Hanging Around Reality's Stage Door
by Johnny De Falbe
Nearly twenty years ago, as an undergraduate, I went to a meeting of some literary society that had the imagination to invite Russell Hoban to speak. At a previous occasion, A.N.Wilson had addressed us and I had to stand. When Hoban visited, there were so few people that we moved to a smaller room. Were there 20 of us? I doubt it. I recall him reading from something to do with Orpheus and Eurydice. He mumbled about the head of Medusa, the Kraken … It was very obscure, and yet I listened, rapt, because he was the author of Riddley Walker, which I still believe to be a masterpiece. First published in 1980, it is hard to see how it could date, unlike many futurist novels. Set in the remote future in an England that has reverted to an iron age after some nameless apocalypse, the story is told in a language (re)created from the fragments that remained.
Russell Hoban is one of the most celebrated modern children’s
authors – The Mouse and His Child and the Frances books are
acknowledged classics. The film of
Turtle Diary is known to many, as is
The Second Mrs Kong, an astonishing opera that he collaborated on
recently with Harrison Birtwistle. Nor am I sticking my neck out in praising
Riddley Walker: critical acclaim for it was lavish. But few are aware of the
extent of his work, while some suppose him to be of interest only to weird
cults. Even his publishers have been guilty of this. I recall the Jonathan Cape
rep subscribing Fremder to me, one of my favourite Hoban novels. It was
tucked right at the end of that month’s fiction and he skipped over it, knowing
nothing about Hoban himself and taking it for granted that I (a bookseller)
would not be interested. Since then (1996) Hoban has fortunately switched
publisher to Bloomsbury, who appear to be trying to reach a wider audience with
their promotion of Angelica’s Grotto and Amaryllis Night and Day.
In each of Hoban’s novels a strange world has been imagined with detail and
conviction. In Riddley Walker, part of what characterises the world is
the language, and this is sustained with breathtaking energy and invention. At
the start, you might be forgiven for thinking that ‘The woal thing fealt jus
that littl but stupid’, or put off because of the difficulty. But you quickly
get the hang of it, and it is just another aspect of the linguistic fertility on
display in Fremder where (to pick at random), in describing the spaceport
on Badru in the Fourth Galaxy, he tells us, ‘There are a mini-cine and a
cybercade in the spaceport but my favourite night spot on Badru is the Q-BO
SLEEP that beckons in purple neon, SLEEP & SHOWER 10 CR. PER HOUR’. Sometimes,
as in these two novels, the setting is futuristic. In Pilgermann, where
the narrator is a disembodied consciousness, it is historical – action occurs
during the First Crusade – and a sense of the past imbues all the work: ‘The
dead are with me in the ordinary moments of every day – sometimes I see my hand
lift a cup of coffee or sign my name and I feel ghost hands moving with mine,
lifting their no-coffee, signing their no-names’ (Fremder). More often,
however, the novels are set in a very recognisable contemporary London, complete
with bus numbers and the tube at Fulham Broadway. But it is still Hoban-land.
Uniting all the books is his distinctive vision, where the strange and
disturbing are natural bedfellows with the wry and romantic. “Trust me, I’m a
weirdo,” says Amaryllis in Amaryllis Night and Day, and of course the
narrator does, for who could resist such disarming frankness?
In the same novel, the narrator remarks, “…if reality had a stage door I’d hang
around there and see what came out after the show,” which would do very well as
a statement of intention for Hoban himself. Likewise in Fremder, after
our hero has been found tumbling unprotected through ‘the black sparkle of deep
space’, the irresistible Dr Caroline Lovecraft tells him, “Reality is for
squilches. The real thing is what comes through the cracks when you fall apart…
I can feel your terror and I want to be in that terror with you.” This ‘real
thing’ is often reached through vivid mythic resonances. Some of these have
their origins deep in a shared culture, such as the figure of Orpheus, or
Vermeer (Hoban was alluding to the girl with the pearl earring long before Tracy
Chevalier). Others – owls, lions, the word tawny, the Kraken – seem to be have
special significance in Hoban’s personal cosmology, and they suggest some
nameless threat, or the presence of a primeval force which is to be found inside
people as well as in the world outside. This dreamlike, mythical element often
accompanies a modern, robustly banal situation, and derives great force from the
tension. Angelica’s Grotto is a pornographic website that the aged
narrator has wandered into. “You’re a tiger from the neck up, Professor, ” she
says when she meets him, and this remark coexists easily with his worries about
the absence of his ‘inner voice’. The eponymous Amaryllis and her narrator spend
a lot of time in a shared dream (‘glim’) aboard a paper bus to Finsey Obay. On
one trip, they check in at a motel with a print of Edward Hopper’s Gas on
the wall. A page later we read a typical Hoban throwaway line, ‘I was confident
that the mattress would be damp.’ The predictable spices up the weird here,
instead of the more usual opposite. As ever, there is a pervasive sadness, an
awareness of lurking horrors, which is redeemed by wry humour and the comforts
of the ordinary.
The weirdness and the sense of connectedness that is present both in the text
and as an essential element of Hoban’s vision make him a natural cult author.
But it would be a mistake for anyone interested in fiction to suppose that his
appeal must therefore be limited: he is a brilliantly inventive, often very
funny novelist, an original who stretches your head in surprising ways .
Different people favour different books. Some find Riddley Walker heavy
going, but I have always been amazed by its readability. I find Pilgermann
difficult, and Hoban lost me with a couple of books after that, but one of these
(The Medusa Frequency) appears to be the favourite among Hoban’s web
fans, while a very straightforward reader told me the other day that he liked
Pilgermann best. Fremder will be abhorrent to those who despise
sci-fi, but, though I read no other sci-fi, I think it is delightful. I became a
loyal admirer on the strength of his first three books, The Lion of
Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz, Kleinzeit (a man pursued by sheets of yellow
paper) and Turtle Diary, but I suspect the best place to start now is
with one of his two most recent books. Both are accessible, and both are vintage
Hoban.
Johnny De Falbe, a longtime Russell Hoban fan, runs the John Sandoe bookshop off the Kings Road in London and has reviewed Russell Hoban's Her Name Was Lola and Come Dance With Me for the Spectator magazine. The above piece was originally published in the Summer 2001 issue of Susan Hill's (now defunct) magazine Books & Co.
Orpheus (detail)
Roelandt Savery
Gas