Local author goes 8 pages without describing female protagonist in uncomfortable detail, breaking previous records.

Literature has been changed forever.

(An audio version of this will come soon, exclusive to my paid/comp tier, because I need food to eat to keep my brain nice and slippery so the good ideas slide around and frolic and you know the rest).

---

Local male author goes 8 pages without describing female protagonist in uncomfortable detail, breaking previous records.

In an astonishing feat, author Barry Binbag has discovered that his female protagonist suddenly has other stuff to do outside of thinking about lipstick and boys. She is no longer a lump of body parts with a brain stuck on the top.

“It’s as if she developed sentience, like a terminator, but with tits,” he said.

---

I visited his home in Clammy Giblets, North Phlegm, to talk to him about his upcoming novel, THE GIRL WHO DID SOME STUFF AND LOOKED OUT OF A WINDOW ALL POUTY WHEN IT RAINED.

“It’s essentially a postmodern exploration of all those secret loves we have, such as Jenny’s secret love for yoghurt and fruit. That’s based on my personal experience growing up as a writer who had experience growing up as a writer with experience growing up as a writer knowing he would one day be looking back at growing up as a writer with foresight on how he would one day become a writer writing forward about looking back,” Barry explained.

“Is that why it goes on for so long?” I asked him.

“No, that’s because I did a lot of research, into the yoghurts and fruits and stuff. And there’s this great scene with the immigrant family at the corner shop that lasts about half the book and I couldn’t cut that. My editor quit at that point but it is a challenging read you know. Jenny is a very fleshy… sorry, fleshed out character.”

“And you’re writing a lot about the yoghurt?”

“Yes. Her husband in the novel, Jerome, doesn’t think it proper for a lady with her figure to be ruining it with yoghurt and chocolate-coated fruit, especially in that cafe where she meets the French exchange student. Really it’s a novel about warfare and the apocalypse.”

“And when does the war and the apocalypse start?”

“Well I was going to put it on page 308, but I realised that at that point I had not gotten into the description of Mr Patel’s eyebrows, which was going to be chapter three. There’s also the sex scene, which I’m thinking might be made better with the inclusion of a pop-out segment of the book. My publisher hasn’t responded to that request yet, but I think it would really bring another dimension to things.”

“Let’s circle back,” I said to Barry Binbag. “How come you decided to write an eight-page segment without referring to Jenny’s body in horrendous, syrupy detail?”

“Well. The society of authors who don’t go out enough to meet real people and yet think they can write about them without reducing them to shopping lists of stereotypes and jiggly bits wrote to me and told me I really ought to come to their awards ceremony, and that was a wake up call for me.”

“Ah yes, the SOAWDGOETMRPAYTTCWATWRTTSLOSAJB. So are you saying that their outdated values turned you off?”

“Oh no not at all, it’s just that if I win an award like that, I might not be a good writer any more. You know if a coffee shop tells you a book is good, I always remember my professor reading a coffee shop review and yelling ‘What the fuck do you know? You make lattes!’ at the quirky little leaflet they had at the till, and that’s stuck with me through my career. I wouldn’t trust an author’s opinion on coffee as anything more than an expedient way to simulate a panic attack and make your house smell like a hipster’s beard, so why should I trust a coffee company to understand literature?”

It was at this point that Barry finally got round to the point. He was sat in a well-decorated room, something between kitchen and arts lab, the sort of place where you’d find a lot of cress but be afraid of eating it. There were so many bean bags, perhaps more bean bags than there were people in Barry’s life.

“You see. Jenny is a very beautiful, curvy, soft, sensual character. But I want readers to work that out on their own, you know? My older books really went deep into describing the curves and the softness. But I think I’ve done that now. I got up one night and I had this entire sentence planned out in my mind, like it came to me in a vision. She ran down the stairs to answer the door to the postman. But this time I didn’t describe her bouncing breasts, nor did I linger on her half-applied mascara, her feminine charm, or how she lusted after the postman’s solid and veiny arms.”

Barry leaned back in his chair, placing his typewriter over his lap.

PAYWALL OF DEATH

There is another big chunk of silly text behind this paywall. Luckily I’m feeling charitable, so if you’ve been checking out a lot of my posts recently, you might well be on a free trial. Try scrolling, see if it works. A few people here have got behind-the-scenes access to more weird.