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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Russell Hoban

14:37 / 06.10.03

Any other enthusiasts out there?

I have just finished the latest Russell Hoban book to come out in paperback (I think there is another one in the pipeline), The Bat Tattoo, and realised again how much I enjoy the work of this narrator of the mildly improbable...

The Bat Tattoo was recognisably one of his later works - more like Amaryllis Night and Day than, say The Lion of Jachin-Boaz and Boaz-Jachin; and, indeed, there are some minor but explicit links between his last three books (the third is Angelica's Grotto). I think he has always written with much the same tone - calm, lucid, augmented by an eye for an unexpected but apposite image. I suppose some might find his quirky subject matter irritating, but I think I have got past my original irritation and now I rather like it, because - especially in the last three books - it so obviously prompted by something which happened to attract Hoban's interest and whihc he has then worked into his narrative.

I like the way he patterns the lives of his characters - it makes me look for patterns in the smallest things I do, even sitting on the bus, where I sit, who else I always see, what I notice... And I think that is one of the things he attempts to do as a novelist, to pattern his subject matter together to illustrate the singularities and samenesses of people's obsessions and characters.

I also enjoy the way his London is so definitively our contemporary London - so in The Bat Tattoo, Roswell Clark goes to see an exhibition at the RA called 'The Genius of Rome' which I remember going to see a couple of years ago myself; and Sarah Varley takes a walk down Cecil Court, past the salt-beef sandwich deli on the corner, past the gentlemen's outfitters (Inman and Co?) and past all the bookshops which I regularly drag my friends past... I think it makes the improbability of the novel seem immanent, as if my life could be improbable too if I just picked out the right patterns...

So, yes, any other enthusiasts?

19:20 / 08.10.03

Riddley Walker's the only one I've read, and I loved it. I found it quite heartbreaking. I thought ot was so good in fact that I haven't read anything else of his for fear it couldn't measure up. What's a good second Hoban?

Whisky Priestess

21:00 / 08.10.03

Fremder is fantastic - it's the sci fi book I'd love to have written. Atmospherically it reminds me of Blade Runner (the film), than which there can be no higher praise.

02:10 / 09.10.03

It must've been a prior incarnation of the board, but I've raved about Riddley Walker before. It was in a thread about made-up languages, I think. His is one of the best, although it took me longer to pick up than Burgess' nadsat.

Took the idea of "bombed back to the Stone Age" and ran with it right into the Bronze Age.

14:56 / 20.10.03

Or it might have been in the thread about post-apocalyptic fiction, maybe? I vaguely recall that.

Anyway, I got hold of Kleinzeit and Riddley Walker at the weekend. Joy joy. And, on Whisky P's rec., I am halfway through Fremder and I agree with WP - it is fantastic (nice to see Gosta Kraken from The Medusa Frequency turning up - see what I mean about all the books being linked together?).

However the thing which has confirmed my suspicion that RH is a minor deity is this: I have discovered that he wrote The Twenty-Elephant Restaurant! My life is complete.

13:49 / 08.01.04

I finally got round to Riddley Walker. What a book! Much as I love his other stuff, I reckon this is by far the best Hoban novel I have read (and there are only three I haven't, so chances are my opnion won't change when I've got through the lot).

It does fit with the other books - I could definitely get a sense of the usual Russell Hoban manner, sort of ludic and opaque - the kind of imagery and themes that affect you on a superficial level which is simultaneously quite profound, but in a way which is difficult to grasp (I am not expressing myself very well here, apologies). I spent a lot of my time reading the book appreciating the way in which he ties together ideas about nuclear holocausts with creation myths, 'primitive' societies, religion, etc.; but in this book, unlike some of his others, it really does all make something new and different, which said something important about the way human beings seek to make sense out of fragments of information, and about how this process can lead to dangerous discoveries which are nonetheless seductive...

The end is absolutely amazing as well. I wanted to reread immediately but decided to leave it a while for everything to sink in.

There's a thread somewhere round here about post-apocalyptic fictions - will try to dig it up.

13:53 / 08.01.04

Here it is. Lovely and juicy, too.

00:47 / 13.01.04

'The Mouse and his Child' is just one of my favorite books. So well crafted. Manny the Rat is such a wonderful and tragic villain.

10:36 / 15.01.04

I am currently reading Mr Rinyo-Clacton's Offer, and when I have finished that I will have just two to go, plus The Mouse and His Child, before I can start re-reading the LOT and forming a considered opinion, list in order of preference, etc. ...

Is this normal?

11:27 / 20.01.04

Finished Mr Rinyo-Clacton's Offer, a take on the Faustian compact - enjoyed it a lot, more than I was expecting, in fact. It definitely fits in with the later books, but I thought it was slightly less concerned with fitting in every little thing that RH happened to be interested in at the time, and more concerned with the story. But the characteristics of a RH novel were all there. Very satisfying.

Whisky Priestess

12:11 / 20.01.04

Riddley Walker sounds good. I wonder whether, if I go into Waterstones and pretend to have lost the receipt, I can swop my obligatory Christmas copy of Eats Shoots and Leaves for it?