21 February

I've noticed this, how in recent decades art - writing and music in particular - has been obsessed with being 'real' and 'authentic'. Writers and musicians are so often drawn to the pathological in life, because they think it's somehow more real. (Often because their own lives are actually pretty mundane, so writing about the way-out-there helps them feel less mundane.) This extract from 'Dark Mirror' analyses so well why they do that, I think. Well worth the 30 seconds it takes to read it.