the times | Monday June 13 2022 27
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Buy prints or signed copies of Times cartoons from our Print Gallery at timescartoons.co.uk or call 020 7711 7826People will hurt your feelings — deal with it
From thin-skinned writers to lovers demanding happy pills, our not-so-brave new world is ever more emotionally fragile
delusions: that everyone deserves
unbroken happy mental “wellness” in
a grievous world, that sexual passion
is irresistible (“bigger than both of
us”), and that a domestic partnership
must be calmly harmonious for
decades, and promptly binned if it
isn’t. These superhuman demands
will make over-the-counter happy
pills demanded as a “human right”
in no time.
That may suit governments.
Ninety years ago, in Brave New
Wo r l d, Aldous Huxley predicted a
population drugged on “soma”,
happily promiscuous and
emotionally null, unlikely to carve
out — either in sex or friendship —
the gritty reality of fidelity,
intellectual connection and
the commitment that sparks
independent thought, hence dissent.
Squirt oxytocin up your nose, couple
and giggle, never scale the difficult
emotional steps of humiliation, self-
doubt, grief, yearning and frustration.
It’s probably coming. And who
knows? This brave-new-world
delegation of human feelings to
pharmaceuticals might even enable
theatres to pump a dense oxytocin
mist into the auditorium, making
critics feel love and eloquent
adoration, bypassing the higher brain
functions. The plays might get worse,
mind you, but troublesome critics
will have gone the way of the
smallpox virus.Reflecting on this painfully
acquired adult skill of emotion
management and “getting over
yourself” reminded me of something
else: last week’s pharmaceutical-
neuroscientific news from Oxford
University’s Dr Anna Machin. She
roams “the frontiers of love research”
and the chemistry of attraction.
Apparently a dose of MDMA
(Ecstasy) has been used in marriage
guidance to make couples fonder.
And within a decade, she tells us,
people looking for love and
connection will “squirt oxytocin up
their nose before they go out on a
Saturday night, at the same time as
having a glass of prosecco”.
Hideous. Given the existing
Gadarene rush towards drunken
binges, party drugs and instant
hook-ups with a swipe-right stranger,
followed by betrayal, ghosting,
emotional dismay and even violence,
it doesn’t feel quite the moment to
layer on more psychoactive drugs
and dependencies. Not that the meds
won’t work: they probably will, on
their own terms. Few moderns reach
my time of life without experiencing
at least a spell on antidepressants
(a useful crutch, but no way to live)
or some weird paranoid reaction to
a prescription-opioid: yes, emotions
are influenceable, all right. So there
will be a clamour for artificial
dopamine and endorphins, because
the peacetime West suffers severalpermanent. But shrugging it off is an
essential grown-up skill. It’s easiest
when some pompous twit of a
reviewer has missed the point or
clearly skimmed your novel, or when
they are working off an obvious
grudge. The real pain comes with
accurate criticism: the kind which
rings so true that you accept the need
for what the Catholic confessional
calls a “firm purpose of amendment”.
One or two of you below the line
have adjusted my views and language
in the past. You deserve thanks.
Through gritted teeth, obviously.
Yet the Horowitz tantrum isdownright silly. Theatregoing is not
cheap, and readers know which
hacks to trust. As for book reviews,
sometimes a hatchet job makes you
curious: I genuinely long to find out
whether Quentin Letts’s Saturday
Times assault on Sheila Hancock’s
“tiresome” memoir was deserved.
The sensible writer or performer
takes these things on the chin and
staggers on, consoled by a few
redeeming lines. At least it’s
attention. Not getting reviews is
worse: as Andy Warhol said, “Don’t
read your reviews; weigh them.”C
ruel amusement has
been provided by the
blockbusting novelist
and screenwriter
Anthony Horowitz, whose
forthcoming novel uses the old
Theatre of Blood trope: a playwright
may have stabbed an unkind critic.
His own real stage play, Dinner
with Saddam, had a number of iffy
notices. They weren’t vicious, but the
words ham-fisted and lumpen were
used, and even the kindest said it
needed a trim.
That last indeed was my main beef:
I enjoyed some fine acting and
appreciated the topicality of it being
launched just as the Chilcot Iraq war
inquiry was revving up the
“Maxwellisation” phase. Besides, it
was a TV screenwriter’s first live stage
play, and debuts deserve licence.
Horowitz , though, was furious. He
says even one bad review will “really,
really upset” him, send him into a
“dark place” for years. He is angry at
what he sees as critical brutality. His
line echoes Equity’s plaintive
demand that reviewers check their
privilege and “their own lived
experience” before presuming to
address the ticket-buying public.
Hilariously, though, only last
month this same wounded writer
sounded off against pusillanimous
publishers bowing to cancel culture,
“where certain thoughts are not
allowed”. Writers, he trumpeted,
should always be brave and never
“cowed”. Quite right. But hang on —
critics are writers too! There is
creativity in concentrating, reflecting
and arranging words to interest a
reader. Must the privilege to speak
your mind only be suspended when
discussing the Horowitz oeuvre? The
man’s phenomenally successful;
courted by TV, selling novels across
all age groups. He should surely be
able to hack it.
All theatre-makers have to: they
often plead that their work is hard
and their living precarious, but hell,
that equally applies to many of the
tentative ticket-buyers they ask to
travel to their temples. Anyone who
makes art and puts it on the open
market must accept some flak.
Plays, films, journalism and
broadcasting are businesses. It’s not
like showing your Year 1 raffia-work
to your mum or offering a friend a
homemade brownie.
Tough feedback does hurt, even
amateur sniping on Twitter or below-
the-line comments here. And yes,
print feels doubly damning andTough feedback hurts
but shrugging it off
is an essential skill
Libby
Purves@lib_thinks