Philip Pullman's latest literary endeavour: the Twitter tale of Jeffrey the housefly

AdamSmith · February 20, 2014

Philip Pullman's latest literary endeavour: the Twitter tale of Jeffrey the housefly

Since November, Philip Pullman has been using the social media site to tell the increasingly bizarre tale of a housefly called Jeffrey

Philip Pullman: author of His Dark Materials and a new Twitter tale about Jeffrey the housefly Photo: Clara Molden/Wikimedia Commons

By George Berridge

8:19AM GMT 20 Feb 2014

telegraph.co.uk

One of Britain's best-loved authors, Philip Pullman, author of His Dark Materials, isn't like most high-profile Twitter users.

Instead of indulging in mindless 140 character twitterings and arguments with trolls, Pullman is currently devoting his Twitter timeline to telling the story of a housefly called Jeffrey.

Jeffrey's literary life began in November as an unobtrusive insect, peering over the author's books and papers ("Jeffrey listless, melancholic. My fault: I left a volume of French verse open on the kitchen table and he'd spent the night on Baudelaire").

A brief love interest developed in the form of Polka, a ladybird found asleep on the kitchen window.

Then, only days after their paths crossed, there was a shock twist: Jeffrey's apparent death ("In memoriam Jeffrey, 2013-2013. Official household fly, much missed. He did not buzz, and he always washed his hands").

In the event, it was a false alarm. Jeffrey had simply flown out into the wide world to taste dung for the first time, a substance to which he has since become addicted.

"I joined Twitter back in November because the people who do my website suggested it would be a good quick way of keeping in touch with readers," Pullman told the Telegraph. "I soon found that I didn’t have very much to say, so I started telling the story of Jeffrey the fly, who was a valued member of the household. It just grew from there."

Jeffrey's attempt to battle his addiction is ongoing and has coincided with his discovery of the Silverfish Symphony Orchestra (SSO), led by the conductor, Sviatoslav. He is also currently enraptured with the pianist, the wasp Madame Vespucci.

However, Sviatoslav is a fraud ("Last week he conducted Robert Farnon's Westminster Waltz and passed it off as Tchaikovsky") and has had to go on the run from the Performing Rights Society (PRS).

Jeffrey, who aids his escape, is later contacted by the PRS (a wing of MI5, it transpires) to go on a secret mission into the heart of the underground dung trade.

In bewtween chronicling Jeffrey's escapades, Pullman is working on a new novel, The Book of Dust, to accompany His Dark Materials.

"Jeffrey is just fun," Pullman says. "It's nothing to do with The Book of Dust, which is progressing at its own rate on paper in another part of the house. I don’t think it’ll be a book. I’d rather keep it where it is. But if it had a title it would probably be The Jeffreyad. What’s next in the story? I don’t know. I shall have to wait and see."

It's not the first time that an author has attempted to write a story on Twitter.

Between April 2008 and March 2010, American author and journalist Nick Belardes wrote a Twitter novel called Small Places.

On the literary website thenervousbreakdown.com, Belardes described the novel as "a corporate mockery and love story set in Central California, it follows one man’s mundane day-to-day life, and his attempt to create philosophical meaning out of it."

The book can be read on Twitter @SmallPlaces.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10646921/Philip-Pullmans-latest-literary-endeavour-the-Twitter-tale-of-Jeffrey-the-housefly.html