Here’s a thing that Noel Gallagher once said in a Pitchfork interview:
What really f**king annoys me about books is when you go to a bookshop and you’ll see a book, and the book will be titled, The Happiness of the Homosexual Squirrel, and I’ll say, “What’s that book about?” and they’ll say, “Oh, it’s about drug addicts.” What the f**king hell is that title, then? How to Catch a Hippo, what’s that one about? Oh, it’s about one woman’s erotic journey across f**king Eastern Europe.
People who write books are f**king idiots. I’ve met a few. They think they’re above everybody else. Honestly, you think I’m arrogant? F**k me, I’ve met a few authors in my time, and it’s just like, really? You wrote a f**king book called The Happiness of the Giraffe.
Doughnuts are f**king overrated…
I watch this interview once a month. It brings me so much joy.
Noel’s fixation on titles as literal descriptions of books is fascinating. I picture a massive library in his home. It’s got leather couches, smoking chairs, a nice rug, and ceiling-high bookshelves with rolling ladders. But the library is exclusively filled with books carrying literal titles. There are instructional manuals, cookbooks, how-to books, encyclopedias, dictionaries, and two dozen copies of Honor Levy’s first book, My First Book.
I wish The Happiness of the Homosexual Squirrel were an actual book. I’d read the hell out of that. I am unsure why Noel only distinguishes the squirrel as ‘homosexual.’ It’s very turn of the millennium of him, though I suppose this is to be expected. I figure The Happiness of the Homosexual Squirrel is the prequel to The Happiness of the Giraffe, which is followed by How to Catch a Hippo. In my head, The Happiness of the Homosexual Squirrel goes like this.
The squirrel is unhappy because he’s lived his whole life in a tree outside a bar that plays “Champagne Supernova” every night at close. To cope, the squirrel has taken to drugs and booze to dull the irritating high-end ring of the Britpop guitars. In the doldrums of the squirrel’s Oasis-driven substance abuse, the squirrel meets a giraffe who’s taken to habitually bashing his head against a tree because he lives in a zoo, and one of the zookeepers plays “Stop Crying Your Heart Out” on the loudspeakers before the zoo opens in the mornings.
Through their shared disdain for Oasis, the giraffe and the squirrel fall in love, and the giraffe asks the squirrel to marry him. When the giraffe asks the squirrel to marry him, it takes him a while to get down on one knee, and the squirrel tells the giraffe not to worry about it, but the giraffe loves the squirrel so much that he insists. Eventually, the giraffe gets down on one knee, and the squirrel cries happy tears and hugs the giraffe. The giraffe leaves the wedding planning to the squirrel, who hires a highly recommended wedding band, but the wedding band just turns out to be Oasis. At the reception, Oasis won’t stop playing Oasis songs, so the squirrel, giraffe, and all their animal friends maul and trample Noel and Liam to death.
The Happiness of the Homosexual Squirrel ends with the squirrel and the giraffe on their honeymoon. They are in Mexico, sitting on a beach, drinking from coconuts, and reading books. There’s no music, only the sounds of waves and birds. On the last page, the squirrel’s cheeks are full, the giraffe is smiling, and way out in the ocean, there’s an inexplicable hippo swimming towards shore.
But this all seems too obvious. Surely, The Happiness of the Homosexual Squirrel already exists somewhere. I am convinced that Noel Gallagher’s true dream is to write a vast, multi-volume series called The Happiness of Animals. There’s a hard drive somewhere with drafts of The Happiness of the Homosexual Squirrel, The Happiness of the Giraffe, and How to Catch a Hippo. This is why Noel can’t think of any book titles that aren’t animal-related in the interview. It’s not that he hates books. It’s that he realizes how old he is, how many animals are still left to write about, and that he may never finish his magnum opus.
Anyhow, for the happiness of all the animals out there, I hope this whole Oasis reunion thing falls through. I hope Noel and Liam get into another big fight, and Noel spends the rest of his life finishing The Happiness of Animals. I am particularly looking forward to reading The Happiness of the Human, a book about a British pop star who struggles to accept that the world continues to spin despite his dimming glow.
Hello, world. Doughnuts are good.
Need this series now. faster than a cannonball.
Daisy I am fucking deceased, this is the best thing I’ve read all day