Does questioning women about their sex lives constitute harassment?

Alert to the combination of a controversial issue and a brilliant writer, Serpent’s Tail have bought This is a Pleasure, first published as a short story in the New Yorker, and issued it as a very short hardback novella — 15,000 words, large print, lipstick kisses on the cover. Already described by the Guardian as ‘an incendiary volume’, the book is a response to, and questioning of, the #MeToo movement.

Quin Saunders, the longtime head of a respected publishing imprint, is accused of harassment by the many women who work or write for him, is ultimately stripped of his career, boycotted and humiliated. He’s the Harvey Weinstein of the publishing world — although the sex seems to be more verbal than actual.

The story is told in two voices, that of Quin himself and his good friend Margot. She is of the same generation as Quin and early in their friendship slaps him down — a response that younger women don’t, or won’t, follow. Quin is an elegant, perceptive character. He ‘imbibes’ people, particularly women, takes them to lunch, listens to their problems and interrogates them about their love lives. He picks people up, invites them to his parties and then drops them. His behaviour is (as Margot says) mildly sadistic. Are the women victims, or do they in some way conspire? At what point does intimacy turn into anger, flirtation into abuse?

‘Turn left on to the heath. Then you have reached your destination.’

Quin’s persuasive self-defence is that

most people are starved for perceptive questions, and the chance to discover their own thoughts. This is especially true of young women, who are expected to listen attentively to one dull, self-obsessed man after another.