Throwaway literature 2019

The International Cheese-Fries Review presents a quick roundup of the best of the worst new literature of 2019... so far.

(The 2018 edition seems to have got lost in the wash, bear with us as we attempt to wash out the pink tinge.)

***

I opened the front door, for the second time in the five minutes since I had arrived to the house on Station Road, which wasn’t even mine, to find one of the Ilkeston Mobsters outside. I didn’t know him personally, but you could always tell from the shirts and the trainers which crowd you were dealing with. Check shirts and red converse meant Ilkeston. The West Hallam Boys wore stripes and old-school Adidas. All black usually meant you were dealing with the Stanley Massive.

“Yes?” 

I hoped that I would be able to elicit an explanation before he pushed his way into the house wordlessly.  

“Here for the music video”, came the sparing reply, and then: “It’s Dave.” 

I hadn’t been told about any of this. 

The House on Station Road, a badly conceived and worse-written crime novel about approximately twenty separate modern-day Derbyshire gangs who each behave as if they were trapped in a different decade.

***

Well hello there. I bet you never thought you’d read a book that addresses you directly, Dr Doron Swade. But here I am. Not only am I speaking to you, just you, through these printed words, I also know everything there is to know about you. I know where you live, who your parents were, where you trained as a doctor and the name of the fellow junior doctor who was your first, great true love. A love the like of which you think you will never find again. Because yes, Doron, I know your thoughts too. And your dreams. And your deepest secrets. The ones you won’t even admit to yourself.  

I see you, Dr. Swade, a manifesto addressed entirely to a fictional GP on the off-chance that someone with the same name and life story actually exists in the real world.

***

The Bermuda Triangle was discovered in 1983 by none other than the renowned top hat merchant and TV psychic Edmund J. K. Shonal, who, during a transatlantic flight on his chi-powered wooden fold-up aeroplane, noted somewhat strange geometrical borders within the ocean waters which had hitherto never been observed by pilots. It is thought that it was due to his low flying altitude that Shonal was able to observe the three actual visible borders of what we now know as the Bermuda Triangle (named after the lucky Bermuda shorts that Shonal was wearing at the time). Noticing that these perfectly straight lines in the water were something of an oddity, self-proclaimed amateur scientist Shonal later returned to the area and began throwing various objects and small rodents into the sea within the borders of the triangle. Strangely enough, they were never to be seen again.  

The Bermuda Triangle, an intricately detailed yet wholly incorrect account of everything there isn't to know about the infamous location.

***

Throwaway Literature 2017

It's been a fair while, but it is high time that we return to the International Cheese-Fries' very own digest of literature of little or no value - Throwaway Literature. Here, then, are the best/worst submissions to the editors' inboxes so far.

***

"Scattered thoughts wade through a heavy cloud of coughs, half-finished sentences and well-meaning jabs at someone's confidence. The confusion is strong with this one, they seem to say, watching from opposite, on the bench. She gets up, as if to leave, because this is frankly too much. Instead, the mouth opens. "Why are you all looking at me?" comes the hoarse inquiry, a shaky utterance, barely audible.
A pause.
"Why are you all looking at me? Answer me" she repeats, this time looking one of them directly in the eye. The target, a wiry-looking man in his thirties, is hesitant. "Is this not where the play is? We were told to come in here for the show".
Of course.
She's known there was something she has been forgetting. Days have melted into each other of late, and now the day is upon her, the audience is here, and she hadn't even noticed.
And what an audience! Fifteen people, is it really worth doing the performance now? Does she even remember all the moves and all the lines? What is it called again? It's all swimming around somewhere in uncertainty, until she turns around and spots the costume on the chair next to the one she's been sitting on. The simple white blouse and the tracksuit bottoms. It's all coming back. She sighs, and starts to undress."

Swimming Days, the long and rambling story of a highly intelligent and busy performer with a knack for drifting in and out of reality (includes a colouring-in section towards the end of the book, before the finale).

***

"When you go out and realise, two minutes down the road from your house, that you have not only forgotten your keys in your flat and thus locked yourself out, but have also left the hair straighteners plugged in, switched on and resting on your most flammable pair of colourful polyester trousers, the back pocket of which contains your smartphone and your bank card, as well as instructions regarding the donation of your organs after your death - this of all times is when you should honour the mantra that we live by and  c a l m  d o w n." 

"You know the moment. The moment when someone has come up to you in a bar, insulted you, your partner, everything you stand for, and, by extension, your mum, and now this lad is standing opposite you, squaring up, sleeves rolled up and getting ready to punch you right in your pretty face whilst wearing a shit-eating grin on his own horrible arse-face, and then he opens his big hate-filled mouth and tells you to CALM DOWN? Well, conversely to what you might think, that is exactly what you should do in that situation."

The Little Book of Calm Down, recently reviewed by amazon user hotcakes15 as being "literally the worst self-help book I have ever read whilst on the bog".

***

"I wish I could fold up my life and stick it in a tiny little envelope and put that in a tiny little drawer in a miniature bureau made for a dollhouse out of wood and glue. Don't tell the dolls where my tiny folded up life is kept. They will only take it out and look at it and it will make me feel embarrassed about what I've been doing these past forty years. I wasn't even alive for some of them.
I think."

Wat is origami?, [according to the author] a collection of "confusions, contusions, and anthropomorphic auto-bamboozles, with a twist of the old nihilism". Nominated for "Worst in show" at the 2017 Small Literary Show Prize.

***

until next time

x

Throwaway literature, part 3

"You have a sort of visible, silent resentment boiling under the surface, against anything and anyone who goes against your principles, and that is what I like about you."

"You always wear two necklaces, and you have two white hairs in your beard, also you look like you might have done a large amount of drugs at some point in your life, but in a way that gives me confidence."

"You resemble Jack Sparrow gone overboard on the eyeliner, trying to set a plastic bag on fire with magic."

Sentencing You, a community project in which people are asked to describe a person they like in just one sentence.

***

"In the clouds he hangs, shredded dust
two wings fled, bleeding out out out and then not
deciding to copulate with paws of steel
shouting all over the floor.
Hard cold wet disturbance
with only one aim - to shoot on sight
the exceptional culprit of distance
and banish forever his appearance and not submit to any kind of hospitality
and always greet pistol shots kindly with an open heart (ribcage)"

oh gawd, what drivel

Guardians at the Gates of Pain, a collection of angsty, pseudo-deep poems for all audiences, which may or may not share a name with a Folk Metal band (Ed.: no research was undertaken in order to confirm or deny this factoid)

***

"People had the nerve to wish me a happy New Year 2015, but what they didn't know was that since I briefly had access to a time machine in 2010, I had travelled to late 2015 once already, mainly in order to be able to prematurely cover Miley Cyrus' comeback hit Lick Me Downstairs on uke and bring it back to the (then) present. Uke covers were THE THING in 2010, you see. I know this because I always have my heavily manicured fingers on the pulse of the time. And occasionally, I will take that pulse from a few years in the future, and bring it back, and time will still be alive when I get there. Usually."

...but I never did quite learn how to spell Spandau Ballet, a memoir by music journalist/internet personality Sin W. Tucker, which mainly consists of half-truths and fabricated anecdotes and was hastily pieced together from her professional Twitter account as the deadline approached more quickly than anticipated.

S. W. Tucker's internet presence, home of the #CampaignToRespectHair hashtag

***

"Shortly after they assigned the absence of a sound to refer to me, it dawned on me that I had become addicted to inhaling aftershave. Expensive aftershave."

I have no name, the illustrated story of a traveller and his/her struggles related to the lack of a name. A children's picture book, for ages 18+.

***

Watch this space for more throwaway literature in the coming months/years!

Throwaway literature, part two

"Carefully, he draped the heavy cloth over the mirror on the dresser. 'Not tonight, Elaine', he whispered, 'not tonight', as a single tear rolled down his now emaciated face."

Always There With You, a novel about a woman who is having an affair with her husband's reflection.

***

"my head

is filled

...

with wool."

my head is filled with wool., an anthology of variations of one single poem which consists of the single line 'my head is filled with wool' repeated approximately 300 times throughout the book with different punctuation, typefaces and accents.

***

"You there! With the playful trousers! How many times have you walked past a naked refrigerator on the street and wished you could just shake its delicious hand?"

"I had tits and gravy for breakfast!" 

Poo poo poo, Russsell Brand's latest attempt at engaging with the general public.

***

"I had a bubble bath around midnight. It was surprisingly shit. And I usually love bubble baths."

Life-changing, a first-person account of a series of (not very) unusual experiences.

***

Throwaway novels - the best pitches of 2014 (so far)

 "And as I saw the next letter in the word, my whole body froze... it was a Z. AGAIN."

"Those two dots above the u still haunt my dreams to this day - they constitute what I can only describe as the doom-laut."

Keyboard Nightmares, a futuristic novel about a man who has an irrational fear of typing complicated words on computer keyboards.

***

“You think you’re hot shit, huh? Well, Harvey, I don’t like your fucking teeth.”

Swagger, a novella about a young actor who, in split-second decision, changes the final lines to a much-anticipated play during its opening night performance, thereby completely changing its meaning forever.

***

"If you look at the following picture (fig. 1) closely, you will see a perfectly aesthetic portrayal of a kiss between lovers by the very talented Auguste Rodin. What you will also see, in the lower right-hand corner of said picture, is a swastika. QED." 

Love is Shit, a collection of (non-)scientific essays on why love just isn't "all that."

***

"Tensely, they watched the news broadcast. It said that the thief had been caught and questioned, but nothing was found inside the teddy bear he tried to steal. There was really nothing for them to do, except neck each other passionately."

The Bunny Conspiracy, a novel about two teenage detectives who take it upon themselves to solve the case of why toys are being stolen from children in weird random incidents and who may or may not fall in love with each other while doing so. They may also turn into horses at some point.

***

"As I type this, I am much more occupied with looking out of the window, checking out the guys walking past. Erm. Where was I?"

title goes here lol, an autobiographic novel about a novelist who just cannot concentrate on her work, but gets published anyway.