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
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."
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"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."
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