Bits #7
Things to read, watch, listen to, think about
I interviewed Katy Hessel in London’s Union Chapel on Tuesday night. I love doing events in churches, they’re beautifully ornate and you can just feel all that history, which felt particularly fitting as Hessel is an art historian and the author of the bestselling The Story of Art Without Men, a corrective to E.H. Gombrich’s seminal text The Story of Art (which featured no women).
A bestseller both sides of the Atlantic, the book spirits us through 500 female artists over 500 years (with plenty more on Hessel’s Instagram account @greatwomenartists, where she posts about a female artist every day.) As someone who never studied art history, I’ve learned so much from her work, namely that context does matter and that when it comes to art, what you feel, is infinitely more important than what you know.
My favourite part of our conversation was when we were talking about female artists subsumed (consumed?) by their male partner’s work (so think Krasner by Pollock, Gilot by Picasso, Kahlo by Rivera, etc), and Hessel pulled up side by side pictures of Claudel sculpted by Rodin, and Rodin sculpted by Claudel, and we just… looked at them. Says it all, doesn’t it?
I was gobsmacked to learn this week that there are 10 million empty homes in rural Japan (known as akiya) which are free for anyone to move into, whenever they want. Yes, that’s right - if you find an empty house in the countryside in Japan, you can move in and call it home. According to The Guardian1, if you allocated 3 people per household, you could house the entire Australian population in Japan’s vacant housing. (The same piece also suggests that the figure could be closer to 11m houses, which would be 30% of Japan’s housing.)
To someone living in a densely populated place like London, it is rattling - made perhaps more eerie by the admission of the British man in The Times piece, who on moving into his akiya, began wearing the Japanese traditional rural dress of indigo robe, straw hat and cloven-foot boots that even the locals no longer wear - but it makes total sense. Japan has a declining population, particularly in rural areas (when areas become less populous, people naturally move towards resources and employment opportunities). With an ageing population, many elderly people die in hospital, without relatives to pass their homes onto, and from thereon the houses lie dormant.
The thought of 10 million houses lying empty, elicits impossible, childish thoughts in me about teleporting houses to combat the housing crisis. For now, it would appear many people are going over there. “There is a lot of hype now, particularly among foreigners, about these gigantic farmhouses in Japan being available very cheaply or free” says Hans Sakata, who renovates and rents out abandoned houses. “In 10 years we could see a lot of foreign-owned akiya.” I’m so intrigued to see what will happen, culturally, and demographically, if Sakata’s prediction comes true.
I’ve been tittering over my daughter’s copy of The Twits Next Door, a funny and filthy sequel to Dahl’s 1958 classic, written by Greg James and Chris Smith. The liberal use of bold capitals can get a bit wearing - tbf, I’m not the target market - but the story is great and they’ve nailed the tone. A family called The Lovelies move in next door to The Twits and are determined to find a lovely side to their horrible neighbours. The Twits, who are as revolting and mean as in Dahl’s telling, feel sick at the sight of The Lovelies loveliness. You can tell James and Smith had such fun writing it.
“Mr Twit stomped down the stairs, his newspaper tucked under his arm. The newspaper was called the DAILY TWIT and it is not available in your local newsagents. Mr Twit had made it himself and here is why.
Like many people, Mr Twit enjoyed catching up with the news each morning. But as he grew older, he realised that he only liked certain kinds of news. He really enjoyed reading about things that were sad, or things that were horrible, or things that were disgusting. And so Mr Twit began cutting these stories out of the newspaper and saving them in a special scrapbook that he called the DAILY TWIT.”
The Twits Next Door is the first of 12 sequels that Roald Dahl’s estate have commissioned to his iconic childrens books, including a follow-up to Danny the Champion of the World by Konnie Huq, and one for James and the Giant Peach by Ben Bailey Smith (who happens to be Zadie Smith’s brother).
I should add, I was the real twit, when I received the book. I opened the promotional box from the publisher, Puffin, and found a box of chocolates inside. Yum! I thought. I need a little afternoon sweet. I should have sussed from the fact that the truffles were placed in the box upside down, and that it said across the front of the box, “THE TWITS DELICIOUS CHOCOLATES” that these were not to be trusted.
But my greediness prevented my brain from reaching the obvious conclusion - and it took until I got to the second chocolate (the first tasting of soap, but I thought maybe it was meant to be mint) and it tasted of ROTTEN EGG, that I realised I’d been pranked. I spat it out and swilled my mouth out with Appletiser but I am still semi-heaving in memory. You got me good, Puffin.
It looks like the next to drop is Charlie and the Christmas Factory. I am very excited to collect them all.
As a short person, I can’t stop thinking about this image of a 1997 ‘same height party’, which I have been sending to all the tall people in my life.2 Imagine if we were the same height? I wrote to my sister, who is six inches taller. The mere thought rendered her speechless. I’m so used to talking up to people, I can’t even imagine the psychological effect of being on their level. A fascinating project! I’m thinking this would be a great theme for my 40th. I’ve got 3 years to get boots made for all my guests. I reckon I can do it, if I invite as many people as are in this photo.
If the multiverse is listening, I’ve found my dream job. I want to be an ‘archive mole’ for one of the small indie publishers that re-discovers out of print books. McNally Editions is the publishing arm of the independent NYC bookshop chain McNally Jackson (which I am dying to visit) and my god I love the covers of the bygone classics their archive moles have sniffed out of obscurity to republish.
McNally aren’t the only archive moles in the biz.