On Writers and their Bottoms

A Theory

At a neighbour’s Christmas party, last night, I got talking to an amateur cyclist and a former Olympic rower.

The cyclist described an overambitious ride from London to Brighton, just after lockdown, which had taken him three hours longer than expected.

When he got there, just before nine in the evening, all the restaurants were closing due to Covid restrictions. So, as it was a clear night, he bought a Tesco’s sandwich, a bottle of red wine and went to sit on the beach.

Now, you may or may not know Brighton — but the mainly egg-sized stones that make up the beach are an uncomfortable surface at the best of times. Not as bad as Chesil Beach or Shingle Street, but worse than Dunwich and Walberswick. (Always take a thick blanket is my advice.)

The cyclist said, he tried to sit down and found he couldn’t.

Too too painful on his post-ride posterior.

His bum just wasn’t up to that kind of expedition.

And so he lay there, flat on his back, exhausted, and ate the sandwich and drank the wine, and then fell asleep.

And was woken an hour later by a man with metal detector.

‘Oi, mate,’ the detectorist said, and pointed.

The incoming tide had almost reached the cyclist’s feet.

We laughed.

I turned to the former GB rower.

‘You must have suffered a lot from that,’ I said — thinking of his damp-bottomed mornings sculling and crewing on the Cam, the Ouse, the Thames.

Miles and miles of back and forth chafing.

‘Oh yes,’ he said.

Hoping to learn something, I asked, ‘Did you have a name for it?’

‘No, we just called it sore arse,’ he said.

The conversation did not subsequently turn to me, but it should have done.

You writers — you novelists — you really put in the hours on your bums. You sit, and you sit hard. Any tips?

Years ago, I heard an interview with a famous literary agent. I can’t remember who they were, and I’ve never been able to track down the exact quote.

They were asked if they ever envied writers?

God, no, they said —

Writers are like long-distance truck drivers. They spend years and year sitting down, and they end up with these massive fat bottoms — because they have to. It’s the only way they can survive. There’s nothing worse than being a writer with a bony arse.

Which tempts me to formulate a theory of literary genre in which the average length of the works a writer produces is directly proportional to the generosity of the flesh on their gluteus maximus.

To write very long books one needs a very cushioned ride.

Think Honoré de Balzac (see below), JRR Tolkien, George Eliot, Georges Sand, George R R Martin.

All built for comfort.

Clearly, there are exceptions. Skinny maximalists such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, who must have suffered out their wordcounts on harsh hipbones, on aching ischia.

But might this sketch of a theory not explain why Franz Kafka tended to write in fragments? And why sleek Chekhov never completed a novel?

And might it not be extended to practitioners of flash fiction, who simply can’t sit around that long?

If, as Mary Heaton Vorse is credited with saying, “The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair,” then much of the day-to-day Craft of it is dependent on what comes between the skeleton and the cloth.

The agent’s image of writers as long-distance truck-drivers at first horrified me, but I’ve come to see the truth in it.

At school, I was mocked for being bottom heavy.

There was one particular bully who fixated on this part of my anatomy.

Hey, fattie bum bum, he would chant at me, Sweet sugar dumpling.

He was the only person I ever punched.

I landed one on his nose, right outside the Staffroom — because I knew if I did it there, the fight would be stopped in moments.

It was.

But maybe, by drawing attention to my bottom, my bully was inadvertently pointing out my physical qualification to become a long-distance truck driver.

Or…

Balzac’s lower half.