One of John’s odder unrealized projects was a short diet book, known as either The Invisible Diet or How to Turn Yourself Inside Out. He wrote it in the ’80s under his favorite pseudonym, Randolph Halsey-Quince, and imagined it illustrated with cartoons. Although written in John’s usual humorous style, it offered serious advice: cut out white bread, sugar, caffeine, alcohol, and tobacco; keep track of what you eat; get more exercise. It also recommended changing your eating habits by changing your other habits: read a different newspaper, go to a different church, watch different TV shows. As he put it, “you must change everything.”
Publishers were confused, since it was neither a standard diet book nor a parody, so he was never able to sell it. Here are the first few pages. The “Dachau diet” of the chapter title, by the way, is the starvation diet that was given prisoners — a bad way to lose weight.
Just when I thought I knew nearly everything about JAK… Tip of the iceberg, it seems!
Comment by William J. Grabowski — May 23, 2014 @ 10:45 pm
John wrote just about everything: TV and radio scripts, comic books, kids’ records, novels, short stories — he had to, to make a living. In the ’80s, he tried a number of novels and plays, none of which was accepted. And this curious diet book…
Comment by Doug — May 24, 2014 @ 10:12 am
I didn’t know about kids’ records, or the diet book. As a prolific ghostwriter, though, I do know about having to write things to stay alive. Still, it beats working for some soulless idiot.
Comment by William J. Grabowski — May 26, 2014 @ 2:08 am
[…] is The Invisible Diet, which John shopped around without success in the ’80s. I mentioned it here. It’s a curious book: it tells you how to change your eating habits by changing everything […]
Pingback by A Couple of Notes « JOHN KEEL: NOT AN AUTHORITY ON ANYTHING — February 14, 2015 @ 12:58 pm