the West.’
Read MoreYes, this is the same person who wrote Cat Person - the only short story to ever go viral. And viral it did. Carried away on a #MeToo tailwind it's probably one of my least favourite stories in this collection. The irony of many Twitter followers loving and ‘relating’ to that story without realising the joke was mostly on them. Relating to Margot or Robert meant you were a bit of an insipid self-obsessed loser but maybe that was the point.
Read MoreI was in a bar in my early twenties when one of the first publishers I ever met scolded me for naming Bret Easton Ellis as one of my favourite writers. American Psycho had yet to be published. She said Ellis was overrated waving her arm though the air – her rose gold bracelets jangling. Ellis’s record stands. So does hers. And Ellis won. For me Ellis is up there with the Marquis de Sade and Oscar Wilde – ferocious dandy stylists of their times – writers who refused to pull their punches. It landed De Sade and Wilde in jail – Ellis fared better but American Psycho still came wrapped in plastic and generated typhoon levels of hysteria.
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