What were you hoping to find when you were here?

Sure.

But to be honest, the Japan element is just one small part of the book in question.

So I'll show you the book.

It's The Prodigal Tongue Dispatches from the Future of English.

And So even though I had an advance and even though I was lucky enough to win an award that gave me some time and money to write this book, it's still a very daunting prospect to tackle something like the spread of English and the changes in English around the world as an individual without a university affiliation.

So in researching this book, I went to Los Angeles and I went to Singapore and went to England.

Why was this the last year of the hippie trail?

Why did you choose to write a book about numbness?

Yeah, I have to credit Leila Marshi, who's a Montreal writer and editor who works for Baraka.

Leila phoned me up last summer and said that Baraka was starting a new series called traction, like TR and then a capital A action.

And the point of traction books would be these topical books on issues that are really close to people's hearts and minds at the moment.

So the first one was about Zionism, written by a Jewish person who's very anti-Zionist.

And one of the other ones that came out at the same time as mine was called Last Call for Canada, Sovereign Nation or Vassal State.

And Leila suggested a topic that she thought I might be interested in writing.

But what happens when everything you look at is just like an explosion, you become numb to it, right? You're not able to pay attention anymore.