Printer error inserts <i>Sex Toys of the Gods</i> into Barbara Pym novel (1360)

Students at the University of Akron wondered why Barbara Pym's acclaimed 1952 novel Excellent Women suddenly started dealing with gay video store clerk Jason Dallin and his adventures in modern-day Hollywood. The [Cleveland] Plain Dealer reports that a printer error at Plume, a trade paperback division of Penguin Putnam Inc., accidentally inserted 64 pages from gay writer Christian McLaughlin's 1998 novel Sex Toys of the Gods. "It would be like finding a love scene in the New Testament," said Thomas Dukes, who teaches the modern British literature course where the faulty copies of Excellent Women surfaced. McLaughlin, who also wrote the 1994 novel Glamourpuss and cocreated the recent MTV soap Spyder Games, told Advocate.com, "Thank God it wasn't the other way around--can you imagine? It would be like making out with Enrique Iglesias and having him suddenly and without warning turn into Judi Dench. But seriously, I am intrigued that this was the only modern British literature course in history that included a jalapeno enema as part of the assigned reading."