One of the greatest challenges human beings face is how to tease apart a bad act from a good character — or, conversely, a toxic personality from the good and worthy things he created. How do we separate the long-time …
Inside the mind of a monkey-torturer
In 1944, my grandfather was serving aboard the USS Sealion (SS-315) when it became the first and only Allied submarine to sink an enemy battleship. The operation inadvertently imperilled more than 1,000 British and Australian prisoners of war. My grandfather …
Poetry has lost its violence
Jerome Rothenberg, aged 91, has made immeasurable contributions to American poetry over the past seven decades. Born in New York in 1931, he first came onto the scene in 1959 with New Young German Poets, the unintended fruit of his …
Bret Easton Ellis: ‘My generation wanted to be offended’
Earlier this week, Bret Easton Ellis visited The UnHerd Club to celebrate the publication of The Shards, his first novel in 13 years. Below is an edited transcript of his conversation with Jacob Furedi.
Jacob Furedi: Bret, you’ve spoken …
What’s wrong with violent fiction?
I was last asked the question three weeks ago at a panel discussion on crime fiction. The time before that, it was in a written Q&A for a literary magazine. I no longer remember the first time I heard it; …
Violence rules my A&E ward
I’ve seen everything on my A&E ward: from staff, police officers and members of the public being punched to full-on brawls breaking out. Even visibly pregnant staff are not immune to aggression. And that’s just in a fortnight: people don’t …
How Ukrainian women will suffer
Suddenly, images of Ukrainian women are all over the internet. Most of them are mothers, fleeing Russian convoys, carrying their children across borders. Many of them are leaving husbands and brothers behind to fight. But these heart-wrenching photographs, published by …
The rise of the literary noble savage
According to elite cultural consensus, the great villain in America is the white male, so it’s only logical that publishing would run the toxic literary bad boys off. But this hatred is only levelled at the American man. Other talents …
