Remembering Riddley Walker’s writing

Some of you may have heard — Russell Hoban died ten days back. You may know him through the Frances The Badger books (which I remember as a child).  He’ll be remembered for Frances, of course, but I wanted to remember him for Riddley Walker, the novel, and also for Riddley Walker, the character.

I re-discovered Hoban in my adulthood, when somebody pointed me at Riddley WalkerWritten entirely in Riddley’s idiosyncratic spelling, the novel is Riddley’s own notes and journals: he has taught himself to make words on paper in a post-apocalyptic England that can barely keep him alive, let alone be concerned about his literacy. Riddley’s a wise young man, though, and writes about the same things that most teenagers — especially the better-read-than-their-peers ones — think about, like how to find community, and the possibilities and despairs of friendship and love and consciousness and if you can really know something:

I cud feal it in the guts and barrils of me. You try to make your self 1 with some thing or some body but try as you wil the 2ness of every thing is working agenst you all the way. You try to take holt of the 1ness and it comes in 2 in your hans.

Seeing that boars face in my mynd that morning in the aulders and seeing it in my mynd now I have the same thot I had then: If you cud even jus see 1 thing clear the woal of whats in it you cud see every thing clear. But you never wil get to see the woal of any thing youre all ways in the middl of it living it or moving thru it. Never mynd.

(source of excerpts.)

Go find Riddley Walker at your local bookshop or library. Read it. Let me know what you thought.

 


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6 responses to “Remembering Riddley Walker’s writing”

  1. Robin Turner Avatar
    Robin Turner

    Russell Hoban’s dead? Shit. During the ’80s he was part of my Holy Trinity of writers, the other two being Ursula Le Guin and Angela Carter.

  2. eyeteeth Avatar

    Have you read The Mouse and His Child? That book means a lot to me.

    1. Jeremy Avatar
      Jeremy

      Maybe when I was a kid? I don’t remember it though. What did you like about it?

      1. eyeteeth Avatar

        It’s in the shape of a children’s book, because it’s about windup toys and animals, but it’s not a children’s book really — or maybe it is, because the best children’s books have a lot of menace in them and can be read with pleasure by adults. The Mouse and His Child is full of whimsy but even the whimsy is menacing: a romantic conversation between two weasels comes to a halt when an owl pierces their brains with its talons; a headless hula dancing toy is forced by a rat to perform burlesque. At its heart the book is about finding family and a place to belong, and about breaking away from what you were made to do in order to take control of your own destiny. What the mouse and the mouse child want more than anything is to become “self-winding,” and that’s something people of any age can relate to. It’s a terrifying and hilarious and gorgeous and heartbreaking book.

  3. Henry Kahn Avatar
    Henry Kahn

    No, I nefer herd of Riddley Walker. He sowndz leik mi frend Og, King of Bashan. I rilly mis hum.

    1. Jeremy Avatar
      Jeremy

      Og [Bud] probably knew Russell Hoban in person, since Bud was so well-connected to the science fiction world. I wouldn’t be surprised if Og was partly inspired by Riddley, or mebbe t’other way rown.

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