“Since the attacks of 9/11, a great deal has been written about fanaticism, terrorism, and religious extremism of all stripes. In an earlier essay in JMB (3), I described the terrorist mind-set in terms of three features: paradoxical narcissism, ressentiment, and schadenfreude. I argued that terrorists such as Osama bin Ladin demonstrate what Eric Hoffer called, ‘the vanity of the selfless’ (4). I further suggested that much of the animus of terrorists stems from a corrosive sense of hatred, envy, and impotent rage: what Nietzsche called ressentiment. Finally, I argued that the atypical behavior of the 9/11 terrorists just prior to the attacks–their eating out at pizza parlors and enjoying sexual favors from an ‘escort service’–represented a kind of ‘malicious joy’ (schadenfreude). I now want to link these aspects of the terrorist mind to Kafka’s ‘hunger artist’; and, much more broadly, to suggest that attitudes about food and fasting can teach us a great deal about fanaticism. And what could be more mundane–more ‘ordinary’ and ‘of this world’–than the way we feel about food?” (Journal of Mundane Behavior)