In the second part of my nicely noisy conversation with Hanya Yanagihara about her debut novel
The People in the Trees, we began by discussing ----more----the fictional tribe of Ivu'ivu who may have discovered the secret to extending the natural human life span.
This leads to the following topics:
- Western treatment of the elderly
- 'I would rather be lead off into the jungle than sit in some horrible home for decades'
- sexual rituals and moral relativism
- judging Norton Perina
- 'People do use being in a naive land, where they're the powerful one, as an excuse for all sorts of bad behaviour that they wouldn't do in their own society
- the morality of sexual tourism
- travel writing and the ethics of travel
- 'I can't think of anything that are moral absolutes in every society'
- children, sexuality and the problems of power
- sex and imperialism
- masculinity, editing and narrative in The People in the Trees
- the neatness of theories