Young adult novelist Bennett Madison turned in 25 fake letters seeking advice from Slate's Dear Prudence column starting in 2018
A disillusioned novelist turned in fake letters to an advice column to avoid the 'cultural revolutionaries' in the writing world, but cut his experiment short when Tucker Carlson shared one of his fake missives detailing a wife's despair at her COVID-conscious husband's insistence on wearing a mask during sex.
Bennett Madison used fake emails to submit 25 letters to Slate's Dear Prudence column starting in late 2018. Twelve of the letters were answered in print or on the column's podcast.
The one that got Carlson's attention - 'My Husband Won’t Take His Mask Off - Even for Sex' - was published in May and describes a wife's frustration over her husband's seemingly permanent pandemic-era accessory.
Madison, writing as 'Maskless and Alone,' vents: 'He wears it to sleep, to do most of his bathroom activities, and, yes, even during lovemaking. To eat, he pulls it up to expose his mouth, and then quickly pulls it back down between bites.
'I want to kiss him on the lips romantically, like we used to, and not through a piece of fabric. (He does not change his mask very often and it is often smelly and soiled.)'
Columnist Tori Bosch suggested the husband seek medical and psychological care.
'Once he has committed to some sort of treatment, see if you can get him to promise to change his mask every day until he feels secure going without it,' Bosch answered.
Madison's most popular letter detailed a spouse's frustration of their husband's mask wearing
The absurd letter, published in May, said that the writer's husband would not remove his 'smelly and soiled' mask 'even during lovemaking'
Madison embarked in the long-term writing exercise after growing disillusioned with his career as a young adult novelist, he revealed in an essay for Gawker on Monday, where he suggested that the current culture of social justice in the writing world dampens creativity and free expression.
He's written young adult novels such as September Girls and The Blonde of the Joke.
'In my anonymous, fabricated letters to Prudence, I could follow the most demented threads of my imagination without having to anticipate the omnivalent flavors of opprobrium that might rain down on me from YA’s brigade of cultural revolutionaries,' he explained.
He added: 'I can speak only for myself: at a moment when stories increasingly serve as delivery mechanisms for moral and political messaging, it felt like a tiny form of resistance to engage in fiction that was at its heart completely pointless.'
The novelist cut his experiment short after Carlson ranted about the letter on air. 'What I thought of as harmless trolling might actually have evil consequences,' Madison said
His unique hobby came to a halt after the Fox News host used his 'mask sex' letter to decry COVID hysteria on air, complete with a chyron reading
