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I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like
A collection of obsessive and yet crystalline stories set in contemporary Japan, written with savvy that is flawlessly streetwise, literary and metaphysically profound all at once. Futuristic in outlook, up-to-the-minute in setting and sophisticated in influence, these are stories for those who feel that literature has not caught up with the 21st century.
356 pages, Paperback
First published January 12, 2011
7 people are currently reading
445 people want to read
About the author
Justin Isis
26 books176 followersJustin Isis //primary succession psychic automatism citizens of teh universe publishing industry intransitive cauliflower !! Shizuka Muto's brand "Rady# is recommended International law must properly be regarded as another branch of fantastic literature
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
November 17, 2023
Friends, have you ever, at the suggestion of your underground chemist, ushered monkey dust (i.e. PABS (i.e. psychoactive bath salts) MEPHEDRONE .e.i) into your respiratory tract through the cartilaginous teepee responsible for un-visioning (i.e. disappearing) the residual evidence of late night smartie consumption with, like, pulsatile anti-expiration (i.e. snufflization)? What was the most salient feature of the perceptual fracas which followed? To the side; all incidents in which flesh was abraded by formations of metal chevrons protuberating from an aluminum surface like a chrome phalanx (i.e. cheese grater) marching forward and back to the contractile tune of dumb, striated colonies of red worms (i.e. your muscles in electrochemical paroxysms of psychotropic aspect), with screamings of, “I’ll see you in the hell of macerated flesh and low-fat red wine salad spritzer!” Try not to think about that. Instead, concentrate on the fact that your cilia garrison (i.e. your nose) responsible for defending you against aerosolized microbial threats to your palpability (i.e. continued physical existence) saw absolutely nothing wrong with admitting these chemicals which have altered your molecular vibrations from a pleasant state of simple harmonic motion (i.e. a state in which the energy is a quadratic function with respect to the atomic displacements, and the first overtone has twice the frequency of the fundamental) to anharmonic chaos (i.e. a state in which the overtone has slightly less than twice the Bob Harris action figures of the leader of the renegade Nexus-6 replicants [i.e. Roy Batty].) And so you’re attacking people with your K Basix Cheese Grater Handheld Shredder Stainless Steel Formation of Chevrons, Arterial Spray Resistant Non-Slip Grip, Hand Cheese Grater, Red Wine Mist Cabernet Vinaigrette Macerator, Ideal for Hard Fruit, Root Vegetables, Nuts, Parmesan Cheese & Tender Ectodermal Tissues with, lets be perfectly honest, little to no provocation. And while your best friend Vicky is wailing about not filing her Pininfarina’s Aresline XTEN Office Chair (valued at 1.5 million dollars) down to a useless stick of polyurethane material not even fit to increase the inertia of stationery (i.e. act as a paper weight) you trace back this entire episode to “Nanako”, and so you wheel around with your sternocleidomastoid muscles standing out like the hamstrings of a long distance runner and, in a fit of coagulated suspicion and hemotoxicity, produce a sound, “Justin eye *proceeded by a long, venomous hiss*!” And how you look as twin thickets of retinal cones (i.e. your fovea) seem to dance across invisible sheet music, is enough to precipitate Vicky’s immediate voluntary expulsion from the premises.
And that’s exactly how the narrative beats hit you in this collection. Like some surreptitious pharmacological payload which partitions the things you find significant in a completely alien manner. The strangeness hyper inflated by the plausibility of the backdrop against which it is rendered. If you’ve never taken MDMA and suddenly found your shoelaces more interesting than the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, then this sort of attentional recalibration is perhaps unfamiliar to you. But, take it from me, things and events that appear mundane can become suffused with an almost painful degree of meaning. And here I direct your mind’s eye towards the image of me weeping over my RFW Tokyo sneaks and their sleek, simple design, as concerned onlookers wrestle with the desire to comfort someone who might be dangerously unhinged, and I, vindicating their reticence in full, leap from the curb, grab the nearest person by the neck, and, harnessing my inner Holden Caulfield, say through gritted teeth, “The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move... Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you.” To which the salary man flailed and screamed himself red, “胸が苦しいです!!!!” Which, roughly translated, means: “MAN THIS IS A TALL BITCH!”
This book ensorcelled my neuroendocrine pathways with impressive word wizardry (i.e. kicked my hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis (i.e. HPA) right in the kangaroo apples (i.e. jizzberries)), doling out some seriously disturbing content (i.e. cannibalism, incest, animal cruelty, giant face mutilation, and so on.) without reeking of the desperation I find so common in the glut of new weird fiction. Instead of unintentionally tipping into parody with ratcheting splatter shenanigans, these stories were stranger and more impactful by virtue of what’s been omitted. While I am tempted to make comparisons with Mishima, Kawabata and some others, subvocalizing this dude’s lyrical incantations (i.e. engorging my associative networks (i.e. reading) with additional meaning) reminded me of my first brushes with Murakami, but there is something distinct about this brand of fiction which sets it apart from magical realism, and while the term “supraphysiological” utterly fails to capture that difference on a technical level, it seems to satisfy me completely in comprehending it. And since my own happiness is far more important than (and not contingent upon) being completely understood, I refuse to elaborate further. (i.e. I will not, through some final “id est” - riff on its over saturation within this not-review (e.g. any review by me) and then follow up with an addendum which compares the author to my favorite manga creator (that is: Inio Asano) who speaks in the same language of alienation and expertly reveals the numinous within a the hyper real.)
And that’s exactly how the narrative beats hit you in this collection. Like some surreptitious pharmacological payload which partitions the things you find significant in a completely alien manner. The strangeness hyper inflated by the plausibility of the backdrop against which it is rendered. If you’ve never taken MDMA and suddenly found your shoelaces more interesting than the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, then this sort of attentional recalibration is perhaps unfamiliar to you. But, take it from me, things and events that appear mundane can become suffused with an almost painful degree of meaning. And here I direct your mind’s eye towards the image of me weeping over my RFW Tokyo sneaks and their sleek, simple design, as concerned onlookers wrestle with the desire to comfort someone who might be dangerously unhinged, and I, vindicating their reticence in full, leap from the curb, grab the nearest person by the neck, and, harnessing my inner Holden Caulfield, say through gritted teeth, “The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move... Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you.” To which the salary man flailed and screamed himself red, “胸が苦しいです!!!!” Which, roughly translated, means: “MAN THIS IS A TALL BITCH!”
This book ensorcelled my neuroendocrine pathways with impressive word wizardry (i.e. kicked my hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis (i.e. HPA) right in the kangaroo apples (i.e. jizzberries)), doling out some seriously disturbing content (i.e. cannibalism, incest, animal cruelty, giant face mutilation, and so on.) without reeking of the desperation I find so common in the glut of new weird fiction. Instead of unintentionally tipping into parody with ratcheting splatter shenanigans, these stories were stranger and more impactful by virtue of what’s been omitted. While I am tempted to make comparisons with Mishima, Kawabata and some others, subvocalizing this dude’s lyrical incantations (i.e. engorging my associative networks (i.e. reading) with additional meaning) reminded me of my first brushes with Murakami, but there is something distinct about this brand of fiction which sets it apart from magical realism, and while the term “supraphysiological” utterly fails to capture that difference on a technical level, it seems to satisfy me completely in comprehending it. And since my own happiness is far more important than (and not contingent upon) being completely understood, I refuse to elaborate further. (i.e. I will not, through some final “id est” - riff on its over saturation within this not-review (e.g. any review by me) and then follow up with an addendum which compares the author to my favorite manga creator (that is: Inio Asano) who speaks in the same language of alienation and expertly reveals the numinous within a the hyper real.)
March 1, 2021
The struggle of young people to understand their place in the world, within society's context, or outside of its proscribed categories, considered from a multitude of perspectives, at differing stages of fatalistic contempt, solipsism, wanderlust, and obsession. The Japanese setting, conjured with sublime authenticity, was absolutely convincing. Equal parts startling nostalgia and enigmatic yearning. With the tenacity of Mishima and the crystalline clarity of Tanizaki, Isis attains timelessness. In a style bereft of posture, the author zeroes in on a generation of media-savvy, dislocated characters who possess a shattered sense of empathy or are psychologically tethered to abstract or actual idols, who are at times depraved due to the sheer weight of loneliness. It depicts delicate sensibilities in a mature way, reaching a salience of aesthetic purity which perfectly demands the reader's active consideration while memorably encapsulating beautiful lived-in moments.
A sublime and poignant collection of long stories. Atmospheric, mesmeric, down to earth, and unhurried as the films of Kiyoshi Kurosawa or a darkly tinted Ozu. The desolation of empty public spaces, littered with wind-swept memories. Leave your innocence at the door. The book embodies the act of stepping off the precipice of youth into the abyss of adulthood, forcefully straining you through a contorted filter of sex, philosophical hunger, and the inseparable gulf between disparate human understandings.
I would've continued reading this book for another 1000 pages.
A sublime and poignant collection of long stories. Atmospheric, mesmeric, down to earth, and unhurried as the films of Kiyoshi Kurosawa or a darkly tinted Ozu. The desolation of empty public spaces, littered with wind-swept memories. Leave your innocence at the door. The book embodies the act of stepping off the precipice of youth into the abyss of adulthood, forcefully straining you through a contorted filter of sex, philosophical hunger, and the inseparable gulf between disparate human understandings.
I would've continued reading this book for another 1000 pages.
January 7, 2017
In an interview with Weird Fiction Review, Justin Isis labeled his fiction "Emo Situationist Expressionism". Pretty much hits the nail on the head. Some other choice adjectives appropriate for the stories in this collection are 'filthy', 'emotive', 'hallucinatory', 'sublime', 'decadent', etc. The themes and style of these stories remind one of such talents as Georges Bataille, Yukio Mishima, Baudelaire, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Geza Csath, and Jamie Stewart of the critically-acclaimed experimental band Xiu Xiu.
It deserves to be more widely read, and in due time this book will be hailed as a cult classic.
It deserves to be more widely read, and in due time this book will be hailed as a cult classic.
June 28, 2016
It's been interesting re-reading this. Unfortunately, I don't have time to give a decent review at the moment. (Full disclosure: I wrote the introduction and was involved in the publication of the book.)
There were parts in these stories that, on re-reading, I couldn't remember. Often, these were lyrical interludes. The purely lyrical parts were a reminder, it seemed to me, of the 'classical' nature of the prose style (beautiful, literary, without being florid), that at other times might be overlooked because of the grotesque or provocative nature of much of the subject matter. There were passages where something like lengthy introspection or philosophical exegesis took place, but more often I think the style was elliptical, which is to say, formed of images, statements and so on whose significance the reader must complete in their own mind.
This time round, I was struck by the perfection of structure in 'A Design for Life', an understated piece that I have not heard people especially comment on much. My favourite perhaps remains 'The Eye of the Living Is No Warmth'.
There were parts in these stories that, on re-reading, I couldn't remember. Often, these were lyrical interludes. The purely lyrical parts were a reminder, it seemed to me, of the 'classical' nature of the prose style (beautiful, literary, without being florid), that at other times might be overlooked because of the grotesque or provocative nature of much of the subject matter. There were passages where something like lengthy introspection or philosophical exegesis took place, but more often I think the style was elliptical, which is to say, formed of images, statements and so on whose significance the reader must complete in their own mind.
This time round, I was struck by the perfection of structure in 'A Design for Life', an understated piece that I have not heard people especially comment on much. My favourite perhaps remains 'The Eye of the Living Is No Warmth'.
March 1, 2024
A couple years ago I read the pseudonymous author Justin Isis' science-fiction short story collection ”Welcome to the Arms Race” from 2015, which managed to be as finger-licking surreal by the standards of the 2010's as William Gibson's ”Burning Chrome” was by the standards of the 1980's' – no mean feat. ”I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like” from 2011 contains examples of what realistic short stories written by the same man look like. The stories within accurately depict how real life in the 21st century often gets weirder than the vast majority of science-fiction authors could have predicted.
All of the short stories found in ”I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like” are set in contemporary Japan, depicting in fine detail aspects of Japanese society which often remain obscure to most Westerners. Another impressive accomplishment, especially when you consider the author's lack of Japanese heritage: According to an interview for The Aither he's a 2nd generation Italian-American whose youth was evenly divided between Italy, the United States and Australia to the point he carries passports for all 3 countries and views Milan, New York City and Perth as his three hometowns on equal footing. He shows an exceptional ability to describe the inner lives of the main characters even when they do things that are weird or horrifying to the reader, and a rare gift for capturing the specific atmospheres of the social environments described. The result is one of the very few works of fiction I have read where I have this clear an idea of how everything not just looks and feels, but also sounds and smells.
A good example is ”Garden of Sleep”, a short story told from the viewpoint of a man who starts a relationship with a trans person 15 years his junior, whom he ends up abusing with no satisfying resolution in sight for any of the story's characters. The fact that Justin Isis manages to humanise a protagonist who does some horrifying things throughout the story, as well as writing about fucked up aspects of modern society without offering an obvious constructive solution for the issues described, results in ”Garden of Sleep” being one of the most disturbing short stories I have read in a long while. (certainly more disturbing than the 2 stories in here which can be categorised into the horror genre, hence the positive blurbs by horror authors Mark Samuels and Thomas Ligotti on the back)
If I have to pick my own personal favourite stories in here, they have to be: ”The Quest for Chinese People” which hilariously satirises Japan's particular variety of navel-gazing parochial nationalism; ”A Design for Life” which is an interesting look into international avantgarde art movements clearly written by an insider to such milieux; ”I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like Etc.” which follows 2 young women who have been raised into a strict vegetarian lifestyle, reacting against such an upbringing with bleakly hilarious results.
I also have to mention the final short story, which bears the title ”A Thread from Heaven”. This is by far the longest, to the point of almost counting as a novella. The story revolves around a friendship between 2 teenage boys, one Japanese and the other South Korean, that slowly falls apart. Perhaps because of the length, this story goes into by far the furthest depth describing the characters' inner lives, in addition to describing several elaborate dream sequences that each has the potential for an interesting fantasy or science-fiction short story in them.
It took a while for me to understand to a satisfying extent what Justin Isis was going for here. I get the impression he takes a certain level of pride in writing fiction so unconventional even most indie publishers don't understand it. I also find it interesting that he defies popular clichés of what ”experimental fiction” looks like, having in interviews expressed dissatisfaction with ”experimental fiction” and ”transgressive fiction” at this point in human history being effectively genres with as many codified clichés as horror and science-fiction. Notice that the no1 stereotype that the average modern Westerner has of experimental literature is a complex doorstopper novel with many seemingly independent plot lines that eventually converge, with fantastic elements used in different contexts than what the typical reader would associate with science-fiction or fantasy. (archetypical examples being Thomas Pynchon's ”V.” and Robert Anton Wilson's ”The Illuminatus Trilogy”) It is probably no coincidence, then, that both of the books by Justin Isis I own are short story collections one 100% science-fiction the other 100% realistic fiction... and his ostensibly realistic stories were by far the most difficult for me to understand. Closest point of comparison I can think of in writing style is the contemporary Danish author Louise Kristensen's 2 published short story collections "Against the Sunset" and "The Queen of Alcohol", with the main difference being the Japanese setting.
If you are interested in reading fiction depicting daily life in the 21st century that does not fit popular clichés of literary realism, or just literature that is exceptionally challenging and unconventional even by the standards of books published by small presses, ”I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like” might be worth a read. Note that the book is currently out of print after Chomu Press closed earlier this year, though it might be reissued by another small press (probably the author's current home Snuggly Books) in the near future.
All of the short stories found in ”I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like” are set in contemporary Japan, depicting in fine detail aspects of Japanese society which often remain obscure to most Westerners. Another impressive accomplishment, especially when you consider the author's lack of Japanese heritage: According to an interview for The Aither he's a 2nd generation Italian-American whose youth was evenly divided between Italy, the United States and Australia to the point he carries passports for all 3 countries and views Milan, New York City and Perth as his three hometowns on equal footing. He shows an exceptional ability to describe the inner lives of the main characters even when they do things that are weird or horrifying to the reader, and a rare gift for capturing the specific atmospheres of the social environments described. The result is one of the very few works of fiction I have read where I have this clear an idea of how everything not just looks and feels, but also sounds and smells.
A good example is ”Garden of Sleep”, a short story told from the viewpoint of a man who starts a relationship with a trans person 15 years his junior, whom he ends up abusing with no satisfying resolution in sight for any of the story's characters. The fact that Justin Isis manages to humanise a protagonist who does some horrifying things throughout the story, as well as writing about fucked up aspects of modern society without offering an obvious constructive solution for the issues described, results in ”Garden of Sleep” being one of the most disturbing short stories I have read in a long while. (certainly more disturbing than the 2 stories in here which can be categorised into the horror genre, hence the positive blurbs by horror authors Mark Samuels and Thomas Ligotti on the back)
If I have to pick my own personal favourite stories in here, they have to be: ”The Quest for Chinese People” which hilariously satirises Japan's particular variety of navel-gazing parochial nationalism; ”A Design for Life” which is an interesting look into international avantgarde art movements clearly written by an insider to such milieux; ”I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like Etc.” which follows 2 young women who have been raised into a strict vegetarian lifestyle, reacting against such an upbringing with bleakly hilarious results.
I also have to mention the final short story, which bears the title ”A Thread from Heaven”. This is by far the longest, to the point of almost counting as a novella. The story revolves around a friendship between 2 teenage boys, one Japanese and the other South Korean, that slowly falls apart. Perhaps because of the length, this story goes into by far the furthest depth describing the characters' inner lives, in addition to describing several elaborate dream sequences that each has the potential for an interesting fantasy or science-fiction short story in them.
It took a while for me to understand to a satisfying extent what Justin Isis was going for here. I get the impression he takes a certain level of pride in writing fiction so unconventional even most indie publishers don't understand it. I also find it interesting that he defies popular clichés of what ”experimental fiction” looks like, having in interviews expressed dissatisfaction with ”experimental fiction” and ”transgressive fiction” at this point in human history being effectively genres with as many codified clichés as horror and science-fiction. Notice that the no1 stereotype that the average modern Westerner has of experimental literature is a complex doorstopper novel with many seemingly independent plot lines that eventually converge, with fantastic elements used in different contexts than what the typical reader would associate with science-fiction or fantasy. (archetypical examples being Thomas Pynchon's ”V.” and Robert Anton Wilson's ”The Illuminatus Trilogy”) It is probably no coincidence, then, that both of the books by Justin Isis I own are short story collections one 100% science-fiction the other 100% realistic fiction... and his ostensibly realistic stories were by far the most difficult for me to understand. Closest point of comparison I can think of in writing style is the contemporary Danish author Louise Kristensen's 2 published short story collections "Against the Sunset" and "The Queen of Alcohol", with the main difference being the Japanese setting.
If you are interested in reading fiction depicting daily life in the 21st century that does not fit popular clichés of literary realism, or just literature that is exceptionally challenging and unconventional even by the standards of books published by small presses, ”I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like” might be worth a read. Note that the book is currently out of print after Chomu Press closed earlier this year, though it might be reissued by another small press (probably the author's current home Snuggly Books) in the near future.
December 18, 2019
Possibly one of the strangest books I ever read. It felt like being introduced to Murakami all over again.
In my opinion where Murakami's characters seemed relatable, the people that inhabit Justin's stories defy explanation and yet seem real. Its like he dredged the depths of humanity and peered long and hard behind the charade of normalcy that most people preserve to seek inspiration for this collection.
Depressing, melancholy and with an undercurrent of perverse sexuality that is always lurking yet never bubbling forth to the surface!
This was a memorable read.
In my opinion where Murakami's characters seemed relatable, the people that inhabit Justin's stories defy explanation and yet seem real. Its like he dredged the depths of humanity and peered long and hard behind the charade of normalcy that most people preserve to seek inspiration for this collection.
Depressing, melancholy and with an undercurrent of perverse sexuality that is always lurking yet never bubbling forth to the surface!
This was a memorable read.
September 16, 2024
Follows in a long line of shit cunt texts like Lolita, Temple of the Golden Pavilion, American Psycho, and The Sluts. Your mileage will vary depending on how much you can stand shit cunt anti-socials who would rather get the shit kicked out of them and ruin the lives of trans girls than go to therapy. On some level, Justin Isis motions towards an alien world, a mechanistic system of alienation that engulfs our capacity to empathise with others and with ourselves. Yet, too often, we're trapped in the heads of his characters, watching helplessly as their psychotic thoughts blossom into violence and abnegation. Such helplessness mirrors the characters' own entrapments, but these entrapments maim others, and those who are maimed matter less than the ones who maim.
It may 'miss the point' of these texts to focus on the victims of violence, rather than the perpetrators, but maybe the point has been made too many times already. To put it bluntly, fuck psychopaths and the system of detached spectacle that fashions our fascination for them. As scholars of China Mieville have argued, love, solidarity, and revolution are just as (if not more) transgressive than hatred, xenophobia, and rape, especially in an economic system that valorises individualism over mutualism. Anti-sociality then, is nothing but the norm of capitalist realism. What would Dennis Cooper say to that, I wonder?
—
[Edit] Curse you Justin for liking my review >////< Now, I'm a self-conscious human bean shamefully reflecting on the fairness of it.
According to another reviewer, Justin was 24 when he published this.
When I was 24 I was bedridden at home after a suicide attempt. My dad hid the knives from the kitchen in case I relapsed. I lay in bed all day, for months on end, because I saw no point in living. I couldn't express myself emotionally, I couldn't communicate with others, and my future felt arbitrary, the whims of an impersonal god who would later reveal themselves to be capitalism.
A few years after my 'recovery,' I was candyflipping at a house gig, rolling on the floor, and yelping inarticulately into a mic. I'd been doing this all year, with escalating intensity. A bandmate sexually assaulted me after our set. If this had not happened, I would have continued on with my self-destructive path towards nowhere and nothing, hurting all those around me, myself the most. Because of this assault, I learnt about complex-PTSD and started healing from pains far earlier and deeper than it.
This is why I have a hard time reading this kind of fiction. Because I see myself as both perpetrator and victim, detached and dissociated. An invalid in an invalidating world, with no escape in sight. Cruelty blossoming through tighter and tighter circles of constriction. Reading trauma as the human condition.
No matter their grotesqueries, many of Justin's characters are just kids who don't know the source of their suffering. And if you're in that space, it's bleak. Utterly.
But maybe Justin's approach to these characters is more akin to the Buddha or Benjamin's Angelus Novus. Looking down from heaven, all they see are the inarticulate motions of people blindly suffering. They cannot intervene (you cannot save people who don't want to save themselves), they can only watch with heartbreak as history unfurls into atrocity.
This is how I see my past self, from a site beyond freedom and fate, idealism and materialism. Despite everything I know now, none of it can help them. Their suffering is as inevitable as their healing. They will never be free from their suffering, but they will always be healed through me.
It may 'miss the point' of these texts to focus on the victims of violence, rather than the perpetrators, but maybe the point has been made too many times already. To put it bluntly, fuck psychopaths and the system of detached spectacle that fashions our fascination for them. As scholars of China Mieville have argued, love, solidarity, and revolution are just as (if not more) transgressive than hatred, xenophobia, and rape, especially in an economic system that valorises individualism over mutualism. Anti-sociality then, is nothing but the norm of capitalist realism. What would Dennis Cooper say to that, I wonder?
—
[Edit] Curse you Justin for liking my review >////< Now, I'm a self-conscious human bean shamefully reflecting on the fairness of it.
According to another reviewer, Justin was 24 when he published this.
When I was 24 I was bedridden at home after a suicide attempt. My dad hid the knives from the kitchen in case I relapsed. I lay in bed all day, for months on end, because I saw no point in living. I couldn't express myself emotionally, I couldn't communicate with others, and my future felt arbitrary, the whims of an impersonal god who would later reveal themselves to be capitalism.
A few years after my 'recovery,' I was candyflipping at a house gig, rolling on the floor, and yelping inarticulately into a mic. I'd been doing this all year, with escalating intensity. A bandmate sexually assaulted me after our set. If this had not happened, I would have continued on with my self-destructive path towards nowhere and nothing, hurting all those around me, myself the most. Because of this assault, I learnt about complex-PTSD and started healing from pains far earlier and deeper than it.
This is why I have a hard time reading this kind of fiction. Because I see myself as both perpetrator and victim, detached and dissociated. An invalid in an invalidating world, with no escape in sight. Cruelty blossoming through tighter and tighter circles of constriction. Reading trauma as the human condition.
No matter their grotesqueries, many of Justin's characters are just kids who don't know the source of their suffering. And if you're in that space, it's bleak. Utterly.
But maybe Justin's approach to these characters is more akin to the Buddha or Benjamin's Angelus Novus. Looking down from heaven, all they see are the inarticulate motions of people blindly suffering. They cannot intervene (you cannot save people who don't want to save themselves), they can only watch with heartbreak as history unfurls into atrocity.
This is how I see my past self, from a site beyond freedom and fate, idealism and materialism. Despite everything I know now, none of it can help them. Their suffering is as inevitable as their healing. They will never be free from their suffering, but they will always be healed through me.
June 10, 2024
Asano Inio, Like a Dragon, Iwai Shunji’s films are some of the pillars that had given me an idea of what to expect when I finally get to visit Japan (A lifelong ambition for a working-class Peruvian like me). The fourth pillar would be I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like by Justin Isis. It was almost a year zero for me regarding literature. Before it, I was only into Salinger, Cheever and Fitzgerald and I thought that Murakami Haruki was the best Japanese literature had to offer (I know, shame on me. I was a heartbroken young man). After this book, names like Mishima, Kawabata and Akutagawa got my attention and I started to read what I considered closer to my own aesthetic desires rather than what the establishment considered “good”. Dreams, karaoke bars, Izakayas, convenience stores, semen, mental landscapes, contemporary ennui, violent bursts, the importance of titles and how to shape the world to suit one own’s vision. Mr Isis didn’t fall into the common (and now unbearable for me) so-called literary style of “rain, coffee and cigarettes”: passionless bores pretending to be cool by quoting Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, diluting more interesting writers into their dysfunctional prose. Life is full of beauty, sadness, sex (if you are lucky) and revelations. This book has them all. Bring on the Girl Revolution!
May 8, 2022
Full disclosure: I know Justin Isis. We're friends. One of the fun parts of our friendship is that we joke around and tease each other a lot. When I told him I was going to read this, his first collection, he said, "Be generous, I was 24 when I wrote that." I replied, "Omg, I can't wait to rip it to shreds! Mwahahaha." I have a problem, though: I can't rip it to shreds. That's because this collection is really, really good. The stories are tight and efficient without being cryptic or obscure or leaving anything out. I couldn't find a wasted word. The prose is spot on, and each story has this pall of tinkling suspense hovering over it, while each has an ending that, though you may know exactly what's coming, still surprises you because it's done so damn well. As I was reading, I was reminded a bit of what Samuel Butler said and I think Justin does this really well: to use the specific to talk about the general. Most of the characters in these stories are disaffected, disillusioned, and/or alienated, but the really gratifying and satisfying part of these stories is how this is shown to us through the minutiae of these characters' everyday lives without any sort of browbeating or tangential philosophizing. The stories and the writing speak for themselves and nothing more is needed.
February 20, 2015
I just finished reading this book five minutes ago: it is the first time I've read it, and I was very impressed. In particular, I greatly enjoyed the stories "Manami's Hair" (Miyabi's dream on pages 44-45 is a very evocative sequence), "The Quest for Chinese People" (which I found to be a very hilarious story, to the point where it made me laugh out loud a few times), "The Eye of the Living is no Warmth," and especially "The Garden of Sleep," which I found to be very erotic, beautiful and sad in equal measure. The last story was also very well-written, but my god, talk about ending on a downer note!
I think my favorite aspect of the book was the characterization, not only of the people who populate the stories (many of whom I could personally relate to) but also the country of Japan itself. Even though I didn't always understand what was going on (and was mystified by the way that a couple of the stories ended, which isn't always a bad thing), I always found myself caring about the characters and their stories.
I think my favorite aspect of the book was the characterization, not only of the people who populate the stories (many of whom I could personally relate to) but also the country of Japan itself. Even though I didn't always understand what was going on (and was mystified by the way that a couple of the stories ended, which isn't always a bad thing), I always found myself caring about the characters and their stories.
December 20, 2023
A stunning collection of stories set in Tokyo that reads like an interwoven novel. Isis called I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like a ‘cubist novel’ and the stories are thematically and tonally all of a piece; Tokyo is authentically rendered but also feels as exotic as Viriconium. It is as though its streets, its izakaya bars, its love hotels, its karaoke bars are all populated by the characters from the other stories. Written in a cool lyrical realism, the main characters share a fierce solitariness, in thrall to their often perverse obsessions, a decadent fatalism, detached from mainstream society, indifferent to its expectations.
There’s an intensity to every story here, an overtone of perverse nihilistic transgression with the possibility of sudden eruptions of violence. Reading this I was on edge, fascinated, disturbed; such a visceral literary experience.
{{{ kulchurkat.uk }}}
There’s an intensity to every story here, an overtone of perverse nihilistic transgression with the possibility of sudden eruptions of violence. Reading this I was on edge, fascinated, disturbed; such a visceral literary experience.
{{{ kulchurkat.uk }}}
November 12, 2021
Justin Isis is probably one of the best contemporary writers I have read. This is my favourite book by him. I strongly urge people to read this book.
June 27, 2023
Justin Isis is one of the main authors of the "Neo-Decadent movement", a collection of writers using and updating techniques and tonality from the Decadent Fin-de-Siecle writers, but setting their stories in the modern world (most of the time), and often implementing elements of horror, fantasy or surrealism.
Isis's debut collection of short stories is set in modern-day Tokyo, and mostly on the realist side, but almost all of the stories contain something to offset any balance of pure realism; surrealist imagery, obtuse interpretation-challenging endings, horror tonality or - most of all - dissociated characters with odd outlooks and motives. In a mostly realistic setting, it is about as weird as it can get.
These stories are especially concerned with youth culture in Japan, seemingly a place and time ripe with loneliness, disassociation, alienation, and sexual misunderstanding (fashion is a particular interest of Isis, and it pops up many times here).
Many of the characters herein are caught in solipsistic conundrums, struggling to connect with anyone or anything in particular. The lack of meaningful relations between characters underpins the collection as a whole.
The best stories for me were:
'Garden of Sleep', in which a young man supports a fashion-obsessed tween boy in seeking a sex(ual) transformation.
'The Quest for Chinese People' is a sort of solipsistic conspiratorial parable. Very strange and very interesting.
'Thread From Heaven', a character study of a dissociated youth.
A good debut collection, with a few misses. Quality prose in chosen moments, but often the realist teenage dialogue and rather flat tone bored me a bit. Very intrigued to see what Isis can do in a completely speculative mode (next collection 'Welcome to the Arms Race').
Isis's debut collection of short stories is set in modern-day Tokyo, and mostly on the realist side, but almost all of the stories contain something to offset any balance of pure realism; surrealist imagery, obtuse interpretation-challenging endings, horror tonality or - most of all - dissociated characters with odd outlooks and motives. In a mostly realistic setting, it is about as weird as it can get.
These stories are especially concerned with youth culture in Japan, seemingly a place and time ripe with loneliness, disassociation, alienation, and sexual misunderstanding (fashion is a particular interest of Isis, and it pops up many times here).
Many of the characters herein are caught in solipsistic conundrums, struggling to connect with anyone or anything in particular. The lack of meaningful relations between characters underpins the collection as a whole.
The best stories for me were:
'Garden of Sleep', in which a young man supports a fashion-obsessed tween boy in seeking a sex(ual) transformation.
'The Quest for Chinese People' is a sort of solipsistic conspiratorial parable. Very strange and very interesting.
'Thread From Heaven', a character study of a dissociated youth.
A good debut collection, with a few misses. Quality prose in chosen moments, but often the realist teenage dialogue and rather flat tone bored me a bit. Very intrigued to see what Isis can do in a completely speculative mode (next collection 'Welcome to the Arms Race').
March 29, 2025
It’s hard to put into words how immaculate this novel? Collection of short-stories? Depraved yet beautiful set of vignettes? Actually is.
Rather risking just repeating what other reviewers have said about Justin’s book, I’ll give my short tidbit and leave the rest to you.
This book does what all those other ‘transgressive’ novels I thought were so cool back in my junior year of university tried to do. It presents notions of ‘transgressions,’ ‘depravity,’ and ‘taboo’ subject matter neither from a place of outright critique nor glorification. This book just presents these things as is, no moralistic filters, nothing.
But this book is also so much more than that. It explores various philosophical ideals, and I especially agree with Quentin S. Crisp in the introduction of the book that this book explores various notions of affect and embodiment to a tee. I’m definitely going to use this as a reference in my honours thesis on affect theory.
More so, this is just a testament to how great of a writer Justin Isis is. In all honesty, nothing really happens in this book. I mean yes, cannibalism, karaoke, lots of drinking, but really, nothing substantial happens, yet I was gripped the whole way through. And I think Justin’s writing, combined with the topical decision of mixing the banal with the depraved, carried me through the entire book.
I can’t wait to read more of his stuff. I wish Chomu press didn’t go defunct, so I’ll have to settle for digital copies for now.
Rather risking just repeating what other reviewers have said about Justin’s book, I’ll give my short tidbit and leave the rest to you.
This book does what all those other ‘transgressive’ novels I thought were so cool back in my junior year of university tried to do. It presents notions of ‘transgressions,’ ‘depravity,’ and ‘taboo’ subject matter neither from a place of outright critique nor glorification. This book just presents these things as is, no moralistic filters, nothing.
But this book is also so much more than that. It explores various philosophical ideals, and I especially agree with Quentin S. Crisp in the introduction of the book that this book explores various notions of affect and embodiment to a tee. I’m definitely going to use this as a reference in my honours thesis on affect theory.
More so, this is just a testament to how great of a writer Justin Isis is. In all honesty, nothing really happens in this book. I mean yes, cannibalism, karaoke, lots of drinking, but really, nothing substantial happens, yet I was gripped the whole way through. And I think Justin’s writing, combined with the topical decision of mixing the banal with the depraved, carried me through the entire book.
I can’t wait to read more of his stuff. I wish Chomu press didn’t go defunct, so I’ll have to settle for digital copies for now.
January 28, 2011
Justin Isis: A Strange and Fascinating New Voice in Literature
Justin Isis pounces onto the literary scene in his first novel published by the avant garde Chômu Press as a voice so strange yet so very well practiced at his nascent craft that he bears close observation. I WONDER WHAT HUMAN FLESH TASTES LIKE is a title of one of the ten stories in this 'progressive involvement' technique of novel writing and if that title doesn't capture the attention of a wide and sophisticated audience then the cover art by Colwyn Thomas most surely will! The book is presented as a collection of short stories, and yes, they each could stand alone as each has a theme and a beginning and an end, but when read consecutively they feel like peeling an onion as the narrator takes us through experiences one by one that demystify him, allowing the reader to begin observation in the early stories as a voyeur and lead to feeling of involvement in this odd artist's life as a confidant.
All of the stories take place in Japan and each of them involves the narrator encountering a female figure who may or may not be real (the girls may be a part of the artist's creative side of his brain, part of his writing skill). Justin Isis keeps our attention by bringing such odd concepts into the line of the stories as bizarre methods of self gratification, cannibalism, spontaneously strange physical encounters with his females, horrifying incidents of killing pets, and so forth. Yet we are always given the option of considering these incidents to be imagined or dreamed - a very wise technique in developing stories that might otherwise lose the reader.
As an example of how Isis accomplishes this is as follows: 'Yeah, he said. It's another dream I had, about this fox that turns into a girl. I guess it's more like an outline, there's not that much description. I mean, I think technical proficiency is a waste of time. You can spend your whole life learning to write or draw everything perfectly and it won't mean anything if you're not saying anything new. What's the point of life if you don't have any ideas?' And continuing in the dialog of the title story the author writes: 'You might be wondering what the connection between foxes and eating human flesh is. The truth is that there is none, but by calling my story that, I force whoever reads the story to make some kind of connection. That's part of my strategy, to force the reader to make connections between things they wouldn't necessarily connect. If it's successful, it taints their everyday system of association with new associations that I can impose. That's the power artists have, to reorder how people see the world.'
Such is the insight of this intelligent and gifted young writer, Justin Isis. And so flows this endlessly fascinating stream of bizarre tales that challenge us to look at the weird, the impossibly improbable encounters he introduces to us at face value and then realign our probable provincial concepts to open windows of possibility. Prepare to be shocked into new ways of thinking - and then prepare for his next novel that simply must not be far behind!
Grady Harp
Justin Isis pounces onto the literary scene in his first novel published by the avant garde Chômu Press as a voice so strange yet so very well practiced at his nascent craft that he bears close observation. I WONDER WHAT HUMAN FLESH TASTES LIKE is a title of one of the ten stories in this 'progressive involvement' technique of novel writing and if that title doesn't capture the attention of a wide and sophisticated audience then the cover art by Colwyn Thomas most surely will! The book is presented as a collection of short stories, and yes, they each could stand alone as each has a theme and a beginning and an end, but when read consecutively they feel like peeling an onion as the narrator takes us through experiences one by one that demystify him, allowing the reader to begin observation in the early stories as a voyeur and lead to feeling of involvement in this odd artist's life as a confidant.
All of the stories take place in Japan and each of them involves the narrator encountering a female figure who may or may not be real (the girls may be a part of the artist's creative side of his brain, part of his writing skill). Justin Isis keeps our attention by bringing such odd concepts into the line of the stories as bizarre methods of self gratification, cannibalism, spontaneously strange physical encounters with his females, horrifying incidents of killing pets, and so forth. Yet we are always given the option of considering these incidents to be imagined or dreamed - a very wise technique in developing stories that might otherwise lose the reader.
As an example of how Isis accomplishes this is as follows: 'Yeah, he said. It's another dream I had, about this fox that turns into a girl. I guess it's more like an outline, there's not that much description. I mean, I think technical proficiency is a waste of time. You can spend your whole life learning to write or draw everything perfectly and it won't mean anything if you're not saying anything new. What's the point of life if you don't have any ideas?' And continuing in the dialog of the title story the author writes: 'You might be wondering what the connection between foxes and eating human flesh is. The truth is that there is none, but by calling my story that, I force whoever reads the story to make some kind of connection. That's part of my strategy, to force the reader to make connections between things they wouldn't necessarily connect. If it's successful, it taints their everyday system of association with new associations that I can impose. That's the power artists have, to reorder how people see the world.'
Such is the insight of this intelligent and gifted young writer, Justin Isis. And so flows this endlessly fascinating stream of bizarre tales that challenge us to look at the weird, the impossibly improbable encounters he introduces to us at face value and then realign our probable provincial concepts to open windows of possibility. Prepare to be shocked into new ways of thinking - and then prepare for his next novel that simply must not be far behind!
Grady Harp
July 2, 2014
unexpectedly compelling with lots of great stuff; not really a novel but a collection of stories with a few truly outstanding ones; not as creepy as the title implies but with enough of darkness not to be for everyone
January 8, 2021
Don’t take any one shock as something that should turn you away from this book. In symphonic music, a sudden atonal blast is no reason to walk out from the rest of it. The rest could be as spiritually beautiful as the Lark Ascending or as spiritually darkening as the Lurk Descending. All done without touching the sides. Laid-back. A new gear in literature now clinching….
The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long to post here.
Above is its conclusion.
The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long to post here.
Above is its conclusion.
February 24, 2021
Absolutely fascinating book! I’ve read it twice and there are still things that have me thinking.
Read
May 21, 2022I've often mused about the uses and misuses of the word “decadent” in contemporary America. No, high thread-count Target sheets and Cheesecake Factory desserts don't count. Meditations on the nature of cannibalistic fantasies of schoolgirls at least can count as decadent, and that's what Isis is aiming squarely for here. These are gorgeously rendered decadences, and if that's your thing, you should absolutely read them.
January 10, 2018
This is the third book I've read by Justin Isis (I think I read them newest to oldest). I really enjoyed this book I remember his second collection "Welcome to the Arms Race" having more sci fi elements than this one. Although this is a collection of short stories its easy for me to see them all connecting, like an anthology movie with similar stories. There are some atmospheres and themes that seem to connect it all for me, like the stories are all happening in the same strange world.
I think a big part of my enjoyment of this book is the "feelings" it invoked in me. Its hard for me to describe, but, a lot of the characters are not "normal" people by any means. Even the most depraved or "bad" of them though I didn't find myself hating there would be little bits I could relate to or understand about what made them that way that was sympathetic. For the stories being short Justin Isis does a great job developing his characters in such a way where I feel familiar with them by the time it ends.
I wouldn't know what "genre" to consider these stories, they all take place in Japan are involve strange scenarios (only one about cannablism!), The sci fi elements I remember in a lot of stories in "Welcome to the Arms Race" aren't present but enough wild things happen in these stories to keep them anything but mundane.
I think a big part of my enjoyment of this book is the "feelings" it invoked in me. Its hard for me to describe, but, a lot of the characters are not "normal" people by any means. Even the most depraved or "bad" of them though I didn't find myself hating there would be little bits I could relate to or understand about what made them that way that was sympathetic. For the stories being short Justin Isis does a great job developing his characters in such a way where I feel familiar with them by the time it ends.
I wouldn't know what "genre" to consider these stories, they all take place in Japan are involve strange scenarios (only one about cannablism!), The sci fi elements I remember in a lot of stories in "Welcome to the Arms Race" aren't present but enough wild things happen in these stories to keep them anything but mundane.
November 21, 2025
Went to read the authors profile before reading this book, and it’s exactly what you would expect from a book like this.
While reading I was listening to Xiu Xiu, as I also saw a tweet that recommended this pairing, it felt right.
Don’t ask about my mental sanity after this one.
While reading I was listening to Xiu Xiu, as I also saw a tweet that recommended this pairing, it felt right.
Don’t ask about my mental sanity after this one.
September 18, 2020
Reading this book really just put in perspective to me what it would be like to write in a way that rejects tradition and fully embraced modernity. Totally enjoyed this, my first foray into neo-decadent lit, and look forward to checking out more of Justin Isis' work. Excellent.
November 27, 2017
well written but just couldn't get into it. i'll probably read his 2nd story collection though...
November 2, 2020
This volume of short stories has renewed in me an interest in fiction.
August 4, 2022
When I started Isis's Freshman collection of short stories I despised it, by the end I was left wanting more. Often I questioned whether this book was sheer genius or pretentious garbage. I never quite came to a conclusion about which. Isis's unique writing style is likely the cause for my confusion. Isis writes frequently about sex; intercorse is fused into his prose. Yet despite this, Justin takes emotionally powerful action like sex and makes it feel devoid of emotion. A contradiction in every sense. It's fun to read most of the time, unlike much of the small library of things I've read.
I would skip on the story 'A Design for Life' and 'The Garden Of Sleep'.
I would skip on the story 'A Design for Life' and 'The Garden Of Sleep'.
December 3, 2021
Ok so the first story features a guy who is sexually abusing his little sister but it's not about that, he's in love or whatever with someone else which I guess makes it ok. Second story is surreal in a bad way, like someone read Murakami and was like "I could do this but much worse."
And then. There's the third story. It's about a thirty year old man who "falls in love" with a trans girl. Who is 15. Then he exposes her for doing sex work to her father. And ruins her life basically. Ok well I fucking despise this fucking book and will not be reading further. Once is edgy, twice is a pattern.
And then. There's the third story. It's about a thirty year old man who "falls in love" with a trans girl. Who is 15. Then he exposes her for doing sex work to her father. And ruins her life basically. Ok well I fucking despise this fucking book and will not be reading further. Once is edgy, twice is a pattern.
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