him, because she is tired of boys (48), but what she knows is that Horter arouses her desire. Like
Mac and Horter, she is a musician, a pianist, or at least a music graduate of UCLA. "I'm serious, I
play the classics," she tells Horter (48).
The novel unfolds to two refrains, the cannibal song that gives the book its title, whose
message can be summed up as "you eat me while I eat you" (20).
Clearly Miss Harcum is a little
Cannibelle, "a pretty little painted, tainted, scented pocket cannibal," with a toothy mouth that has to
be fed (37-38). What she eats is Mac. Mac may try to take a bite of Miss Harcum, but he does not
succeed in keeping her down (137).
The harder question is whether the Greek is also a "cannibelle." Horter describes their first
kiss: "I did not kiss her, I fastened on her lips. Whatever impulse the vampire has to fasten on flesh
and draw life from it, I shared with him, and she seemed to share with me" (36). "Seemed" may the
most important word here, though later he calls her a "baby cannibelle" and "she did not deny it" (73),
which is not the same as agreeing to it. With the Greek, as with any Goddess or statue, silence does
not imply consent.
The other refrain is What Next?, the latest song Horter and Macgregor had written "with a
chance to catch on" (15):
What next?
The life of love I knew
No longer loves
The things I do
What next? (16)
What Next? is about the quest for the next thing, the next new raw experience, the next life of love to
be colonized for cliché. Morris's argument, hidden beneath the careful ironies and the unreliable
narrator of Love Among the Cannibals, is that the life of love can resist cliché only if it becomes life as
literature.
3. Horter, the Greek, Mac, and Billie "light out" for Mexico. Billie tries to bring five heavy
pieces of aluminum luggage, but is forced by Horter to leave most of it behind, including forty pounds
9
Convention