‘I feel nothing, / keep touching me, / I feel nothing. / I’m a hungry ghost.’ — The Hungry Ghost , Mark Gable (Margo’s English professor, baby daddy) Tormented by elusive perfection and an indifferent public, Franz Kafka’s hunger artist starves himself. Rufi Thorpe’s protagonist in her 2024 novel Margo’s Got Money Troubles– which David E Kelley adapted for a 2026 Apple TV+ comedy-drama series starring Elle Fanning–tellingly chooses as her alter-ego, the Hungry Ghost, an insatiable being in the Buddhist cycle of existence who would consume the world if its throat were not microscopic. A teenage mother who dropped out of college after being impregnated by her married English professor, Margo identifies with the Hungry Ghost–ironically, it was the subject of a poem written by her professor–as she too will do whatever it takes to feed herself and Baby Bodhi, even something as dubious as OnlyFans. But much like the Hungry Ghost, her throat is also constricted, and she cannot feed as much as she would have liked.…