On Sun, 14 Nov 1999 Ric_____@_____.edu wrote:

> Finally finished Pilgermann myself, after starting it about 8 years ago. Maybe
> I’m just older (51) and more battered myself, but it was much easier to get into
> (especially with all the encouragement from the listserv!). It grapples so
> fiercely with the terror and wonder and beauty…. Hoban himself said this was
> one to spend some time and effort on, and he’s right. There aren’t ANY of his
> books unworthy of multiple readings, and bits of this one are already starting
> to pop into my head at odd times. I like going back and reading at random,
> especially Riddley Walker, and Pilgerman will be most appropriate for that.
>

 

Congrats! Actually it would be nice to know what makes this book
difficult for people. Is it the castration at the beginning, the
undirected and non-plot driven nature of the story, or its rather
heretical take on things.

> “Process theology” is very trendy in some divinity school circles these days.
> It suggests how a less-than-omnipotent God uses human prayers to effect change
> in the world, and changes godself. The passage in Pilgermann about God needing
> divers and lovers and sufferers rings that bell. (But it still sounds like a
> heresy, and seems to me to raise at least as many problems as it solves.)

 

I am going to rant a bit here on models a lot of clever theology students
tend to banter on about, and to theological (as an intellectual persuit)
in of itself (mostly from a very small representative of ‘brainy God
people (n=~5)). I think there is a real danger of attempting to fit God
into a formula or a box, and it seems to me that this is just what Hoban
is escaping from by moving God from a personified idea to the action
itself (God moving from a He to an It). ‘Process Theology’ is once again
creating a model, and fitting God into it as though plugged into an
algebra equation. I had no impression from Pilgermann that God was not
omnipotent, indeed I found that if there was anything to be understood
about God, it could only really be grasped intuitively. Moreso, I think
Hoban says as much that in attempting to answer that question, people are
living the answer, and there is no part of it you can say ‘oh this wasn’t
important’. The answer is the sum of everything and that doesn’t fit into
any equations or clever theological theories. The only thought that has
struck my mind has been how close Hoban’s ‘God as the action’ fits to
pantheistic notions, but again, I think any model–simply because it is a
model, is going to miss what Hoban is trying to get at.
As to models, I think you need to consider Hoban’s idea of the limited
consensus of reality. Much of my problem with certain theology students
and instructors are that many of their models seem intent on putting God
back within the parameters of the LCR while Hoban is pretty intent on
putting God outside of those parameters–and everything else for that
matter! Indeed, most of this rant is mostly due to negative experiences
with those academically learned in religion who seem to be among some of
the more close minded people when it comes to spiritual matters–something
like the botanist who no longer sees the flowers but just classifies,
classifies, classifies…

Well enough of that. 🙂

> I have my copy of Grotto ( and my unrequested but welcome $5.00 refund from
> Amazon!), and have read the reviews with some anxiety.

 

Yes, what is with that extra $5 (or was it 5 pounds)? Anyone figure this
out?

I found Fremder very

> dark, indeed. Hoban spoke disparagingly of prize-winning sexually explicit work
> in Medusa, and yet he got pretty shockingly explicit in Rinyo-Clacton.

 

I think there is a difference between writing orpheus as a sweaty, lusty
exploitative story, and what goes on in Grotto. Grotto really justifies
everything it does. I think what Hoban was downplaying in Medusa was
turning everything into the least common denominator. The resolution that
writing a comic for the backs of cereal boxes is better than selling out
is one that will forever stay with me 🙂 Nexo Volma indeed!

I look

> forward (esp at my age!) to Grotto with terror and wonder of a whole new
> type….
>

Well I think it is a scary book, but the more I think about it, the more I
think it was quite fantastic. Hoban’s 90’s books are far harder to digest
I think, but seem to have high pay offs with some contemplation.

Chris

I have found three Melbourne bookshops with Grotto on order. I am starting
to think that Melbourne has a strong Hoban following as his new books are
always easily found and the children’s books appear regularly when browsing.I can hardly wait to read Grotto.

I am not flabbergasted by how many people found Pilgermann
difficult…bloody hard work – it’s true i found it much easier when I “got
older” and have more patience. I certainly did not find Fremder dark or
difficult and Rinyo not as “shocking or graphic” as has been described in
some e-mails…..yep, I must be getting old….

Kerry Power
—–Original Message—–
From: Chris Bell <chr_____@_____.nz>
To: the_____@_____.com <the_____@_____.com>
Date: Sunday, November 14, 1999 8:11 AM
Subject: [the-kraken] Grotto talk

 

>From: “Chris Bell” <chr_____@_____.nz>
>
>Mainly for Dave V. and Chris C.’s attention (although no one else is
>excluded):
>
>Down here in New Zealand, I feel even further removed from the action than
>ever… I was therefore much encouraged (following a hard drive crash that
>cost me all my data and caused me to miss the list news that ‘Grotto’ is

now

>available) to find that Auckland’s new ‘Borders’ store have FIVE copies on
>order!
>
>Well, I’ll go down to the America’s Cup Village and hand me fags round
>(that’s cigarettes to you, Dave)!
>
>Frankly, I was most impressed – it would not have surprised me if there

were

>only five Hoban books in NZ *in total*. On the subject of the book itself,

I

>must obviously reserve judgement. I admire, however, everyone else’s

reserve

>in restraining themselves from ‘slagging off’ Grotto before it’s had time

to

>filter through and assume it’s place in the consciousness. Well done! It
>would indeed seem logical that it would be a thematic successor to
>’Rinyo-Clacton’… I’m looking forward to immersing myself in it, and –
>while our views of it are likely to be coloured by expectations to

varyingly

>reasonable degrees – I am confident that, in time, it will simply find its
>place in THE BODY OF WORK. Which is what it’s all about.
>
>Aside: I’ll never forget my delight on reading ‘Medusa’ for the first time
>during a Caribbean holiday and wishing I’d never reach the end…
>
>I am constantly flabbergasted by how many people found it difficult (or
>impossible) to complete reading ‘Pilgermann’ – I gave up on it myself on

the

>first attempt, but I soon had the book back out of Chiswick library and it
>then became my fave.
>
>Enough,
>Chris Bell
>
>>—————————————————
>The Kraken: The Russell Hoban Mailing List
>For help contact Dave Awl – day_____@_____.com
>http://www.suba.com/~dayvoll/rh

Chris, I really appreciate your comments; I could not have ranted better
myself. There’s a quote that I cannot attribute, although it might be Meister
Eckhart, that ‘anything we say about God must be false,” i.e., cannot fully
describe or even approach the reality. The only adequate model of the universe
will, to be adequate, be just as detailed as the universe itself, and therefore
will comprise another universe. We summarize this by saying ‘Things are what
they are,” a much more comprehensive and much deeper statement than is generally
recognized. I couldn’t agree more with your condemnation of systems which put
‘God in a box.’ I’ve encountered some of those dogmatic, closed-minded
individuals myself.
Having said that, like Hoban’s yellow-eyed bird of prey in Turtle Diary,
‘This is what we do:” we make systems and theories, we try to understand. We
try to bring some order to the terrible, glorious tumult and chaos that
surrounds us from birth, all in a powerful current in which we float along until
death; we try to come to terms with what happens to us and to everyone else.
It’s what Hoban is doing in his writing, and why we can learn something from him
(and more with every re-read!) to help us do it, too. Provisionally, always
provisionally. I don’t condemn the box-making, the groping for tentative
meanings and explanations, the speculations and trial balloons, just the
dogmatism and closed-mindedness. This is science, and this is religion, and
this is philosophy, never mind art and never mind just making it from 7:00 AM to
7:00 PM every day.
It’s interesting that looking up ‘process theology’ on the web, as I did a
couple of weeks ago, takes you quickly to actual ‘pantheistic’ sites, and that
the box “God as It, God as the action” seems to fit there rather neatly.
Perhaps too neatly, or perhaps not.
Gosh, I didn’t mean to unload all that! Anyway, I love Hoban because he’s
always giving me new perspectives, new pieces of the puzzle, and new ways to
look at the pieces I have. This weekend, into the Grotto—Charge!!!the_____@_____.com on 11/16/99 08:30:12 AM

Please respond to the_____@_____.com

To: the_____@_____.com

cc: (bcc: Richard Hoos/VUMC/Vanderbilt)

Subject: [the-kraken] Digest Number 49

—————————————————
The Kraken: The Russell Hoban Mailing List
For help contact Dave Awl – day_____@_____.com
http://www.suba.com/~dayvoll/rh
————————————————————————

There are 2 messages in this issue.

Topics in today’s digest:

1. Re: Digest Number 47
From: ULTIMATE CHRISMOON <cam_____@_____.net>
2. Re: Grotto talk
From: “Kerry Martin Power” <kan_____@_____.com>

On Sun, 14 Nov 1999 Ric_____@_____.edu wrote:

> Finally finished Pilgermann myself, after starting it about 8 years ago.

Maybe

> I’m just older (51) and more battered myself, but it was much easier to get

into

> (especially with all the encouragement from the listserv!). It grapples so
> fiercely with the terror and wonder and beauty…. Hoban himself said this

was

> one to spend some time and effort on, and he’s right. There aren’t ANY of his
> books unworthy of multiple readings, and bits of this one are already starting
> to pop into my head at odd times. I like going back and reading at random,
> especially Riddley Walker, and Pilgerman will be most appropriate for that.
>

 

Congrats! Actually it would be nice to know what makes this book
difficult for people. Is it the castration at the beginning, the
undirected and non-plot driven nature of the story, or its rather
heretical take on things.

> “Process theology” is very trendy in some divinity school circles these days.
> It suggests how a less-than-omnipotent God uses human prayers to effect

change

> in the world, and changes godself. The passage in Pilgermann about God

needing

> divers and lovers and sufferers rings that bell. (But it still sounds like a
> heresy, and seems to me to raise at least as many problems as it solves.)

 

I am going to rant a bit here on models a lot of clever theology students
tend to banter on about, and to theological (as an intellectual persuit)
in of itself (mostly from a very small representative of ‘brainy God
people (n=~5)). I think there is a real danger of attempting to fit God
into a formula or a box, and it seems to me that this is just what Hoban
is escaping from by moving God from a personified idea to the action
itself (God moving from a He to an It). ‘Process Theology’ is once again
creating a model, and fitting God into it as though plugged into an
algebra equation. I had no impression from Pilgermann that God was not
omnipotent, indeed I found that if there was anything to be understood
about God, it could only really be grasped intuitively. Moreso, I think
Hoban says as much that in attempting to answer that question, people are
living the answer, and there is no part of it you can say ‘oh this wasn’t
important’. The answer is the sum of everything and that doesn’t fit into
any equations or clever theological theories. The only thought that has
struck my mind has been how close Hoban’s ‘God as the action’ fits to
pantheistic notions, but again, I think any model–simply because it is a
model, is going to miss what Hoban is trying to get at.
As to models, I think you need to consider Hoban’s idea of the limited
consensus of reality. Much of my problem with certain theology students
and instructors are that many of their models seem intent on putting God
back within the parameters of the LCR while Hoban is pretty intent on
putting God outside of those parameters–and everything else for that
matter! Indeed, most of this rant is mostly due to negative experiences
with those academically learned in religion who seem to be among some of
the more close minded people when it comes to spiritual matters–something
like the botanist who no longer sees the flowers but just classifies,
classifies, classifies…

Well enough of that. 🙂

> I have my copy of Grotto ( and my unrequested but welcome $5.00 refund from
> Amazon!), and have read the reviews with some anxiety.

 

Yes, what is with that extra $5 (or was it 5 pounds)? Anyone figure this
out?

I found Fremder very

> dark, indeed. Hoban spoke disparagingly of prize-winning sexually explicit

work

> in Medusa, and yet he got pretty shockingly explicit in Rinyo-Clacton.

 

I think there is a difference between writing orpheus as a sweaty, lusty
exploitative story, and what goes on in Grotto. Grotto really justifies
everything it does. I think what Hoban was downplaying in Medusa was
turning everything into the least common denominator. The resolution that
writing a comic for the backs of cereal boxes is better than selling out
is one that will forever stay with me 🙂 Nexo Volma indeed!

I look

> forward (esp at my age!) to Grotto with terror and wonder of a whole new
> type….
>

Well I think it is a scary book, but the more I think about it, the more I
think it was quite fantastic. Hoban’s 90’s books are far harder to digest
I think, but seem to have high pay offs with some contemplation.

Chris

I have found three Melbourne bookshops with Grotto on order. I am starting
to think that Melbourne has a strong Hoban following as his new books are
always easily found and the children’s books appear regularly when browsing.I can hardly wait to read Grotto.

I am not flabbergasted by how many people found Pilgermann
difficult…bloody hard work – it’s true i found it much easier when I “got
older” and have more patience. I certainly did not find Fremder dark or
difficult and Rinyo not as “shocking or graphic” as has been described in
some e-mails…..yep, I must be getting old….

Kerry Power
—–Original Message—–
From: Chris Bell <chr_____@_____.nz>
To: the_____@_____.com <the_____@_____.com>
Date: Sunday, November 14, 1999 8:11 AM
Subject: [the-kraken] Grotto talk

 

>From: “Chris Bell” <chr_____@_____.nz>
>
>Mainly for Dave V. and Chris C.’s attention (although no one else is
>excluded):
>
>Down here in New Zealand, I feel even further removed from the action than
>ever… I was therefore much encouraged (following a hard drive crash that
>cost me all my data and caused me to miss the list news that ‘Grotto’ is

now

>available) to find that Auckland’s new ‘Borders’ store have FIVE copies on
>order!
>
>Well, I’ll go down to the America’s Cup Village and hand me fags round
>(that’s cigarettes to you, Dave)!
>
>Frankly, I was most impressed – it would not have surprised me if there

were

>only five Hoban books in NZ *in total*. On the subject of the book itself,

I

>must obviously reserve judgement. I admire, however, everyone else’s

reserve

>in restraining themselves from ‘slagging off’ Grotto before it’s had time

to

>filter through and assume it’s place in the consciousness. Well done! It
>would indeed seem logical that it would be a thematic successor to
>’Rinyo-Clacton’… I’m looking forward to immersing myself in it, and –
>while our views of it are likely to be coloured by expectations to

varyingly

>reasonable degrees – I am confident that, in time, it will simply find its
>place in THE BODY OF WORK. Which is what it’s all about.
>
>Aside: I’ll never forget my delight on reading ‘Medusa’ for the first time
>during a Caribbean holiday and wishing I’d never reach the end…
>
>I am constantly flabbergasted by how many people found it difficult (or
>impossible) to complete reading ‘Pilgermann’ – I gave up on it myself on

the

>first attempt, but I soon had the book back out of Chiswick library and it
>then became my fave.
>
>Enough,
>Chris Bell
>
>>—————————————————
>The Kraken: The Russell Hoban Mailing List
>For help contact Dave Awl – day_____@_____.com
>http://www.suba.com/~dayvoll/rh

> From: Ric_____@_____.edu
>
>
>

[snip]

> I couldn’t agree more with your condemnation of systems which put
> ‘God in a box.’ I’ve encountered some of those dogmatic, closed-minded
> individuals myself.
> Having said that, like Hoban’s yellow-eyed bird of prey in Turtle Diary,
> ‘This is what we do:” we make systems and theories, we try to understand. We
> try to bring some order to the terrible, glorious tumult and chaos that
> surrounds us from birth, all in a powerful current in which we float along until
> death; we try to come to terms with what happens to us and to everyone else.
> It’s what Hoban is doing in his writing, and why we can learn something from him
> (and more with every re-read!) to help us do it, too. Provisionally, always
> provisionally. I don’t condemn the box-making, the groping for tentative
> meanings and explanations, the speculations and trial balloons, just the
> dogmatism and closed-mindedness. This is science, and this is religion, and
> this is philosophy, never mind art and never mind just making it from 7:00 AM to
> 7:00 PM every day.

 

Well no matter when you go, closed-mindedness is always the problem. I
really like what you wrote above: ‘the terrible, glorious tumult and
chaos…’ When I e-mailed Russell Hoban (to which he kindly responded,
albeit briefly), I said that I found his writing empowering, and I think
it is pretty easy to miss the point and not see why things like Pilgermann
are just that. It isn’t because they have happy or uplifting endings (and
in a sense, like what you said about god, any ending is only an
approximation and not really true), and it isn’t because they have light
hearted humorous bits that I can use to get through the day. It is
because Hoban’s works seem to be singular in their acceptance of ‘this is
what is’, an immersion into the ‘terrible, glorious tumult’, and a
resolution that now is the only time there is. Hoban moves well beyond
morality and to the whole of experience where morality becomes nearly
irrelevant. Perhaps Hoban has been empowering for me because it has
helped me let go of things and live in the whole of the now; although I
don’t know if I am putting that right. It seems to me that if you are the
sort of person who questions a lot of things, a person who sits on the
fence and wants to experience the flow of where things are going, you are
right out from the beginning. You are also right out if the whole of it
seems somewhat bewildering. But Hoban reduces everyone and everything to
bewildered fence sitters, there are just those who believe they know what
is going on, and those who are more willing to admit it is something of a
mystery. That Hoban is putting the mystery back into every every day
things, allowing for uncertainty and framing the near-impossibility of
identity in a world (or universe) that is unfathonamable, is to me
empowering. Perhaps that sounds strange, but somehow coming to terms with
you being whatever you are right now, and not just desperately failing at
some particular recognizable identity is a big relief 🙂

> It’s interesting that looking up ‘process theology’ on the web, as I did a
> couple of weeks ago, takes you quickly to actual ‘pantheistic’ sites, and that
> the box “God as It, God as the action” seems to fit there rather neatly.
> Perhaps too neatly, or perhaps not.

 

I think I’m just afraid of theological terms. In a sense, I think Hoban
is arguing for something approaching the idea of panthiesm, which is
always interesting coming from an agnostic/athiest 🙂 But I don’t think
you will hear anyone argue it the same as Hoban, and I think one would be
hard pressed to formulate a functional definition of
whatever-it-is-Hoban-is-arguing-for.

> Gosh, I didn’t mean to unload all that! Anyway, I love Hoban because he’s
> always giving me new perspectives, new pieces of the puzzle, and new ways to
> look at the pieces I have. This weekend, into the Grotto—Charge!!!
>

Unload away. No better place than the internet 🙂

Chris

Angelica’s Grotto (from that ‘Guardian’ review): “Life isn’t what it was,
but it’s a lot better than it’s going to be.”Wonderful! Truly wonderful.

Chris Bell

Here’s a short review of ‘Grotto’ from the Daily Mail in the UK:PAPERBACKS by Hephzibah Anderson

‘Angelica’s Grotto’ by Russell Hoban (Bloomsbury, �9.99)
This latest novel by maverick author Russell Hoban is a dark tale of sex,
mortality and cyberspace.
At 72, esteemed art historian and dirty old man Harold Klein, already a
veteran of the NHS, one day develops a strange new ailment: his inner
voice deserts him, and thoughts once kept to himself pop out of his
mouth uncontrollably.
In this state he logs onto the internet and discovers the kinky delights
of Angelica’s Grotto, run by a hard-nosed young academic, Melissa, and
her tame porn star Leslie.
As events spiral rapidly out of his control, Klein proves there’s no fool
like
an old fool.
Although it might prove too graphic for some, Hoban layers the repellent
with the poignant to witty effect in a clever and potent morality tale.

Copyright: Daily Mail Newspapers, Friday November 5th 1999

Howdy all!
I just joined the list yesterday. I signed up for digest delivery, but haven’t received a digest yet. Maybe tomorrow.Anyway, I’ve been working may way through the archives at OneList.

FROM THE ARCHIVES:
Richard Hoos included this poem:

<<
And a poem by Tennyson:

The Kraken
Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumber’d and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant fins the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by men and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

>>

 

Sounds very like Lovecraft’s description of Cthulu.

— Duane

HELLO HOBANITES!Still going through the Archives here . . .

Eli Bishop wrote the following:

<<
Chris asked whether there seems to be a change in focus between Turtle
Diary and Riddley Walker, in terms of going from “relatively conventional
settings” to otherwise. I’m not sure. First, Kleinzeit wasn’t all that
relatively conventional; and The Medusa Frequency I believe was largely
written before Riddley Walker. And the way R.W. was originally written,
judging from the excerpts in the new edition, was far more conventional
than the final result (and not only in terms of spelling).

>>

 

I did not know that the books were written in an order other than that in which they were published.

Is there a chronology somewhere (or can a knowledgeable reader post one to the list) of the dates or order of writing for each of the books? Or can someone offer a simplified time line of Mr. Hoban’s working on his books?

Thanks muchly.

— Duane

On Tue, 30 Nov 1999, Duane Spurlock wrote:

> HELLO HOBANITES!
>
> Still going through the Archives here . . .

 

Welcome to the list. Things have been quiet lately. I hope that means
everyone is waiting until they’ve finished Angelica, or perhaps they’re
working on the Omnibus (note, Amazon raised the price from 27 to 31,
wonder why?) Of course, one can’t just go nuts over Hoban all the time (I
myself am going nuts over the current screening on Princess Mononoke, but
I’m sure I’ll be back to my normal Hobanophile self as soon as the omnibus
shows up (and The Sea Thing Child too!)

> > Eli Bishop wrote the following:
>
> …and The Medusa Frequency I believe was largely
> written before Riddley Walker….

 

I am still in friendly contention with this. I am really interested to
know where this comes from. I want to believe this is a typo…that is, I
could see Riddley Walker perhaps mostly being written before Turtle Diary
(perhaps Eli confused this with Medusa?) From what I have read in Moment
under the Moment, and also simply from reading those two books, I cannot
see Medusa as anything but a post Riddley (and in fact a post Pilgermann)
book. To my senses at least, there is a door that Hoban passed through
when he wrote pilgermann and I can’t see him going back and writing
something like Kleinzeit or Turtle Diary. All his work seems much darker
and even more tragic after this–but also significantly more outside then
Kleinzeit and Turtle Diary which are both rather pastoral in comparison.
I don’t think anything could ever develop into a fist fight on this list,
and even if it did, I’d probably be on the losing end, but I just can’t
figure how Medusa could have been written before riddley and basically
I’ll believe it when I see the evidence.

> Is there a chronology somewhere (or can a knowledgeable reader post one to the list) of the dates or order of writing for each of the books? Or can someone offer a simplified time line of Mr. Hoban’s working on his books?
>

I think you will find everything you want to know on Dave Awl’s page:
www.suba.com/~dayvoll/rh

If you can’t, I’m sure I could dig up the years, but those are publishing
dates. One can never know when precisely a thing was written. That’s why
I’d like to hear where Eli heard about Medusa.

Chris

HOWDY!
I’ve posted a couple of times, so I spoze should intro myself to the
enlightened folks on this list.My name’s Duane Spurlock, 40, and I live in Louisville, KY.

My reading of Mr. Hoban prolly differs from most on the list: I’ve not read
the best-known works (Turtle, Riddley, Pilgermann).

I first encountered the Hoban canon-in-progress via favorable reviews of
Riddley. I looked the book over, but was intimidated by the language and
lacked the patience to worry over it. Instead, a year or so later, I read
Lion and Kleinzeit. I thoroughly enjoyed the whimsical use of language, and
I probably missed the author’s intent entirely. I bought RW and P, fully
intending to read ’em, but never getting around to it.

I saw the Turtle film, putting it together with the novel only much later.
Still haven’t read the book.

While working in a bookstore, I bought Medusa on its publication and read
it. Short, after all. Contemporary language. Still, I didn’t quite enjoy it
as I had the earlier books.

The Great Hoban Drought began in the U.S.

Two years ago, during an Ireland excursion, I bought a
remaindered/discounted copy of The Moment Under the Moment.

A few weeks ago, I opened the refrigerator door and found my PC monitor
inside displaying The Head of Orpheius web site. And I remembered that I
liked Mr. Hoban’s books.

So recently I’ve read The Trokeville Way, The Moment Under the Moment, The
Marzipan Pig, and I’m re-reading Medusa now and enjoying it much more.
Perhaps because I’m so swaddled by pop culture these days — I’m a content
manager for an online content provider (Emazing.com), and I write daily tips
about comic books and crime fiction — and because Herman’s talking to the
Kraken using his Apple II seems so similar to what I do on a daily basis
with e-mail. Rather than looking merely for the language play in Medusa, I’m
better appreciating the woof and weave of the motifs and stylistic
touchstones. (Reading Moment before tackling Medusa again was like turning a
key to open a door lock.)

I’ll prolly re-read Lion and Kleinzeit. And I’m better motivated to read the
Three Unread (Turtle, RW, P).

I’ve already ordered Fremder and Angelica’s Grotto from Amazon.UK. (I
noticed that Mr. Rinyo-Clacton’s Offer is unavailable from A.UK, although
Waterstone’s offers it still.) I plan to get the expanded RW from IUPress. I
hesitate to order the Omnibus, since R-C is the only novel included that I
don’t yet own. But I may yet break down. Hmm. Does it include any
introductory material from Mr. Hoban or others that is available nowhere
else?

So, I’m introed. Now you probably know more than you ever cared to.

I look forward to finishing the archives and reading posts from
more-informed readers.

Best — Duane

In reading Mr. Hoban’s intro to The Moment Under the Moment, I noted his
surprise at the frequent use of “tawny” and his effort to change those
instances. So, naturally, I kept a lookout for “tawny” while reading the
stories and essays therein.I’ve also noted it in Trokeville and Medusa.

So “tawny” seems to be nearly as important as “pinky-orange,” though it
doesn’t appear so often as the latter in Medusa.

(Tawny, of course, immediately reminds us of another Hoban motif, lions. But
why tawny shows up so often and in the places it appears — that’s the
jumping off point for further study.)

Anyway, the intro poked me in the mental ribs to watch for color usage. So
pinky-orange executes the retinal trip nearly every other page of Medusa.

Here’s the curious bit: While reading The Marzipan Pig, I notice that the
street lamps are described as “bluish,” not the usual pinky-orange. Instead,
the hibiscus peeking from the window of No. 6 is described as
“pinky-orange.” Curious, sez I to me.

I’ll admit I haven’t given this much thought, other than what I’ve written
above. Does anyone have any insights into the use of or significance of
pinky-orange — or tawny or other colors, for that matter — in the Hoban
Canon?

Thanks muchly. — Duane

Tawny and pinky-orange or of course the embryonic Hoban, he’s now moved on
to his far more mature purple-blue. I greatly anticipate his introduction
of a new color in his future work. *laughs*I really don’t can’t put words to any particular relationship between
Hoban’s colors and ‘ideas’ per se. I think it is far more intuitive such
that the tawnys and the purple-blues (I really like the purple-blues) do
not mean any one thing but are more an experience (the tawny experience).

Glad Medusa did more for you the second time ’round. I really think it is
among one of his very best works with not a word wasted. One of the few
points with Hoban I could almost believe there was a linear progressions
with Medusa being the pinnicle of his writing career, but ah, that’s
probably illusory, but such is the charm of Medusa.

Chris

HALLO!Okay, after this I’ll try to refrain from further postings today.

In reading “A Ceaseless Becoming” by Chris Bell at this URL,
http://www.suba.com/~dayvoll/rh/cbcb.html, I noticed in particular this
passage:

<<Critics claim that Hoban’s personal language-base is tantamount to
trickery, and yet surely idea pheromones extend from every book (not merely
his own) to those minds that wish to connect with them. “Numinous images
seek us out through aeons of darkness,” he says in Moment, “whether they are
cave drawings or numbers on a manhole cover.” What Hoban does so
compellingly is to make us feel good about the notion that we belong to a
community of perception and emotion. He quotes Schroedinger’s ‘The overall
number of minds is just one,’ and asks us whether it feels like that to us:

“To me it does. I feel inhabited by a consciousness that looks out through
the eyeholes in my face and this doesn’t seem to have originated with me. I
feel like a receiver made for a transmission that was going on long before I
arrived.”
(The Moment Under The Moment)

Language is everything; as soon as we begin to talk or to think, we give our
mind-pictures names.

>>

 

This bit kicks my mental Rolodex to William S. Burroughs’ “Language is a
virus,” picked up by Laurie Anderson for her HOME OF THE BRAVE show. A word,
an idea, a motif spreads and mutates and infects mind after mind, until the
shared concept unites those many minds into one — not so different from the
notion Mr. Hoban proposes when he quotes Schroedinger’s “The overall number
of minds is just one.”

Later– Duane

Duane wrote:

>I did not know that the books were written in an order other than that in
>which
>they were published.

 

Chris wrote:

>I don’t think anything could ever develop into a fist fight on this list,
>and even if it did, I’d probably be on the losing end, but I just can’t
>figure how Medusa could have been written before riddley and basically
>I’ll believe it when I see the evidence.

 

Aargh… Chris, before the fist fight, please see my previous response to
this, somewhere in the archives. Basically, in an interview with Hoban in
_Poets and Writers_ magazine several years ago, which I no longer have, the
author said something to the effect that he had started _The Medusa
Frequency_ in some year X and that it “hung fire” for a long time before he
went back and finished it. In my famously defective memory, year X seemed
to be before the publication of _Riddley Walker_ but that certainly may be
a delusion of mine. Sorry I have nothing to add; it’s probably best
forgotten.

Eli

Chris wrote:

>To my senses at least, there is a door that Hoban passed through
>when he wrote pilgermann and I can’t see him going back and writing
>something like Kleinzeit or Turtle Diary. All his work seems much darker
>and even more tragic after this–but also significantly more outside then
>Kleinzeit and Turtle Diary which are both rather pastoral in comparison.

 

Outside what?

And yes, Turtle Diary has a happy ending but that is a DARK book. By
“pastoral” maybe you’re just referring to its slower pace and realistic
environment? (Hard to think of London apartments as a pastoral setting,
but compared to Inland I guess I could see it.)

Eli

> Aargh… Chris, before the fist fight, please see my previous response to
> this, somewhere in the archives. Basically, in an interview with Hoban in
> _Poets and Writers_ magazine several years ago, which I no longer have, the
> author said something to the effect that he had started _The Medusa
> Frequency_ in some year X and that it “hung fire” for a long time before he
> went back and finished it. In my famously defective memory, year X seemed
> to be before the publication of _Riddley Walker_ but that certainly may be
> a delusion of mine. Sorry I have nothing to add; it’s probably best
> forgotten.

 

No, that is actually pretty cool, unfortunately I’m probably too apathetic
to seek out the article for something so trivial. I was simply under the
impression from Moment that Medusa had been something he had wanted to
write for sometime but had never really materialized in any form that
worked for him. Basically, my feelings were that while Riddley is
definitely a product of the 70’s, Medusa to me felt like something that
belonged to Hoban’s 80’s period. It would also be interesting to know
what degree of Medusa had been completed in the 70’s. Like many things,
it may have been purely embryonic with the novel itself really not taking
any shape until the 80’s. But I think there is probably only one person
that could answer this, and ultimately it is really too trivial to persue
I suppose.

Chris

 

>
> Eli
>
> > —————————————————
> The Kraken: The Russell Hoban Mailing List
> For help contact Dave Awl – day_____@_____.com
> http://www.suba.com/~dayvoll/rh
>
>
>
>

On Wed, 1 Dec 1999, Eli Bishop wrote:

> From: Eli Bishop <eli_____@_____.net>
>
>
> Chris wrote:
> >To my senses at least, there is a door that Hoban passed through
> >when he wrote pilgermann and I can’t see him going back and writing
> >something like Kleinzeit or Turtle Diary. All his work seems much darker
> >and even more tragic after this–but also significantly more outside then
> >Kleinzeit and Turtle Diary which are both rather pastoral in comparison.
>
> Outside what?

 

‘outside’ meaning more unusual, more uncommon. In Jazz, certain works are
referred to as being more ‘outside’. To my sensibilities at least, the
work before Riddley Walker seems fairly well grounded in some particular
objective reality (relatively speaking of course), such that one feels
while Hoban is going somewhere very interesting, you can trace his steps
back to terra firma. After Riddley however, it seems to me that all
safety nets are gone, all bets are off. Pilgermann is definitely a sink
or swim book, and I think if there can be ‘outside’ recordings in Jazz,
then Pilgermann can be thought of as an outside book. For me, Medusa is a
sort of wolf and sheeps clothing. Certain the setting is normal, but
Herman Orph is definitely out in deep space. He might as well be Fremder
Gorn spinning in celestial nights without a space suit–the setting is an
internal one, and the Medusa, Hoban explores uncharted territory that only
superficial readings will mistake as being a hop skip and a jump from what
is well known and well understood. Turtle Diary especially seems to be a
book that while excellent shows fairly normal people who are moving away
from normality and finding new ways to be. In Medusa, I never felt there
was a normal. Consciousness was very dangerous and nothing was ever to be
well illuminated, all was, and would continue to be mystery. In Medusa
these things go right, but we can clearly see in Angelica they can go
wrong too, and still the mystery is there. This in my mind is far darker,
and more difficult for the uninnitiated reader than Turtle Diary.

>
> And yes, Turtle Diary has a happy ending but that is a DARK book. By
> “pastoral” maybe you’re just referring to its slower pace and realistic
> environment? (Hard to think of London apartments as a pastoral setting,
> but compared to Inland I guess I could see it.)

 

Again, not the setting but the territory of consciousness explored. I
don’t mean these other books did not have their own blackness. Look at
Mouse and his Child, if you look at it in a certain way it is actually a
terrifying little book. But I think their are degrees of
blackness/darkness/distance from what is called ‘normal’, and it has
seemed in close readings that as Hoban writes he continues to go farther
out and offer less footholds for inexperienced readers to follow. Not
that that is a bad thing.

Chris

 

>
> Eli
>
> > —————————————————
> The Kraken: The Russell Hoban Mailing List
> For help contact Dave Awl – day_____@_____.com
> http://www.suba.com/~dayvoll/rh
>
>
>
>

Hello you all,I have the Poets and Writers interview with Hoban in hand and refer to
the question of when he started the Medusa Frequency:
Hoban: “For example, The M F I started in 1982 and it hung fire; at one
point in 1983 I put it aside, then came back to it, and finally got it
published in 1987.”

best, alida

At 11:05 AM 12/1/99 -0600, you wrote:

>From: ULTIMATE CHRISMOON <cam_____@_____.net>
>
>
>
>On Wed, 1 Dec 1999, Eli Bishop wrote:
>
>> From: Eli Bishop <eli_____@_____.net>
>>
>>
>> Chris wrote:
>> >To my senses at least, there is a door that Hoban passed through
>> >when he wrote pilgermann and I can’t see him going back and writing
>> >something like Kleinzeit or Turtle Diary. All his work seems much darker
>> >and even more tragic after this–but also significantly more outside then
>> >Kleinzeit and Turtle Diary which are both rather pastoral in comparison.
>>
>> Outside what?
>
>’outside’ meaning more unusual, more uncommon. In Jazz, certain works are
>referred to as being more ‘outside’. To my sensibilities at least, the
>work before Riddley Walker seems fairly well grounded in some particular
>objective reality (relatively speaking of course), such that one feels
>while Hoban is going somewhere very interesting, you can trace his steps
>back to terra firma. After Riddley however, it seems to me that all
>safety nets are gone, all bets are off. Pilgermann is definitely a sink
>or swim book, and I think if there can be ‘outside’ recordings in Jazz,
>then Pilgermann can be thought of as an outside book. For me, Medusa is a
>sort of wolf and sheeps clothing. Certain the setting is normal, but
>Herman Orph is definitely out in deep space. He might as well be Fremder
>Gorn spinning in celestial nights without a space suit–the setting is an
>internal one, and the Medusa, Hoban explores uncharted territory that only
>superficial readings will mistake as being a hop skip and a jump from what
>is well known and well understood. Turtle Diary especially seems to be a
>book that while excellent shows fairly normal people who are moving away
>from normality and finding new ways to be. In Medusa, I never felt there
>was a normal. Consciousness was very dangerous and nothing was ever to be
>well illuminated, all was, and would continue to be mystery. In Medusa
>these things go right, but we can clearly see in Angelica they can go
>wrong too, and still the mystery is there. This in my mind is far darker,
>and more difficult for the uninnitiated reader than Turtle Diary.
>
>>
>> And yes, Turtle Diary has a happy ending but that is a DARK book. By
>> “pastoral” maybe you’re just referring to its slower pace and realistic
>> environment? (Hard to think of London apartments as a pastoral setting,
>> but compared to Inland I guess I could see it.)
>
>Again, not the setting but the territory of consciousness explored. I
>don’t mean these other books did not have their own blackness. Look at
>Mouse and his Child, if you look at it in a certain way it is actually a
>terrifying little book. But I think their are degrees of
>blackness/darkness/distance from what is called ‘normal’, and it has
>seemed in close readings that as Hoban writes he continues to go farther
>out and offer less footholds for inexperienced readers to follow. Not
>that that is a bad thing.
>
>Chris
>
>
>>
>> Eli
>>
>> > —————————————————
>> The Kraken: The Russell Hoban Mailing List
>> For help contact Dave Awl – day_____@_____.com
>> http://www.suba.com/~dayvoll/rh
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>>—————————————————
>The Kraken: The Russell Hoban Mailing List
>For help contact Dave Awl – day_____@_____.com
>http://www.suba.com/~dayvoll/rh

 

Alida Allison
Associate Professor
Director, Children’s Literature Circle
Dept. of English and Comparative Literature
San Diego State University
5500 Campanile Dr.
San Diego, CA 92182-8140
(619) 594-6385, office phone
(619) 594-5443, department phone
(619) 594-4998, FAX

CHECK OUT THE CHILDREN’S LITERATURE PROGRAM WEB SITE AND BOOK REVIEW SERVICE:
http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/dept/english/childlit

FOR INFORMATION ABOUT CURRENT CHILDREN’S LITERATURE COURSES:
http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/dept/english/engl.html

Alida Allison <all_____@_____.edu>
wrote:<<
I have the Poets and Writers interview with Hoban in hand and refer to
the question of when he started the Medusa Frequency:
Hoban: “For example, The M F I started in 1982 and it hung fire; at one
point in 1983 I put it aside, then came back to it, and finally got it
published in 1987.”

>>

 

Well, this puts TMF’s start (1982) before Pilgermann’s publication (1983),
but I’m not sure anything’s
clarified about whether TMF was actually written before an earlier-published
work.

But, if the TMF ms. lay fallow for such a length of time, there’s no
surprise about the book’s fascination with blighter’s rock.

— Duane

ULTIMATE CHRISMOON <cam_____@_____.net>
wrote:

> Tawny and pinky-orange or of course the embryonic Hoban, he’s now moved on
> to his far more mature purple-blue. I greatly anticipate his introduction
> of a new color in his future work. *laughs*

 

Perhaps we’re on the verge of forming a new theory for literary discussion:
determining a writer’s merits by comparing the colors he mentions in his
works and those colors’ positions in the spectrum between infrared and
ultraviolet!

> I really don’t can’t put words to any particular relationship between
> Hoban’s colors and ‘ideas’ per se. I think it is far more intuitive such
> that the tawnys and the purple-blues (I really like the purple-blues) do
> not mean any one thing but are more an experience (the tawny experience).

 

I haven’t encountered the purple-blues yet. However, I did notice the
appearance of violet for the taxi meter beloved by the meter-enamored owl in
The Marzipan Pig.

Although I didn’t count the instances of appearance within the text, the
pinky-orange lights seemed to show up quite frequently. I link the lights
with dusk and darkness, during which Herman does most of his soul-searching
(and makes his attempts at working). This meditative state — diving into
the deeps of his conscious and unconscious mind — echoes his trips to the
underground and, by extension, Orpheus’ trip to the Underworld. So perhaps
the arrival in the text of pinky-orange is a signal that we’re entering the
caverns of that unreal world of mystery that Herman keeps trying to map.

> Glad Medusa did more for you the second time ’round. I really think it is
> among one of his very best works with not a word wasted.

 

I agree. But I thought the ending chapters seemed curtailed or rushed,
compared to the rest of the novel. Maybe not rushed. But the realization
about Medusa — that she entrusts the idea of herself to Herman — was
handled in so brief a fashion compared to the amount of space devoted to
Herman’s fascination with Eurydice, that this epiphanic climax seemed
unfinished or underdeveloped. To me, anyway. Am I missing something?

— Duane

> I haven’t encountered the purple-blues yet. However, I did notice the
> appearance of violet for the taxi meter beloved by the meter-enamored owl in
> The Marzipan Pig.

 

Purple-blue doesn’t show up until fremder/trokeville. It is also in
Angelica.

> I agree. But I thought the ending chapters seemed curtailed or rushed,
> compared to the rest of the novel. Maybe not rushed. But the realization
> about Medusa — that she entrusts the idea of herself to Herman — was
> handled in so brief a fashion compared to the amount of space devoted to
> Herman’s fascination with Eurydice, that this epiphanic climax seemed
> unfinished or underdeveloped. To me, anyway. Am I missing something?
>
> — Duane
>

 

Hmmm, I didn’t really have that feeling. But I guess I spent a lot of
time absorbed in that Rilke poem at the end (which in the context of the
story seemed rather mind blowing). I am not sure what more could be said
at this point and so hoban ends it with that poem. *shrugs*

Chris

 

> > —————————————————
> The Kraken: The Russell Hoban Mailing List
> For help contact Dave Awl – day_____@_____.com
> http://www.suba.com/~dayvoll/rh
>
>
>
>

FROM THE ARCHIVE:cam_____@_____.xxx writes:

<< So to sum up:
-I am wondering if Hoban is of one of those INxx personalities, and I
could possibly try to guess more specificially.
-I am wondering if almost everyone on the list is one of those INxx
personalities.
-I am wondering if I can get everyone on the list to hit one of those
rather skimpy kiersey indicators on the web that gives a rough idea of the
miers briggs score. The we can have fun exchanging them 🙂
-I am wondering if people are afraid to talk about their miers briggs
because they are too personal (!!)

>>

 

Well, I did the online questionnaire and came up INTJ.

I find I usually answer differently from one time to another on these
surveys depending on the stresses or joys at work or home going on at the
time. Things are pretty good right now. And the INTJ score is probably
fairly accurate, with some minor fuzziness around the edges.

Who do I read? Like some others on the list have expressed, I’m all over the
place.

Beside Hoban, I read a lot of pulp fiction (that is, from the pulp magazines
of the 1930s and ’40s): Doc Savage, the Shadow, the Spider, Edgar Rice
Burroughs, hard-boiled crime stories and novels (Hammett, Chandler, Ross
MacDonald, John D. McDonald, Andrew Vachss, Chester Himes, George Pelecanos,
John Harvey, Derek Raymond, Paco Ignacio Taibo, Adam Hall, Donald Hamilton,
Ed McBain, Russell James, etc., etc.), westerns (Bill Crider, Norman Fox,
Max Brand, Les Savage, Jr.), I enjoy Ford Madox Ford and Conrad, Patrick
O’Brian’s Aubrey and Maturin series, Flann O’Brien, Barry Gifford, Jerome
Charyn, John Hawkes, Barry Hannah, Jim Harrison, Thomas McGuane, Barry
Lopez, James Crumley, Guy Davenport, Don DeLillo.

I’ve recently started reading SF again. I like space opera stuff, like Peter
Hamilton, David Feintuch, the Honor Harrington series, the Miles Vorkosigan
series, Poul Anderson. And I’ve been reading the revived Weird Tales, so I’m
reading a bit of Tanith Lee, Ian Watson, Darrell Schweitzer. And I’ve
recently been sampling some “avant punk” stuff: Jeff Noon, Paul DiFillipo,
Geoff Ryman.

And, of course, H.P. Lovecraft.

Like I said, all over the place.
— Duane

FROM THE ARCHIVES:Dave wrote:

<<
Okay, I’ll do the authors thing too. . . . James Joyce (Ulysses really is worth it, and don’t let
anyone convince you otherwise) . . .

>>

 

I’m sure it is. And maybe one of these days I’ll read it all the way through. But I gotta say I laughed out loud when I read in The Moment Under the Moment that Mr. Hoban had, like me, started Ulysses more than once unsuccessfully.

Truth is, I’m plumb aggravated that I’ve been unable to finish it. ’cause I certainly like Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist . . .

— Duane

Duane wrote:

>I’m sure it is. And maybe one of these days I’ll read it all the way
>through. But I gotta say I laughed out loud when I read in The Moment
>Under the Moment that Mr. Hoban had, like me, started Ulysses more than
>once unsuccessfully.
>
>Truth is, I’m plumb aggravated that I’ve been unable to finish it. ’cause
>I certainly like Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist . . .

 

Oh, believe me, I laughed at that passage in Moment, too. Would you believe
it took me TEN YEARS to finish Ulysses? What finally turned the corner for
me was I realized that it wasn’t a book I could just pick up and read, it
was a book I needed to *study*. Meaning I needed help–supplementary
materials, maybe even a class. I had made it three chapters in about three
different times, and had always been enthralled by the language itself, but
didn’t have a *clue* what was actually going on. So I got serious, and was
considering taking a Ulysses class at the Newberry library here in Chicago,
when I stumbled across Harry Blamire’s _The Bloomsday Book_ (actually the
third edition, titled _The New Bloomsday Book). This is a superb guide to
Ulysses that really unlocked the book for me. It takes you through the
novel chapter by chapter, sets the stage and fills in the background, so
you can concentrate on enjoying Joyce’s text, language and treatment. I
would read one chapter of Blamire, then the corresponding chapter of
Ulysses, then go back and re-read the Blamire chapter. And it was stunning.
The whole book came into focus for me, like one of those stereographic
images you stare at and stare at and finally give up because you can’t see
the picture, and then just as you’re giving up you suddenly do see it, and
it knocks you over backwards.

Anyway–I actually chatted about this with Mr. H in June. What he says in
Moment is that he found Stephen Dedalus and Buck Mulligan “dead boring,”
and of course he’s spot on there. They *are* dead boring. But that’s also
the point! Stephen and Buck are *supposed* to be dead boring–young, gassy,
and full of themselves, in contrast to the charm, humanity and simple
dignity of Leopold Bloom. It’s Bloom who is the beating heart of the novel,
Bloom the superb creation you fall in love with for his clear-sighted
compassion, kind-hearted humor, courageous humility and flawed heroic
heart. And unfortunately, you don’t meet Bloom until the fourth chapter, so
it’s a fair slog until the book really comes to life.

So I told Russ all this and his response was that it seemed to make sense,
but that he was past the point in life where he was going to go back and
try it again. Fair enough, of course. But to those of us who *aren’t* past
that point, and have the energy to tackle it, I say don’t give up!

Dave Awl

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Who’s your friend when things get rough?”
–H.R. Pufnstuf
Ocelot Factory: http://www.suba.com/~dayvoll

Does anyone remember in which book RH expressed the idea that `an altar is anywhere where there is a field of attention’ (not exact words)?

>From: wil_____@_____.uk
>
>Does anyone remember in which book RH expressed the idea that `an altar is
>anywhere where there is a field of attention’ (not exact words)?

 

It’s in “The Bear in Max Ernst’s Bedroom,” an essay in _The Moment Under
the Moment_. Page 186: “An altar doesn’t have to be a piece of
furniture–any special field of attention is an altar. The big CERN
particle accelerator at Geneva is an altar, the Pentagon is an altar,
drawing boards and computer screens all over the world are altars, the
brain itself is an altar, and on it are offered the thoughts and wishes
that call up what cannot be put down, gods and demons and unnameable
presences hungry for their moment, and every single one of them real.”

Dave

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“It is a curse having the epic temperament in an overcrowded
age devoted to snappy bits!” –J.R.R. Tolkien, _Letters_
Ocelot Factory: http://www.suba.com/~dayvoll

Hooty-hoo!Received today ANGELICA’S GROTTO and FREMDER from amazon.uk.

Happy happy, joy joy!

— Duane

After re-reading MEDUSA, I re-read LION this weekend.A few things I noticed on returning to this book after many years and after
reading other Hoban books in the years between first reading LION and now. .
.

J-B’s stay in the mental hospital prefigures the hospital scenes in
Kleinzeit: it is in the mental hospital, when J-B’s consciousness is so
skewed, that the wordplay becomes most intense. The “tick-tock” doctor is
most memorable, perhaps, but here the sunlight and other inanimate objects
“speak” to J-B, just as the hospital ward and other inanimate objects in
Kleinzeit have a life of their own.

Mr. Hoban presents the story in LION in a relatively traditional narrative
form. The narrative is a bit off-kilter, perhaps, with the POV shifting from
J-B to B-J to the Lion to the Narrative Itself, but nothing really unusual
for a reader who’s encountered Vonnegut or — more likely a better
comparison — Donald Barthelme. Someone coming to LION for the first time
now might be put off a bit, because few writers in the literary mainstream
are playing these sorts of wordgames in their narratives. (Or maybe I’m not
keeping up with writers the way I once was in my college days.)

Okay, LION is basically traditional in style and handling of its elements.
By the time Mr. Hoban reaches MEDUSA, he has changed his sort of
storytelling. This may be difficult for me to get across, so bear with me. I
noticed the difference by reading LION after reading MEDUSA. . .

LION is a story containing metaphor and similar elements that are handled in
a more or less traditional manner. With MEDUSA, Mr. Hoban strips away much
exposition about character and setting, pares the tale down to something
more like parable. Only the most telling details about characters and
scenery are recounted. The story itself is metaphor. A story about story,
about understanding, about learning. This is a return to a sort of
Ur-storytelling.

This is very cool. I missed it the first time around, because I read the few
Hoban novels I’d read over the course of several years. Now I’m picking up
more from each reading.

Now that I’ve picked up on the evolution in Mr.Hoban’s storytelling
techniques, I’m really looking forward to tackling the novels that follow
MEDUSA. (However, I’m first making my way through KLEINZEIT and those
Hobanovels I’ve not read.)

Best — Duane

>J-B’s stay in the mental hospital prefigures the hospital scenes in
>Kleinzeit: it is in the mental hospital, when J-B’s consciousness is so
>skewed, that the wordplay becomes most intense. The “tick-tock” doctor is
>most memorable, perhaps, but here the sunlight and other inanimate objects
>”speak” to J-B, just as the hospital ward and other inanimate objects in
>Kleinzeit have a life of their own.

 

That’s always been one of my favorite scenes in the book, and yes, I’ve
always felt it’s the chapter where Mr. Hoban really discovered his later
style–it’s like a miniature prototype of Kleinzeit. The part that always
stuck in my mind the most was the shared reality of the inmates, the way
they all sense and interact with each other’s “hallucinations” and
“delusions”. Even then, Mr. Hoban was arguing that everything that’s real
in the mind is real, though he didn’t quite come out and say so till “The
Bear in Max Ernst’s Bedroom.”

The most wonderful observation in there is when the letter-writing patient
asks Jachin-Boaz what his lion eats, and J-B replies, “How do you know it
eats?” The letter writer’s face flushes, and he looks “as if he had been
struck.” And then the line:

“In a flash Jachin-Boaz understood that it was as if one duke who owned a
rare and expensive motorcar had been rude to another duke who happened not
to own such a car.”

That kills me. It’s like one of Seymour Glass’s poems. (Not too far out a
comparison, I suppose, considering that Mr. Hoban told me he was very into
Salinger at one point, and named two of his daughters after Salinger
characters.)

Dave

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“It is a curse having the epic temperament in an overcrowded
age devoted to snappy bits!” –J.R.R. Tolkien, _Letters_
Ocelot Factory: http://www.suba.com/~dayvoll

Oh I think Salinger is very much fair game. The scene I continue to
remember is where Zooey is on that talk show (can’t think of the name) and
talks about how wonderful nearly identical housing complexes are–it is
just the sort of thing that shows the same playful hold on reality (or
lack of hold?) that Hoban uses. Franny and Zooey is still one of my
favorite books, the characters seemingly very real.Sorry, not much more to add than that…hopefully my Omni-bus will be here
today and I can start in on Rinyo-Clacton (sp?) shortly.

See You

Day Voll <day_____@_____.com>
WROTE:

>
> The part that always
> stuck in my mind the most was the shared reality of the inmates, the way
> they all sense and interact with each other’s “hallucinations” and
> “delusions”.

 

Absolutely. This is a leap from one level of storytelling to a new height.
The first step to this level is when the constable sees the lion. After J-B
leaves the mental hospital, the storytelling takes half a step back to more
traditional narrative, as that appearing before the hospital scenes. But it
is at the higher level of storytelling that Mr. Hoban starts KLEINZEIT.

But the fact that the other inmates see the lion and hear the sounds of
J-B’s agonizing is very striking and wonderful. This reminds me again of the
author’s quoting Schroedinger’s “The overall number of minds is just one,”
and the hospital inmates are all sharing a single perception of reality —
though each skews that perception according to his own obsession. Like
focusing on a single facet of a cut gemstone: Each sees the gemstone but
only according to the particular facet he or she is tunnel-visioning.

So caught up in his own troubles, though, J-B doesn’t receive the
hallucinations of the other inmates (unless I’m forgetting some details
here). So who is more aware of the world? J-B or the other inmates?
— Duane

More thoughts after re-reading LION this past weekend.Jachin-Boaz’s experiences with the lion throw him for a big loop. The
appearance of a lion in a world in which lions no longer exist — a lion,
moreover, meant for him especially — makes J-B doubt his senses and his
perceptions of the world. More specifically, that particular mote of the
world that is Jachin-Boaz seems in danger of flying off the plane of the
planet’s orbit. With the arrival of the lion, J-B has stepped outside the
rest of the rationally ordered world.

The constable — an agent of rational order — tries to enforce that order
upon J-B when the lion and J-B’s reactions disrupt the “normal” order.
Likewise, the bigoted doctor who treats J-B’s wounds starts rumors about J-B
because J-B is a foreigner, an outsider who disrupts the rational order of
the world as perceived by the doctor.

In the mental hospital, J-B meets the inmates who can see his hallucinations
as well as he can. The lion is now a part of their world And the inmates’
world(s) is definitely outside the bounds of accepted rational order. J-B’s
experience with the inmates leads him to better accept the disrupted order
that the lion brings — the lion, for J-B, is a gateway into an expanded
reality, a different order, in which J-B recognizes the worth of his guilt,
accepts responsibility for the disruptions he has caused in his family’s
life, and realizes the inevitability of his mortality. (Not all his fears
are resolved, however; his anxiety about becoming a father again still
wrenches him, but he is making steps toward acceptance. And this anxiety and
others make him a richer human being, not just a character in a novel.)

So J-B has accepted a larger world that includes the disrupting influences
of non-rational order. On the other hand, those agents of accepted rational
order — the constable and the doctor — end up in humorously out-of-order
situations.

The doctor ends up being carted into the mental hospital as J-B leaves. A
bigot and extremist, he’s broken the rules of the order he zealously
upholds.

The constable is suspected by his superior officers of breaking down. The
constable rejects the order represented by his position, and so removes his
tunic and leaves the force. He has had a glimpse of the world beyond the
borders of the order he’s paid to enforce, and he prefers to leave the old
rational order — perhaps for a quest to find a lion of his own.

Nicely done.
— Duane

Hey folks,I’ve finally managed to make a few updates to The Head of Orpheus… The
news section covers the three recent releases (Grotto, Omnibus, Sea-Thing).
All three book covers are posted, and some quotes from Grotto’s rave
reviews. The Grotto page has been updated with review quotes and an
excerpt, Chapter 3, posted at Mr. H’s suggestion.

I hope to get the Guestbook updated soon…long overdue.

Dave

******************************************************
The Head of Orpheus – A Russell Hoban Reference Page
http://www.suba.com/~dayvoll/rh

Howdy All!It’s great that Indiana University Press has — with the publication of the
expanded RW and the Omnibus — brought back into print a number of Mr.
Hoban’s out-of-print works and some newer work previously unavailable in the
U.S. Actually, it’s great for Mr. Hoban’s followers — those who already are
familiar with his work and know his brilliance. Those readers will seek out
these books and ask for them at their booksellers.

Unfortunately for those readers who haven’t yet discovered Mr. Hoban and who
might be receptive to his singular works, these new publications are brought
out by IUPress. Not to slap the press, which has performed ably. But you’ll
find few bookstores that carry titles from IUPress — or most any academic
press, for that matter — on a regular basis, no matter who the author might
be. Not to say that ALL bookstores won’t carry these books. You’ll find many
independently-owned bookstores carrying such books, particularly those
stores whose owners or book-buyers are wise to the treasures that may be
found in the catalogs of academic and small presses. For instance, I found
the new RW edition in a locally-owned bookstore here in Louisville
(Carmichael’s Books).

Comparing Hobanovels to other books being published at this point in the
20th Century, we can’t really call Mr. Hoban’s adult novels conventional.
(Of course, nearly any descriptive term is relative, but bear with me.) And
as a result, his work will most likely be best represented by a small
literary press rather than a mass-market publisher that has its eyes on
pushing bestsellers and blockbusters that have the potential for Hollywood
sales.

Is this a good or bad situation? I don’t know whether you can qualify it
that way. But I think that some small literary publishers will take greater
pains to keep in print a quality work than will a mass-market publisher. (It
seems I see hardback novels remaindered much more quickly these days —
maybe within a year or two of publication — than when I was working in a
bookstore more than 10 years ago. What’s the average length of time a
mass-market publisher will keep a paperbound edition of a novel in print
nowadays? I’m not sure.)

Anyway, the point of this note is to suggest that those Hobanovels that have
yet to find a U.S. publisher might find a good home at the Dalkey Archive
Press. Dalkey Archive (http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/) is a non-profit press
that also publishes the journal THE REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY FICTION
(http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/review.html), each issue of which focuses on
essays and stories by one or two writers. (Russell Hoban has yet to be
covered by the Review, I think.)

Dalkey Archive has a great catalog of non-conventional writers, some whose
works compare nicely with those of Mr. Hoban. The press also offers an
online review, CONTEXT: A FORUM FOR LITERARY ARTS AND CULTURE, which you can
check out at http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/context/index.html.

Take a look at Dalkey’s site. And I suggest that if you think that’s a
likely home for Mr. Hoban’s works, send ’em a note and suggest that they
look at publishing his works. ‘Cause it just ain’t right that his books
languish in out-of-print limbo.
— Duane

Has anyone ever considered setting up a newsgroup for discussing matters
Hobanic? The format of newsgroups might be better than that of mailing
lists. The humanities.* and rec.art.* hierarchies seem appropriate (the
first more than the last).–
Barnabas T. Rumjuggler

There aint that many sir prizes in life if you take noatis of every thing.
Every time wil have its happenings out and every place the same. What ever
eats mus shit..
— Russell Hoban, _Riddley Walker_

Hello everyone. By way of introduction, my name is Mark Murray-Brown and I am
an oceanographer living in Gloucester Massachusetts. I too had a run-in with
Hoban in the mid-80s but have now recovered enough to start reading them again.
Now that I have a 7 month year old son my reading time is confined to the 3 am
slot by the pinky-orange glow of the space heater keeping my son warm from the
New England nights. Greek heroes do have a habit of popping up out of the
shadows.I am also part of a book club and took a little risk by suggesting the group
take a crack at reading one of RH’s novels. Because of the limited availability
of the books I suggested the group find and read one or more from the following:
The Medusa Frequency, Pilgermann, Kleinzeit, Riddley Walker and, The Lion of
Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz.

I was hoping I could get some comment from this group regarding themes and ideas
that run in common through the above books. Examples I was thinking of, perhaps
as different topics, would be the use of metaphors and the joy RH finds with
word-play and double-entendres. (As an aside what does semiosis mean?).
Emotional themes such as coping with loss and the fear of consciousness also
come to mind. Destruction of conventional notions of the time/space continuum
seem to run in common. Also, I know there is some underpinning of philosophy
throughout but on this subject I am at a complete loss as I barely made it
through Intro. Philosophy and had to retreat to the safety of playing with
mud-worms in benthic ecology.

I suppose, finally, any thoughts generally on what on earth Hoban is up to would
be fun to explore! Poet/Pessimist/Bored with the ‘normal’ use of language/Too
much caffeine.

A second area where I need help is on the subject of food. In our group the
person who nominates a novel also gets to provide supper that night based on the
kind of food discussed in the novel. Here I am really stuck, not just because
of my lack of culinary skills, but Hoban does not seem to ever let his
characters eat. Its all for the mind. I guess at one point somebody (Herman
Orff- I think) was eating a sardine sandwich but I already have my doubts about
how the group is going to react to the novels without making it worse.

Looking forward to any and all ideas/help you may provide!

Thanks. Mark.
.

>
>A second area where I need help is on the subject of food. In our group the
>person who nominates a novel also gets to provide supper that night based
>on the
>kind of food discussed in the novel. Here I am really stuck, not just because
>of my lack of culinary skills, but Hoban does not seem to ever let his
>characters eat. Its all for the mind. I guess at one point somebody (Herman
>Orff- I think) was eating a sardine sandwich but I already have my doubts
>about
>how the group is going to react to the novels without making it worse.

 

Well, you could serve potato pancakes! In Mr Rinyo-Clacton’s Offer
(included in the new Omnibus from IU Press) main character Jonathan Fitch
waxes quite poetic about his ex-lover Serafina’s trademark potato pancakes.
In fact he spends a good deal of the book obsessing about them. This is
from the first time he samples them, at the restaurant where she cooks.
Before ordering:

“…I became aware of a new smell that made the others fade to nothing.
This smell was in its crispy golden-brownness the ultimate expression of
the art of frying; it was earthy and transcendental, seductive and
spiritual…”

Later:

“In due course they appeared, three of them crispy and golden-brown on a
white plate with a blue-and-gold border. Two little tubs as well, one with
sour cream and one with apple sauce. The pancakes tasted more than good;
they tasted of destiny: I knew that I had come to a time and a place that
had been waiting for me. The sunlight seemed less bleak and my plate was
empty.”

Of course, these potato pancakes, I have it on good authority, were
inspired by the real life pancakes of Mr. Hoban’s wife Gundula, and having
sampled her formidable and robust cooking, I have no doubt that they are
the potato pancakes to end all potato pancakes. Olaf will back me up on
this.

After enough of this sort of thing, the book definitely makes you hungry
for potato pancakes. I think R-C is far and away Russ’s hungriest book.

Moving on to dessert, you could always serve marzipan, in honor of The
Marzipan Pig. (Also in the Omnibus).

Changing tactics a little bit, if you want to stick to the world of Medusa,
since it delves so heavily into the world of classical mythology, and
features the Persephone-door olive tree on the isle of Paxos, maybe you
could get away with a nice Greek-themed dinner. Say, Greek pasta with
olives and feta, spanokopita, something honey-sweetened for dessert. That
sort of thing.

There’s also Luise’s recipe for fresh-baked bread, on p.34

Ooh–now I’m really on a roll–and how ’bout a nice sea-vegetable salad or
soup, to represent the Kraken?

Oh, and maybe you could mock up a couple of boxes of THE SEEKER FROM NEXO
VOLLMA bran flakes? Okay, I’d better quit before people start throwing
things.

Dave

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“It is a curse having the epic temperament in an overcrowded
age devoted to snappy bits!” –J.R.R. Tolkien, _Letters_
Ocelot Factory: http://www.suba.com/~dayvoll

Not forgetting half a grapefruit to be confused with the head of Orpheus…Sandra

Let’s see, the Head of Orpheus shows up in THE MEDUSA FREQUENCY as a head of
cabbage and as a large grapefruit.Of course, serving these two things together as the only items on your menu
might raise a few eyebrows. (Maybe some ire as well. I guess that might turn
out as irebrows.)

Maybe the potato pancakes are a better idea.
— Duane

Hello everyone,
I’ve always wondered what writers influenced Hoban.
I was interested to read here a while ago that he was influenced by Salinger, and that certainly makes sense.
I’ve met him twice at book signings. Both times I asked him about his influences and he didn’t seem to have any. The second time I asked him if there was a key text for him that might have made him aware of the moment under the moment and he said “The Fisherman and the Soul ” by Wilde.
I’m a member of the Walter de la Mare Society and Russell Hoban has written a couple of great essays about de la Mare inwhich he sites him as a big influence along with Coppard and Quiller-Couch and Machen. He said that reading these people was what made him move to the UK.
What I think is great about Russell Hoban is that he seems to have a completely idiosyncratic voice. His attitude to literature is completely unsnobbish and down-to-earth .This is unusual in someone who writes outside the genre market, someone who is critically acclaimed and writes that intangible thing: Literature.
I can see that my fixation on his influences is beside the point and a result of the way that literature is discussed in critical terms. Every writer or artist has to be placed historically and intellectually. They have to come from someone and lead to someone else. thats okay for some writers, but not for Russell Hoban. I’m not saying that he exists in some sort of artistic vacuum, but that he does seem to be an outsider. He’s a puzzle to me, just like his books are . And when I read him the world seems to be a mystery and a puzzle too.
I’d be interested if people think that Russell Hoban has links or similarities to other writers, because I just can’t think of any.Thanks,
David Lloyd.

thats what I am, a newsy to the list.
greetings all.
I am a huge riddley walker fan and look forward to talking to all y’all
about that inspiring novel of language glitches.
about me.
I am a third year linguistics student at the university of winnipeg,
manitoba, canada. My linguistic interests include stylistics and artificial
languages like riddley talk. I spent all my second year dealing on some
level with riddley walker, and feel very close to the novel. I have also
read kleinziet which also connected very well with my interests. This is all
you need to know about me now.
thank you whom ever put up this list.a couple of questions:
-has the glossary for riddley walker been uploaded on the internet
somewhere? as well the aditional preface and post script?
-are there any web sites dedicated to riddley speak?
-are there others with similar interests to mine on this list?
-are there any journals or essays online that deal with hoban’s work,
especially riddley walker?
-knowing my interests in the two books mentioned what other of his works
would fit my interests?

thanks
bon soir,
ad.ll

Hi everyone, and thanks for the fascinating contributions. I’ve just read RW again for the nth time, and I was trying to explain it to my wife, who is Spanish and speaks a little English, but Riddley speak is almost impossible to translate for obvious reasons. However I spend so much time banging on about how wonderful the language is, how extraordinary the plot is, how well the two complement each other, taht Riddley is one of the best realized characters in modern fiction etc that she quite rightly insists on me making an effort.
O.K. I said almost impossible to translate, there is a saying amongst translators that anything you can say in one language you can say in another. I don’t know about that, but my proposition is this. Is anyone out there interested in collaborating on a project to translate RW into Spanish? The idea fascinates me but then again I’m a masochist.It would probably take an age and may well prove to be beyond our abilities but what the hell. Give it a go. As the chinese say, everyone should plant a tree , have a child and write a book before they die. I’ve done the first two and translating RW seems a good third. Whaddaya say?
Chris Hannan

Seems to me the best thing to do would actually be to first translate it
into modern spanish then create something equivalent to riddley speak in
spanish. The problem I see is even this does not really work since much
of Riddley is preserved because its language does not mean anything
straight or simple. It is poetic and often ambigous, working more in
metaphor than in anything concrete. I am guessing that many of the
Riddley fans here each have a different idea of the book–not radically
different ideas, but different all the same. Because so much of Riddley
IS language, it seems nearly impossible to conceive of a translation. In
this very rare case it seems to me that it might be easier to learn
english then it would to translate Riddely, but a nobel and fascinating
effort nonetheless.A very nice saying from the Chinese incidentally.

Chris

 

On 14 Dec 1999 buh_____@_____.es wrote:

> From: buh_____@_____.es
>
> Hi everyone, and thanks for the fascinating contributions. I’ve just read RW again for the nth time, and I was trying to explain it to my wife, who is Spanish and speaks a little English, but Riddley speak is almost impossible to translate for obvious reasons. However I spend so much time banging on about how wonderful the language is, how extraordinary the plot is, how well the two complement each other, taht Riddley is one of the best realized characters in modern fiction etc that she quite rightly insists on me making an effort.
> O.K. I said almost impossible to translate, there is a saying amongst translators that anything you can say in one language you can say in another. I don’t know about that, but my proposition is this. Is anyone out there interested in collaborating on a project to translate RW into Spanish? The idea fascinates me but then again I’m a masochist.It would probably take an age and may well prove to be beyond our abilities but what the hell. Give it a go. As the chinese say, everyone should plant a tree , have a child and write a book before they die. I’ve done the first two and translating RW seems a good third. Whaddaya say?
> Chris Hannan
>
> > —————————————————
> The Kraken: The Russell Hoban Mailing List
> For help contact Dave Awl – day_____@_____.com
> http://www.suba.com/~dayvoll/rh
>
>
>
>

HOWDY ALL!Happy holidays to all Hobanites everywhere!

Well, one of my Christmas treats to myself showed up yesterday.

My copy of the new Riddley Walker paperback arrived from Amazon.

Hooty hoo!

I’m working on Kleinzeit right now. The Mouse and His Child will follow
that, because I finally got hold of a copy through inter-library loan. Then
Turtle Diary, so it looks like RW will be on my 2000 reading list.

Definitely a reason to look forward to the new year!

— Duane

My progress through KLEINZEIT has been a bit slow. Surprising, when you
consider the relative brevity of the book, the shortness of the chapters,
and the pared-down style Mr. Hoban uses for this novel.Still, slower reading is one of the side effects of having an 8-month-old
baby.

In recalling my reading over the years, I believe Kleinzeit was the first
Hoban novel I read — sometime in the early 1980s, I think. I buzzed through
it pretty rapidly at the time because I was also doing a lot of reading for
graduate studies, probably remarked, “That’s cool!” and buzzed along to
another book and picked up LION when I stumbled across it.

After re-reading MEDUSA and reading MOMENT UNDER THE MOMENT, Mr. Hoban’s use
of the Underground and Orpheus and Eurydice in KLEINZEIT resonate much more
resoundingly this time around. At the times I read MEDUSA, I didn’t even
recall the references to O and E in KLEINZEIT.

Although KLEINZEIT seems a brief book, there’s certainly a lot going on
there: metaphoric dopplegangers (Kleinzeit and Redbeard), the paraphrased
parallels with Orpheus and Eurydice (Kleinzeit and Sister), an indictment of
national health services (or am I reading too much into the blather of Dr.
Pink and the other doctors, the medical tests, the constantly breaking-down
instruments, the stream of dying patients, the arrogance of Hospital, the
unseemly lust of Bed, etc?), and more.

With the recent death of Joseph Heller, I’ve been thinking about CATCH-22,
and I find some similarities between that novel and KLEINZEIT: Both novels
depict society as a big organization that’s fairly chaotic and doesn’t give
two snaps about the individuals within in. For Yossarian, the human malaise
is manifested as insanity. For Kleinzeit, it’s the failure of physical
health and the constant existential questioning accompanied by the rather
bleak conversations he carries on with the inanimate universe.

For both Yossarian and Kleinzeit, their pleas to God go unanswered–or
answered unsatisfactorily. For instance, not only does God have no answers,
He remains unheard by Kleinzeit. As Kleinzeit thinks (page 78 of the Viking
hardback):

<
. . . .God knows what’ll come into his [Dr. Pink’s] head next and I’ll feel
it.

I DON’T know, said God. I’m not a doctor. This is between you and
Pink. Kleinzeit couldn’t hear him.

>

 

— Duane

I’m not a classics scholar. To paraphrase a popular book title from a few
years ago, “Everything I learned about classics I learned from Tarzan.”Well, not really. But I learned a bit thanks to the classics scholar Erling
B. Holtsmark, whose study of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ books certainly gave me a
few more clues than I’d otherwise picked up on my own.

In his study, Holtsmark shows how Burroughs’ youthful classics education
informed his adult writing as he (unconsciously or not) based his heroes on
the heroic form of the classical tradition.

(Believe me, this gets to Mr. Hoban eventually!)

For instance, whenever one of ERB’s heroes travels underground — that is,
to the Underworld — he returns with some treasure: actual treasure, as when
Tarzan loots the vaults of the lost city of Opar of gold ingots, or at least
with some sort of new knowledge. For John Carter, a trip underground gives
him an entire world! His entering a cave to hide while harried by savage
Indians transports him to Barsoom, where he becomes the warlord of Mars!

This tendency to discover treasure underground follows the tradition of
classical heroes, whose trips to the Underworld likewise result in treasure
or knowledge.

Now, to the Hobanovels, which are filled with classical allusions: In the
novels I’ve read so far, the characters’ trips to the Underground — the
stand-in for the personal Unconscious and the classical Underworld — rarely
turn up treasure. The characters invariably return to the surface with more
questions than they started with, few if any answers, and no treasure.
Usually they are haunted by what they find there.

This seeming inversion of the tradition of the hero’s Underworld quest
follows Orpheus’ luck in the Underworld: He doesn’t make it all the way back
to the surface world with Eurydice, the treasure of his heart. THere’s
something very bleak and discouraging about this.

I guess it all boils down to this: I’d certainly like the artifice of a
Happy Ending every now and then.
— Duane

Okay, I had asked for the artifice of a happy ending.I kinda got that. I finished KLEINZEIT last night.

The novel got heavier into the Orpheus and Eurydice stuff than in the first
half.

Certain details are echoed with MEDUSA: Releasing the tension in the stopped
clock and rewinding it, shaking dandruff over the paper/keyboard, etc.

Is MEDUSA meant to be a refinement of KLEINZEIT? Or is MEDUSA the image of
KLEINZEIT on the other side of the mirror? Are the two novels meant to act
as a frame, in some way bracketing the three novels that appeared between
the two books? The similarities in the two books make me think that you
can’t look at one alone, but you must somehow consider the pair as a unit.

Am I off target here?

— Duane

> Is MEDUSA meant to be a refinement of KLEINZEIT? Or is MEDUSA the image of
> KLEINZEIT on the other side of the mirror? Are the two novels meant to act
> as a frame, in some way bracketing the three novels that appeared between
> the two books? The similarities in the two books make me think that you
> can’t look at one alone, but you must somehow consider the pair as a unit.
>

I am going to jump in here and say I think they are two seperate works
-or- everything by hoban is a series of installments in one great work.
Certainly all of Hoban’s work uses similiar themes, and it is too easy too
note the usage of Orpheus and Eurydice and assume this is the same story.
On the other hand, it does seem one could easily counter-argue that Medusa
is a refinement…I can see both sides of this one. I guess I see both
books wrestling with the same themes, but they are two different books,
and I also think with relatively different resolutions. I hate to think
of Medusa as a refinement because it implies that Medusa surplants the
former, on the other hand, Medusa for me accomplishes something the
Kleinzeit does not. Kleinzeit almost feels like it has a rather happy
ending–I love the final chapter where he draws the perfect circle and has
a little chat with death. Medusa on the other hand feels more nebulous–I
think his recognition of Medusa is something very different then
Kleinzeit’s encounter with death. Hermann is becoming aware of a
different part of himself, a different part of reality, a different part
of experience–he is opening a door so to speak; and I feel like without
Medusa we couldn’t have these Hoban books of the 90’s. Medusa to me does
feel as though it leads to Fremder in the same irrational sort of way that
Riddley seems to lead to Pilgermann. I do not feel Kleinzeit makes any
realization of this sort but is more grappling with the inherent need to
be creative in a very threatening world. Not to reduce Kleinzeit, it is a
fantastic book, but I just feel it is something different then Medusa,
similiar words but a different spirit.

Different topic: Just got my hands on ‘The Sea Thing Child’ recently, and
of course it is fantastic, however a friend of mine has informed me the
original had very sparse black and white sketches, of which he felt
matched the story magnificiently. Has anyone seen this original version?
I will try to have my friend scan some of the images as a sample. For
what it is worth I enjoy these new illustrations quite a bit and
fortunately they are not too cutesy, but I imagine the b&w sketches were
even better.

Chris, who likes the b&w francis better than color.