Patrick Evans, the glamour years

The latest newsletter from the International Institute of Modern Letters (14 May) reports:

VUP is about to announce the forthcoming publication of a new novel, his first in 21 years, by Patrick Evans, Professor of English at Canterbury University. We understand that there is a clause in Evans’s contract confirming his long-held belief that all VUP authors, especially IIML graduates, have to pass a beauty test when their manuscript is accepted. Apparently the wording runs something like this:

Makeover
19. The author shall undergo, at the author’s own expense, a standard makeover, comprising a physical training programme with a licensed instructor, a new wardrobe purchased from approved fashion retailers, hair extensions, and any other measures which in the publisher’s opinion are necessary.

The word is that, like so many before him, the desperate author has signed his contract. We recommend that all suggestions for Professor Evans’s improvement programme be sent directly to Professor Ken Strongman who, as Pro-Vice Chancellor (Arts) at the University of Canterbury, ‘granted me the leave and funding that enabled completion of this project’.

I had forgotten about Evans’s Listener article on NZ lit’s “spectacular babies” and, more specifically, its spectacular babes. It is, perhaps unintentionally, a hoot.