My name is Kevin Hulk. Some of my friends call me White Heavy. Obviously, my friends are a creative bunch, so I thought I could trust them to provide feedback on my latest, and twenty-seventh, novel.
Over the phone, Mary told me, ‘the book’s got no pop. No fizzle. No non-white, non-male character who possesses any speck of complexity or importance for five-hundred fucking pages.’
I told Mary, ‘Chill out, and peace, my sister. Just find your happy.’
My main man Maurice wrote me, ‘White Heavy, you know I respect your short game, like your first words of sentences or your impeccable ability to capitalize the first letters of those first words of sentences, but any time I get past the first clause of your work, I’m infected with a heavy feeling of racism. Like, dude, I’ve been patient beyond belief. This is the fifteenth story of yours I’ve read and you still write black people like all they do is play sports and rap. There is no need for Terry the banker, the only black character in the entire book, to rap every line of dialogue, let alone with the rhyming ability of a five year old. Can you even name one rapper not named Eminem?’
Me and Maurice haven’t talked since, but I’ve got tickets to the game on Sunday. I’m sure he’ll come.
Not to worry, though, because my best buddy John, good old John, emailed me that, ‘I really related to your main character, and not just because his name is also John and, just like me, he runs a good Christian home with a wife, two kids, a dog, and earned both his bachelor’s and master’s from Ivy League schools that he got into largely due to nepotism (but who’s counting!). I was also enthralled by how John was able to overcome every problem that came his way, trivial as they might have been, through grit, synergy, and good old fashioned American values. I’d buy this book in a heartbeat!’
John gets me. John understands me.
But the last time I self-published a book that only John liked I sold three copies, one purchased by John and two by my mother. My mother has since passed.
So I decided to go artistic with this work. It was time for me to flex my creative muscles, marry form to function, and turn my book into the kind of permanent, edgy art installation that gets a ton of press because people think it’s cool and different and, like, super deep and impactful and stuff.
Using funds I’ve been living off from my dead mother’s fortune (she was the face of Big Styrofoam), I purchased advertising rights for the tall, spiral slide at the most popular local park. Then I printed my novel, all 300,000 words of it, and glued the pages to the inside of the slide for people to read on their way down.
Now when you read Middle Class Murder: A John Suburbia Detective Espionage Romance Thriller, you don’t need to rely on your readerly intuition to know when the novel is picking up steam. For example, Mary told me that my opening scene was, ‘boring classist garbage,’ but when you read that scene on the slide, the scene’s end occurs when you reach the slide’s first turn. When John quits his high-paying executive job because his new secretary is too cute to handle and he doesn’t want to cheat on his wife, instead of feeling bored and, I quote Mary here, ‘screamed at with blaring sexist overtones as only a male chauvinist can accomplish,’ you’ll round the slide’s first turn and really feel the momentum of what’s happening.
When you reach the second turn, no longer will John’s decision to call his ex-secretary in the middle of the night under the pretense of inquiring about her husband’s murder feel like, ‘the same predictable manly shitstorm as all your other work.’ Instead, you’ll really feel the plot twist as the slide twists with you.
At the third turn, you’ll feel the sudden turn of John fending off his ex-secretary’s advances over martinis while they’re spying on the primary suspect in her husband’s murder.
At the fourth turn, you’ll feel pulled deep into John’s internal conflict of finding out that the husband’s killer is his ex-secretary’s much younger sister, who he’s even more attracted to and finds the empathy to help (she killed the husband for love!).
At the fifth turn, you’ll feel absolutely spun around when the murderous sister reveals that she’s pregnant and offers John the chance to help her frame his ex-secretary for the murder.
And when you shoot off the slide… no. I won’t spoil the ending.
But you recognize the genius those who ride the slide bear witness to, do you not? The words and the form they are presented in are in perfect harmony. You’re literally moving on the edge of your seat the entire time, until you fall off!
How has no one thought of this before? Because for too long writers have had their heads up their asses, pretentiously averse to progressive ideas that don’t adhere to their archaic values.
Forget revision. Forget worrying about the pages of your books getting torn and their spines worn. The future of fiction is turning stories into spiral slides.
So far, hundreds of children have ridden my novel. None of them have read the book, but some of them have asked their parents to read it for them. The parents love it! I swear. You can take my word for it.
I promise you’ll love my book too. Buy my newest slide novel, Middle Class Murder: A John Suburbia Detective Espionage Romance Thriller, for just $500 plus shipping and handling, and, together, let’s make reading great again.