David Whitehouse: Wide Awake

Bed is the debut novel by David Whitehouse. When it was unpublished, it won the inaugural To Hell With Prizes First Novel Award and was quickly snapped up by Canongate after sleeping in David's agent's drawer for a while.

It tells the story of two brothers. One is always second-best, equal parts in awe of and disgusted by his brother, who is Mal. Mal hasn't left his bed in over twenty years. The book shifts between the present where Mal is the subject of documentaries, jokes and attention, for doing nothing, and how he got there.

We spoke to David, who is also the associate editor of Heat magazine, about the book, writing in general and how he ended up writing an award-winning book about the extreme end of laziness.

> Dearest David Whitehouse, what is your preferred sleeping attire?

Just underpants. Anything else feels frivolous.

> On average, how many hours a night do you sleep?

Eight. If I’m not asleep for a third of every day, I turn yellow.

> Being an editor of various successful magazines, where did the impetus to write a book come from?

I’ve always preferred making stuff up to reporting fact, and always hoped that any kind of writing I did would eventually lead that way. Magazines are frustrating too. The best writers in the world still have to bend and flex to fit whatever title they are writing for. That they can do this is what makes them a good journalist, but also I suspect a frustrated novelist.

> Winning To Hell with Prizes certainly helped find a publisher. What did winning the prize mean to you?

Everything. Bed had sat dormant in my agent’s drawer for almost two years before it won that award. I had begun to try and pretend that it had never existed. So when it won it was as though it had been resurrected. I had to remind myself of it, reread it, get back into it. Like putting an old pair of shoes on, they take a while to get used to. And then you can’t remember why you stopped wearing them. Winning the prize of was like being told off for giving up, in a really good way. I doubt I’d have written another book for a long time had that not happened, even one destined to sit in the drawer again.

> Your writing is very darkly funny and your twitter stream is full of one-liners and jokes. Do you see yourself as a writer of comedy?

No, not at all. I like that people find Bed funny, but I’m never really sure which bits they are talking about. I don’t consider myself to be a funny writer. When it comes to twitter, it feels to me like the sole reason it exists is purely to say stupid things to try and make your friends laugh. If I wanted to say anything serious, I’d probably call them. I realise that not everyone feels this way. I saw someone invite someone else to a funeral on twitter once. Though in retrospect, that did make me laugh, so maybe I don’t know what I am talking about.

> What makes you laugh?

My friends mostly. I love Stewart Lee. I love the Viz letters page.

> While Bed is about the grotesque things that spoilt people do, it is also about that sense of being constantly second-best. Is any of the book based on your own experiences?

Lots of the book is. There are two brothers in the book that are very different. I am probably the exact mid-point between them. So it’s based on extreme versions of my own feelings and experiences I suppose.

> Did you do much medical research into what might happen to someone if they never left their bed or did you stay within the realms of fantastical comedy?

I watched a lot of documentaries and did a bit of reading on the topic, but I never wanted to get too forensic. I wanted it to feel like a description of something totally alien and abstract, something impossible to imagine. Too much in the way of research and it’d have become a medical textbook. And no one wants to read a medical textbook. Doctors do. And my mum does to try and diagnose herself. But other than that, no one.

> There's also a sense in the book of how anyone with a unique selling point, no matter how disgusting or ridiculous, can be a star. How much of this is influenced by your work at Heat?

I’m not even sure you need a unique selling point to be a celebrity. In the book, Mal becomes a celebrity of sorts by doing nothing. Literally nothing. And it feels like that is kind of becoming possible. People have to do less and less now to become a celebrity. Maybe one day soon anyone who wants to become a celebrity will stop doing anything altogether. And they’ll make an ITV2 show about it.

> What are you working on now?

I’ve started, just, a new book. It’s early days, but if nothing goes disastrously wrong it’ll be called Mobile Library. Also I’ve written a short film called Ending, about the last four people in the world, all of whom are bored teenagers. We’re filming it in Scotland in the Summer.

> What are you reading now?

I’ve just finished A Visit From The Good Squad by Jennifer Egan, which I enjoyed immensely. It felt effortless. I’m sure it wasn’t.

> What one book should we all read?

Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware