The House of Writers

by M. J. Nicholls

  In the chill-out room, the testers (who you probably realise I disliked—you may find their brand of earthy humour to your liking!) kicked off a frank discussion of the type of shits they produced as they were reading (looking). How certain pages of certain books led to a series of small turds, while others created serious blockage, and people discussed the weight, consistency, density and malleability of their shits in response to certain images—cute kittens usually made for fluffier shits, while angry dogs or dirty photos usually made for tougher shits, which was simply a technique to force the shit back in so you would spend longer on the loo not shitting and reading (looking at) the book. Erotic images were even worse, as the urge to masturbate would overtake the necessity to shit, and you’d never get going after you’d knocked one out into the loo roll first. I had the strongest urge to leave and ... sob? Shit? Among the titles they discussed were: 100 Wonkiest Gerbil Eyebrows, SuMu’s Subway Shoe Disasters, Sex Tips of Centenarians, America’s Cutest Roadkill, 57 Pictures of Albinos Eating Grapes, Fallout!: Chernobyl’s Zaniest Mutations, 77 Manx Cats with Photoshopped Tails, What Would Preschoolers Look Like with the Heads of the Bee Gees?, How to Scare Yourself in the Mirror, The Difference Between Short & Sharp, Forty More Pictures of Paint Drying!!!, Jezz Wimpole’s Book of Boobies, Jesusface—Our Lord Rendered in 76 Objects, Sorry, Switzerland!: Korea’s Clumsiest Missile Strikes.

  I often fell asleep on the loo. My eyes glazed. My selection process become wholly arbitrary. For books whose content I despised, I would speedily dispatch shits out of spite, and those I thought amusing I would champion by squeezing my buttocks together to suppress the flow. The power of the laxative smoothies and evacuant nature of the curries made shits erupt quickly, while sometimes shits were a tougher consistency if raisin bran and prunes were quaffed in enthusiastic mouthfuls. The eater’s taste in foods was really the criteria by which the books were published, so the setup was pointless. I wondered if this was the procedure when publishing houses existed. If editors took the manuscripts into the bathrooms after very heavy lunches and mistook their slow bowel movements for the quality of the manuscripts. Did that mean literature had always been associated with the production of shit? Next up, 74 Pictures of Kids Shitting on Shakespeare, a book purposefully designed to confront writers. I winced at the pesky kidolts doing their mess over The Bard’s complete works, but took the elevated stupidity of the enterprise on the chin—no amount of junior poo could erase any Great Literature! Once again, I had taken so long making faces of horror that the book would probably be distributed. I explained to the labcoat that I was shitting slow because of my repugnance at the images, but the labcoat said that sort of response was an added marketing bonus—people who still respected the lineage of good writers would read in horror (“shock-lit”) and those who hated books would naturally find the whole thing funny. I clenched. (My teeth).

  The experience reminded me in part of the philistinism I encountered at school, where my interest in books had been met with fear—fear that my bizarre obsession might infect those close by, lead to them picking up books and ideas, until the school was riddled with incurable verbivores, brainwashing the campus with facts and learning that had little to do with ScotCall procedures—how to cure desk cramp or how to deal with customers who had trouble determining whether ring pulls should be pulled towards or away from the drinker. Apart from Kirsty’s sisterly reminders of the worthlessness of writers and me in particular, I’d never encountered such blatant hatred towards books—nothing to the extent of the loo roll with passages from Shakespeare, Dickens, Eliot, and Coulter that were being tested in the department at the time (which despite the blankness on the other side, would still end up in a bowl of shit being flushed towards a palace of shit). If you need reassurance that all the great books are being read, this is not the floor for you. One day, returning to the chill-out area after a tikka with pilaf rice, two poppadoms, and a knickerbocker glory with extra knickers, a tattooed tough was saying how megaliffic his latest dump was, how he was made to read this book wiff picturs of like fames people but wiff their heads replaced wiff monkey arses, and how he was laffing so much he piffed himself first, and didn’t notice when the shit dropped out, and a squat OAP with maxi-specs was saying it was crimnal that they was given such guid biks to read whall shitting, coz his bik had these piccurs of fat hookers covered in choc sauce and ha-ha-ha-ha the lass thing he wanted to do was hurry up shittin when these hot hooks were makin him hard, and a teenager said that he was ragincoz the book he got was all about pottery and what kind of cunt reads a book all about pottery for fuckssake? At that point I stood up and left the sixth floor forever.

  A Word from the Team

  LABCOAT: Testers required. No experience of reading necessary. NO WRITERS NEEDED.

  This

  7

  IAM the author of this novel and I have lied to you, and taken unhealthy pleasure in lying to you, and I will continue to lie to you until you beg for more. I have lied about everything in my real life (which does not exist—even as the “author” I am a construct invented to represent aspects of the “real” author—however, let’s not tangle ourselves in semantic or metaphysical notions). I have lied my way through life, relishing in the saltiest untruths. When people have asked me, “Is that soup made of string?” I have replied, “No. That soup is made of soup.” I have told many dirty, unfair lies, and I have delighted in every one. The truth is a pointless concept, invented by non-writers to keep the masses logical and docile, to eliminate the pleasures of fiction-making. Punch the truth hard.

  The Trauma Rooms

  7

  YOU realise, by now, I could have sifted through the fields outside and found a stapler?” Erin asked.

  “Yes, a stapler to staple your lips shut.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Oh ... no, I meant ... hmm, as the staplers are feral out there. . . anyway, this is Gerald. He has occasional violent episodes, such as strangling or stabbing writers. Apart from that, a perfectly nice chap,” the doctor said, opening on a trimmed man in his forties sitting on his bed listening to Devo on his iPod.

  “Hi there! Sorry, I didn’t see you both sidle in.”

  “We’re sly sidlers.”

  “Sly sidlers! I like that.”

  “This is Erin, Gerald.”

  “Wow, I love your hair, Erin. Do you use Pantox medicated shampoo?”

  “No. I use a Lemmox follicle fixer.”

  “Also a quality brand.”

  “Gerald, Erin would love to hear your story, if you have a spare few minutes?”

  “Gosh! I had my lugs full of Devo’s seminal Freedom of Choice LP. I suppose I can hit the old pause button and spin the old spiel again. I promise not to lapse into a writer-throttling rage this time, doc! Right. I was freshly appointed co-editor of a quarterly magazine. I hadn’t written a single story in my life, nor studied literature, nor read more than forty books, but I didn’t feel that impeded my ability to recognise top-quality literary fiction when I read (or skimmed!) it. I had to read a thousand stories a week. Once I had selected two from that thousand for publication, I passed them on to my co-editors, and we voted for the final line-up. Our first story, by Cody Trylomp, ‘Green Faucets’ was a searing portrait of a minor league soccer team in New Hampshire, set against one father’s struggle to quench his thirst for victory and come to terms with his daughter’s autism. Cody sent his short bio: ‘Cody is a writer, poet, and scriptwriter barely scraping a living as an IT assistant in the Appalachian mountains. In his spare time, he plays dodgeball with his manic toddler Tommy, and helps his beautiful wife Karen with her Hollywood screenplays.’ I found the bio irritating. Next story was by Mandi Brookelyfe, ‘Jane’s Wrists,’ about a cutter who struggles with her weight while running an independent bookstore in Wisconsin. Her bio: ‘Mandy is a writer and novelist. She received her [list of academic qualifications]. Her works have appeared in [list of over twenty magazines]. She loves carving skulls into cook
ies and surfing the zeitgeist in a monogrammed thong.’ I became enraged at this point and had to take a comfort break. Next story, ‘K. Comes to Brooklyn’, by Artie Loden, about a stoned NYC scriptwriter stalked by Kafka’s shadow. His bio: ‘Artie seeks abstractions from the most sordid of sources. His ying is pursuing a PhD on Kafka’s silence, his yang likes beer and pool.’ I kicked things under the table. Further bios included: ‘Serena sits in coffee shops pondering the vicissitudes of bran muffins. If not writing her overdue thesis on Paul Auster, she can be found editing the radical webzine Scissors Trumps Rock.’ And: ‘Brian Fripp divides his time between Leeds and Tijuana. He spends too much time watching CSI: Miami and playing korfball. He is working on a screenplay about Andy Warhol’s fondness for Greta Garbo.’ And: ‘Julie Wilmott likes a nectarine on occasion. When she is not staring into space or fixing valve amps, she writes novels about cisgender puppies and Capuchin monks.’ I exploded. I hurled my Apple Mac out the window, crushing four pigeons. I ran into the street seeking vengeance on the writers who had penned these self-loving whimsical cooler-than-thou bios and, failing to find them, stabbed a tramp outside Oddbins. In prison, I stabbed a writer whose bio I spotted: ‘Derek imagineers sci-fi and erotic literature. If not cleaning out the toilets on E-wing, he can be found in the prison library, brushing up on his Dickens and Zola.’ My defence was that the word ‘imagineers’ alone justified the homicide. I was declared insane and escaped the asylum. I came here to kill everyone in the building. Fortunately, the doctor here intervened before I reached my tenth murder. His treatment has been valuable, but I still have that insatiable bloodlust whenever I read an author’s bio.”

  “Jesus,” Erin said, thinking of her bio: “Erin Grahams writes soap operas featuring the occasional cannibal nurse. She has a fondness for escalators and have-a-go heroes. Her two kittens think she smells.”

  “Thanks for sharing, Gerald,” the doctor said. Erin stared into Gerald’s calm eyes, and for a microsecond, thought she saw the bio-addled psychokiller look into her soul and see the needy narcissist inside.

  “He knows. About my shit bio.”

  “Sorry?”

  “I wrote the sort of embarrassing cutesy bio that drives him to homicide.”

  “Oh. I shouldn’t concern yourself with that. Shall we proceed?”

  “What if he escapes and hacks me into bitesize chunks as I sleep?”

  “These doors are secure. You’d need a battering ram to penetrate those locks.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Now, let’s—”

  “What do those bios say? They say I am the sort of attention-seeking plonk who needs to engineer a quirky persona to make myself appealing outside the fiction I have written. That I am not content with letting the work speak for itself, I have to persuade the reader that the person who wrote the work is awesome, intriguing, and a Talented New Voice on the Scene, and probably fabulous to have as a friend. That by taking a jokey tone, I am trying to distract you from the truth that I consider myself a fucking legend-in-the-making, illustrated by the three paragraphs of literary magazines I have been published in, that I am—”

  “Yes! All right. I have other things to do.”

  “Sorry. Carried away.”

  “It’s OK. Writers are arseholes.”

  “Damn right.”

  Writer Portraits

  Movements

  Freed-in-Fiction

  THE Freed-in-Fiction movement was the hippest club for intellectual dropouts, child/wifeless male academics, and assorted creatives unwilling to face up to their personal problems. A coterie of exhausted English Lit & Creative Writing students, failing upon graduation to rise to the challenge of carving careers for themselves in teaching or editing or corporate proofreading, decided that their fictional creations were far more alive and interesting than their real lives, and elected to neglect the quotidian in favour of vicarious living through their novels. One of the founders, Dan Inch, laid down various rules to help direct the group, the first being a complete shunning of publication of any kind—to publish was to acknowledge that books (and themselves) existed in the real world, whereas they were looking for an ontological loophole that excused them from the business of living (choosing to dismiss their actual corporeal presences on the planet as irrelevant). The second was that their physical presences on the planet were to be treated as part of their ongoing oeuvre—an unwritten extension of their books through the medium of movement and speech. This unhinging of reality, naturally, led to deviant behaviour. One writer in his novels had written an antihero who went around shooting corporate criminals and having sex with random beauties whenever one wandered into the narrative. This behaviour, replicated in real life, was not repeated, although the author beat up random bankers, shop managers, or anyone who appeared to be indulging in capitalist excess, and conducted himself in improper ways around women with pinching and unsolicited touching. These writers were commonly regarded as laughable and clueless until a harsh winter finished them off.

  The New Established Writer Movement

  New writers, i.e. those who had been passed over by agents and publishers for decades, chose to establish themselves as established writers. To achieve this, a list of books published overseas was invented, alongside false overseas agent and publisher contact info (including false agent and publisher websites), and new (i.e. old) manuscripts were sent to UK publishers with the salvo of a respected publishing history (in Australia or New Zealand) to help pique the interest of agents and publishers. If successful, The New Established Writers would find their latest (or earliest) novel published and, depending on sales, find their non-existent backlog sped into print to meet the demands of a burgeoning audience. Most of the writers had ten or so complete novels in their drawers, and in some cases a whole catalogue was “re-issued” simultaneously (with the author having to typeset and print fake copies privately to send to their real publishers so facsimiles could be made). This movement was exposed in a similar manner to the The New Writer movement some years earlier, and a harsh winter finished them off.

  The Serial Listing Movement

  These writers believed that the furniture of conventional novels was superfluous; that the ordered line-by-line dialogue of characters was superfluous; that the linear page-turning plot was superfluous; that deep insight into the human condition was superfluous; that the finger-tingling all-over assault on the brain and body produced by the most masterly of stylists was superfluous; that the words on the page themselves attempting to communicate something or nothing at all were superfluous; that double or triple meanings were so many layers of mouldy custard within a smelly trifle; that the spooky transference of art from brain to page was mystical bunkum; that the physical rigor required to bring books to fruition was a lazy dreamer’s hyperbole; that the bitter sacrifice of sanity, soul, and sexual needs was the pitiful cry of a loner; that all the precious components of timeless literature could be reduced to a series of blank lists with no substance or heart. The movement was criticised as a direct nouveau roman rip-off, and a harsh winter finished them off.

  The Anti-cis-heteronormativist Movement

  This movement set about rewriting literature with the assumption that all characters were trapped in false gender identities, and by allowing characters to realise their true gender roles, free literature from the oppression of the cis-heteronormativists who had been imposing heterosexist ideals on readers since time immemorial. The first rewrite was Jane Eyre, with the famous heroine recast as a pangender transitioning towards a more male-centred outlook. The plot was tweaked to castigate Rochester for his persistence, where he learned to respect Jane’s complex gender position and stronger romantic pulls towards female sexual partners. Further rewrites included David Copperfield realising himself as a queer heterosexual, which better explained his attraction to Dora Spenlow; Molly Bloom identifying herself as a “fifth sex,” outside both genders, outside all non-gender classifications, a separate class known as Bloomism�
��sort of a magnet for all sexualities, genders and non-genders; and Raskolnikov as a transsexual in process of becoming a woman so he could be kept by a husband and write without having to concern himself with making a living. This movement, while an amusing contemporaneous reimagining of the patriarchal canon and a necessary riposte to the tyrannous influence of university syllabi, suffered due to the lack of talent involved in pastiching the originals. A harsh winter finished them off.

  The_______Movement

  Four men who did no writing whatsoever and bragged about their lack of achievements at writing groups, readings, and events. Their belief that more than enough fiction had been penned over the last three centuries was illustrated with the blank notebooks they carried around and the no pens in their pockets (if approached for a pen, they made a show of patting their pockets and declaring: “Sorry, we never need one!”), and if presented with a book published after their inception, they refused with the refrain: “Sorry, for us the buck stopped a while ago!” (the buck meaning new books). In writing classes, the men would sit in silence, staring into space during the live writing portion, infuriating the teachers by insisting on a four-minute silence during their allotted reading aloud time. At author readings, the men would turn their backs on the authors during the readings from their new books and listen to loud punk on headphones, resuming their attention after the applause. If the author’s first book had been published after the group’s inception, the men would book seats and not turn up to the events, leaving the chairs blank as a protest (despite the fact the rooms were usually empty anyway). In online workshops, the men would embed pictures of blank pages, or include a sequence of blank_______lines, and delete the abusive feedback. One time, an ex-vintner with a first novel out castigated them for wasting his time by standing up to ask a question and singing the chorus to “Fernando” by Abba, humiliating them after the show by exposing their movement as a testament to their own failure as writers, and their pathetic need to flaunt their failure by spoiling the success of others. The harsh vintner finished them off.