American author Russell Hoban died yesterday, aged 86. I’ve never read a word of Hoban, nor do I know anything about him: so the obituaries made for very interesting reading.
There appear to have been two Russell Hobans. The first was the dreamy writer of children’s books; the second was an émigré in London who wrote experimental science fiction, of which Riddley Walker is the most famous and challenging example. The book opens:
‘On my naming day when I come 12 I to gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long before him nor I aint looking to see none agen.’
That sentence discouraged me, but less faint-hearted souls have elevated the book to cult status.
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