The attraction of repulsion

Take some boiled maize, chew it, spit it out, put the mixture into an urn, bury it, dig it up several days later, and Bob’s your uncle: the Ecuadoran delicacy chicha. It turns out that ‘controlled rot tastes good’; the particular rot you favour will depend on where you come from. In Sardinia casu marzu is highly prized: it’s sheep’s cheese crawling with maggots. Reading Rachel Herz’s book, it’s astonishing what people enjoy, even before you get to the section on Japanese pornography.

Herz knows whereof she speaks: she has acted as nose judge in the annual National Rotten Sneakers Contest, where finalists aged six to 16 vie for the accolade of smelliest shoe champion. Luckily she keeps such alarming personal information to a minimum and most of her arguments are elucidated with eccentric psychology experiments.

Herz starts by grouping repulsion in loose categories: bodily functions and excretions, disease-contamination, mutilation, animalistic behaviour, sex and morality.