I wanted the book to hurt to read, just as the story itself is about trauma and violence. It’s an old-fashioned outlook, I think, and I decided to embrace it with These Violent Delights, because I wanted the book itself to be an old-fashioned story about moral grappling and the limits of rationality. I love art that is visceral and disturbing, rooted in the frailty of the body and the smallness of human being-that alludes to the unspeakable things we do to each other in the name of an impossible control. I think art should be challenging, and I want the challenge to go to the heart as much as the brain. I love art that is emotional and chaotic, encapsulating the pain of being unable to gain control no matter how much rationality you try to exert. My own taste in art and literature skews Romantic. MN: There are a few of dramatic, sweeping aphorisms in the book that I actually agree with, and this line of Paul’s is one of them. I wondered if you could talk a bit about the connection between beauty, pain and violence within These Violent Delights ? GC: In an early scene in the book, Paul says to Julian that “beautiful things are supposed to hurt,” a line that echoed for me through my reading of the rest of the novel.
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