Richard Cooper 2012

SA4QE day 2012 being a Saturday, my two boys were off school, so I thought this a good time to introduce them to the wonders of 4qation. Joe (6) had in fact had an early introduction to the activity but I doubt he remembered much about it. I sat him and his brother Charlie, 5, down in the front room with some sheets of yellow paper and read them various poems from The Last of the Wallendas to encourage them to choose a poem or a line they liked and write it down. They found the poems a bit difficult to get into however, so I switched to a Hoban they were more familiar with, Trouble on Thunder Mountain. The book is a favourite one at bedtime, the fantastic Quentin Blake illustrations as much a joy as the beautifully-told short story of a small family of dinosaurs uprooted from their mountain home by a nut who wants to replace it with a plastic one. While I read the book Charlie picked out single words and wrote them down, and Joe did a drawing of his favourite part of the story (we won't hold it against him) when the dinosaurs' mountain is blown up by Mr Flatbrain and his team of robots. After I'd finished reading we talked about the story and agreed that having your home blown up and being forcibly relocated was A Bad Thing, and Joe wrote down this:

"A hi-tech plastic mountain?" said Dad.
"It takes a man named Flatbrain to think of something like that," said Jim.

- from Trouble on Thunder Mountain

I had discovered earlier that morning that today was also, by a lovely coincidence, National Libraries Day, in which people were being encouraged to visit their local library and get a Message across to the Authorities that our society would be the poorer for the closure of these services. Whether I personally feel that some in the UK's coalition government are akin to Mr Flatbrain, I couldn't possibly comment.

So with libraries and books very much in mind, we headed off on a very cold and grey afternoon just on the edge of snow into the town centre. Rugby is fortunate in some ways in that its main library building is also a museum and tourist centre, so is probably unlikely to be among those shut by the Flatbrains.

We went in half an hour before closing time and toured the shelves, picking out books that the boys found interesting, on minerals, stars, Sikhism, the Sahara Desert. I explained the Dewey system and we looked up "cars" in the catalogue and went looking for the relevant shelf number. We looked in the Fiction section for books by Russell Hoban and found a hardback of Angelica Lost and Found. I told them about the painting on the cover and Ruggiero flying on the hippogriff to save Angelica.

As much as I love the internet, and the boys are very web-literate for their ages, this is simply not something you can do online.

Suddenly it was nearly closing time, so we hurried into the children's section and found a leaflet holder on the wall in which - after explaining it was not an act of vandalism - I encouraged Joe to secrete his quote:

Then on the way out I left my own quotes, chosen earlier from The Moment under The Moment, in a good place by the front door (I did actually pop it into the box, which seemed otherwise empty, after taking the photo):

The people who run the world now were children once. What went wrong? Why do perfectly good children become rotten grown-ups?

- from Pan Lives (The Moment under The Moment)

In my house of childhood of the mind lives Vol. XVII of the Harvard Classics, the only book in the Five-Foot Shelf much handled; Locke and Hume and Darwin looked as new as the day they were unpacked but Vol. XVII was Folklore and Fable, Andersen and Aesop and the brothers Grimm, and it was in heavy use. Oscar Wilde’s House of Pomegranates and The Arabian Nights live there also. As a child I did much of my reading in the room in our house called the library. It was lined with books in Russian, Yiddish, and English and had a massive oak table. No one else I knew had such a room. I had outdoor reading places as well, and of these my favourite was a big old wild cherry tree where in season I read Robin Hood and ate little sun-warmed black cherries.

- from “‘I, that was a child, my tongue’s use sleeping…’” (The Moment under The Moment)

We went home just as it started snowing heavily, and I tweeted and Facebooked it all.

Hirshhorn Museum 2012

"15. Owt uv thay 2 peaces uv the Littl Shynin Man the Addom thayr cum shyningnes in wayvs in spredin circels."

 - from Riddley Walker

Posted to Twitter

The quote tweeted was accompanied by a link to this upcoming exhibition at the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC: "Art and Destruction is the first in-depth exploration of the theme of destruction in international contemporary visual culture... This ground-breaking exhibition includes works by a diverse range of international artists working in painting, sculpture, photography, film, installation, and performance. It reaches beyond art to enable a broader understanding of culture and society in the aftermath of World War II, under the looming fear of total annihilation in the atomic age, and up to the present."

Pablo K 2012

- from Pilgermann

outside Goldsmiths, 1am, on their cow bins. 

Tweeted

I trusted you with the idea of me, and you lost it.

- from The Medusa Frequency

on the East London line. Not technically A4. So sue me.
Tweeted

Patrick Gannon 2012

"I exist, said the mirror."
What about me? said Kleinzeit.
"Not my problem, said the mirror."

- from Kleinzeit

Posted to Twitter

This was among the most popular quotes as voted for in the SA4QE 2012 Russell Hoban Reader Survey

Mike Smith 2012

A story is what remains when you leave out most of the action.

- from Pilgermann

Posted to Twitter

John D 2012

"What are you?" she said. "A hypnotist?"
"Please forgive my staring, I'm a writer."

- from My Tango With Barbara Strozzi

Left outside Karben Cafe Bar, Portland Road, Worthing and on a bench outside Waitrose, High Street, Worthing

Also posted to Twitter
 

Kevin Holohan 2012

You're a god then? said the yellow paper.
I employ gods, said Word, and left. 

 - from Kleinzeit

Posted to Twitter

Kevin has also written an excellent "Remembrance of Russell Hoban" on writing.ie

Lisa Greenstein 2012

Along with the dream life there is the life of ideas and half-ideas, of glimmerings and flashes and indescribable atmospheres of the mind. What we actually do in what is called the real world depends largely on how we live this unseen life in our inner world of words and images, songs and bits of poems, names and numbers and memories and dreams remembered and unremembered. Whether the song in our heads is Michael Jackson or Franz Schubert it is fitting itself to and reinforcing something in us that comes forward to meet it. That’s how art affects life; we use it to be more what we are and to become what is in us wanting us to become it.

- from The Moment under the Moment

He was almost on the point of crying, but he began to laugh.

    “And that’s funny to you?” said the father.

    “You don’t know what I’m laughing at,” said Boaz-Jachin. “Nothing is smooth and easy for me, and my life isn’t one girl after another — it seems to be one father after another. And how would it help you if I had a wrinkled face and clouded eyes and short hair? Would your daughter then become a nun?”

    The father’s face relaxed behind the beard and the glasses. “It’s hard to let go,” he said.

    “And it’s hard to hold on,” said Boaz-Jachin.

    “To what?” said the father.

    “The wheel,” said Boaz-Jachin.

    “Ah,” said the father. “I know that wheel.”

- from The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz

Posted to Lisa's blog, Facebook and Twitter

AliB68 2012

The finding is in me, and the finding finds a way.

 - from The Sea-Thing Child

Happy Birthday the late, and much missed, Russell Hoban.

Posted to Twitter

Twitterers, Facebookers and Bloggers 2011

After all, when you come right down to it, how many people speak the same language even when they speak the same language?

- from Turtle Diary, tweeted by Joe Snow

Place of dismemberment? said Kleinzeit.
Everywhere, all the time, said Hall of Records.

- from Kleinzeit, tweeted by David Dixon

Sometimes now I dream of music. Not opera music, what it is I don't know. Over me, under me, all around me. I can hear it, I can feel it. when I wake up it is gone. Lost, nothing remembered.

- from Come Dance With Me, tweeted by John D here and here

‘A sense of loss pervades the paintings of Peter Diggs,’ wrote the critic Cecil Berkeley about my last show at the Fanshawe Gallery.

- from Amaryllis Night and Day, tweeted by remotevoices

There's nothing beyond the last visible dog but us.

- from The Mouse and His Child, tweeted by Chris Bell

(Bat bowl from the Victoria & Albert Museum that inspired The Bat Tattoo)

Facebooked by Olle Lawson

A Dog shall rise and a Rat shall fall.

- from The Mouse and His Child, Facebooked by Alison Baker

I do not like the way you slide,
I do not like your soft inside,
I do not like you lots of ways,
And I could do for many days
Without eggs.

- from Egg Thoughts and Other Frances Songs, Facebook-commented by Becky Morgan

I am actually a believer. I have faith that there's nothing that cares about us one way or the other.

- from The Bat Tattoo, tweeted by Danielle Carr

I searched in my A to Z for anything Balsamic but there was nothing.

- from Amaryllis Night and Day, tweeted by Squirmelia

And finally, here's a lovely post on the happy birdaycake blog from 7 February 2011 in which a mother and daughter make a real "Marzipan Pig" - not exactly a 4qation but just as tasty...

Dave Awl 2011

Mortal life is a difficult proposition because hardly anything can be experienced as what it actually is; everything is time-distorted. In childhood we wait for things that seem too long in coming, we wait for treats, for presents, for festivals and holidays, we wait for growing up. There is so much waiting that suddenly childhood itself is gone with all that was being waited for. As grown-ups we find ourselves pitched headlong down a steep and slippery slide with everything hurtling towards us at great speed; some things smash us full in the face, others streak past half-glimpsed or unseen; everything has happened before we were ready for it. Only after the hurly-burly of mortal life is over can one have a really good look at what has happened; unburdened by choice and unthreatened by consequences one is able to sort through the half-glimpses of a lifetime and find perhaps one or two workable fragments of recognition.

- from Pilgermann

Posted to Twitter via Twitlonger 

My aeons-long sojourn with the tiny, tiny dancing giants in the dim red caverns of sleep had made me realize how provincial my outlook had been before.

- from Angelica Lost and Found

Posted to Facebook

Dave's summary of Pilgermann can be found on his Head of Orpheus website

Ra McGuire 2011

Good evening,

Thanks again for this opportunity to participate!

Russell Hoban’s birthday began, in White Rock, British Columbia, Canada, with a menacing darkness squatted defiantly over Semiahmoo Bay. My yellow paper had been wrapped in plastic, as always, to protect it from an inevitable rain coast pelting - and subsequent melting - of Mr. Hoban’s words, but the particularly unwelcoming weather kept me inside until early afternoon …

At 2:00 PM Pacific Standard Time, on Russell Hoban’s naming day when he come 86, the dark clouds parted and the sun shone down. I headed down to the beach with my lovely wife, yellow paper in hand.

Reality is ungraspable. For convenience we use a limited-reality consensus in which work can be done, transport arranged, and essential services provided. The real reality is something else--only the strangeness of it can be taken in...

- from the foreword to The Moment Under The Moment

It was left on the best bench. Close to the water but distant from the action. A peaceful yet powerful spot. The wind was still whipping up the water. The gulls like that.

I am proud to once again represent for White Rock. I hear that, as of this year, I’m no longer the only Canadian contributor to SA4QE. This makes me proud as well.

My best to all members of the Kraken Community ...

And Thank you again, Russ, for the joyous mystery and the mysterious joy

Happy Birthday!

All best

Ra McGuire

This was also posted to Ra's blog and his Twitter feed

Lindsay Edmunds 2011

And I think of the sun over the water, the sun through the water, the eye holding the sun, being held by it with no thought and only the rhythm of the going. . . . Then it doesn't seem hard to believe. It seems the only way to do it, the only way in fact to be: swimming, swimming, the eye held by the sun, no sharks in the mind, nothing in the mind.

- from Turtle Diary

The above quote was included in Lindsay's contribution to The Huffington Post on 4 February entitled The Kraken rising: Russell Hoban's 86th birthday

The following was posted the same day by Lindsay on her own blog, Writer's Rest:

Under our ordinary speech there are always invisible subtitles in an unknown tongue.

- from The Medusa Frequency

 

Russell Hoban at the Guardian Book Club, 22 November 2010

Russell Hoban and Mr Punch

UPDATE: Hear the interview at the Guardian podcast

SA4QE was lucky to get a front-row seat on Monday night at John Mullan's Guardian Book Club interview with Russell Hoban.

There were some 125 people in attendance at the Guardian's Scott Room, where Hoban spoke to Mullan and answered questions from the audience for about 90 minutes on Riddley Walker.

Dressed in a black roll-neck and beige bodywarmer, Hoban took to the stage with help from his wife Gundula to warm applause. He doffed his black baseball cap and as Mullan did his introductions Hoban rummaged in a bag for a Mr Punch puppet, extemporising a few Punchisms in authentic voice to everyone's delight.

SA4QE didn't get a recording or formal notes of the interview (unlike for the somewhat shorter Serpentine gig last month), and it was being recorded for a future Guardian podcast anyway, but fortunately several of Hoban's beautifully-crafted answers were almost exact quotes from an article he wrote for the Guardian Book Club (to be published in the print edition on Saturday 27 November). 'People say to me: "Where do you get your ideas?" "Out of the air,"' was among Hoban's replies, as was his reference to 'the place where the remembered blood of Thomas Becket seethes on the stones' during an account of first visiting Canterbury Cathedral and seeing The Legend of St Eustace.

SA4QE, not being a Riddley expert (we leave that to the formidable Eli Bishop and his RW Annotations website), admits it was unaware of the fact that St Eustace 'has no official standing among the beatified. Perhaps his legend turned up on the back of some Middle-Ages cornflakes box and grew from there. Being thus non-factual, Eustace is quite at home in a work of fiction.' Hoban talked awhile about the poor St Eustace, recounting his separation from his children before finally landing up roasted alive in a brazen bull, checking at one point with Mullan if he was 'spending too much time on this'. Mullan, as captivated as the rest of us, bade him carry on as long as he wished.

Mullan read out some of the place names Hoban gave to actual Kent locations in Riddley Walker (Do It Over for Dover, Horny Boy for Herne Bay etc), querying where 'Bollock Stoans' was. 'I don't remember that one,' Hoban replied, adding something to the effect that 'a certain amount of bollocks' was involved. Another Mullan question revolved around the character Abel Goodparley's misinterpretation of the story of St Eustace, asking Hoban to read out the passage in question. Hoban explained that his eyes don't allow him to read very well these days, so Mullan read it out instead ('St stands for 'sent', meaning he dint jus turn up, he was sent' was among the well-received quotes from the book).

A question about how Mr Punch came into things produced one of several excellent lines of the night, Hoban asserting that his ability to write what and how he writes lies in a facility for 'being friends with my head ... I take its hobo journeys in fast freights, riding the blinds to unknown destinations. Sometimes I get thrown off the train in the middle of nowhere and sometimes I get to the Big Rock Candy Mountain.' One of these journeys evidently took in Punch and Judy, and thankfully Hoban was good enough friends with his own head (what a delightfully Orphic image!) to take that ride and connect Punch with St Eustace to produce the unique work we know today.

There followed a further 40 minutes' fascinating patter, during which Hoban gave some eloquent - if sometimes unnervingly brief - answers, touching on the language of Riddley Walker - 'it slows the reader down to Riddley's pace of thought and the language itself becomes a character in the novel' - and on why people feel drawn to the book despite its apocalyptic mood. Hoban's paraphrased answer to the latter revolved around the perennial attraction to ghost and horror stories as well as to the idea of characters at the very extremes of existence. 'I believe Cormac McCarthy has done something similar recently with a book called The Road,' Hoban added - to, frankly, the relief of SA4QE which understood from past exchanges that the great man studiously avoided contemporary fiction.

John Mullan

Mullan then threw the evening open to the audience. Again, the exact answers (and indeed the exact questions, some of which were of baffling length) will become clear when the podcast is released, but thankfully Claire Armitstead, the Guardian's literary editor, was tweeting summaries of each exchange in real time. The following are summarised from her selected tweets.

'I've been asking myself what is it with the dogs [said Hoban about the book's famous canines]. It's first off, the blackness of them. [I'm addicted to black.] I'm a schwartzophile. I based the dogs on the physiognomy of the hyena. They're not tail-waggy things.'

'Punch is the lawless id, the spirit of rebellion that Riddley digs up. It's the dead hand.'

Q: 'What's your philosophical position?' A: 'All my books are an exploration. The action comes out of the characters and the characters come out of the action.'

One questioner asked at some length how Hoban reconciled writing his Frances series ('my one commercial success') and other books for children with the dark adult fantasy of Riddley Walker. Hoban's explanation gave rise to what will probably be Hoban's best-remembered line of the night: 'I believe it's called talent.' If almost any other writer had said this they would have been roasted in a brazen bull for it, but it seemed more matter-of-fact than arrogant and even a non-Hoban fan could hardly argue with it - SA4QE is of course biased, but the body of work speaks for itself.

Russell Hoban signs for Roland and his class

Another questioner had read the book after doing Islamic studies and said that when people ask what Sufism is she tells them 'read Riddley Walker'. Hoban responded that he hadn't read Sufism. He added though that he had read zen.

There were a number of other questions which will have to wait for the podcast, but the final one was sent in by Kate Laity on Twitter - 'Is it possible to have such a varied career as yours today?' Hoban responded, refreshingly without cynicism: 'Talent will always find a way.'

Several of SA4QE's friends were also in attendance, including Tim Haillay, Deena Omar (forever known as the 'Some-Poasyum quiz winner'), Alastair Bickley, Richard Cooper and Bristol Grammar School's Roland Clare, who had brought eight upper-sixth English students with him. Roland's former students Rowan Evans, who pinned a Riddley quote to a tree on a former 4qation, and Thomas Lipscomb also came with the party on a fabulous day trip which had taken in Riddley-themed sessions at the British Library. SA4QE is pleased to report that the Bristolians were interviewed later as part of the Guardian podcast about their studies of the book - this can be heard about 21 minutes into the audio file on this page.

Altogether it was a fantastic evening, and SA4QE thanks the excellent folks at The Guardian, including of course John Mullan as well as Claire Armitstead, Hannah Freeman and Justine Jordan for enthusiastically tweeting about it. 

PHOTOS BY GOMBERT YAWNCHER
Hi-res versions are available as a set on the SA4QE Flickr site

Meet up with other Russell Hoban fans in London on Monday 22 November

If you're coming to the Russell Hoban interview at The Guardian on 22 November, why not meet up with other Hoban fans?

The interview takes place at The Guardian's Scott Room, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU (map), at 7pm. This event is sold out, so please note if you haven't already bought a ticket you won't be able to get in.

If you do have a ticket though and are in the area before the event please drop into The Fellow, a public bar at nearby 24 York Way, N1 9AA (map). The function room has been booked for the use of Hoban fans from 5.20pm to 6.45pm. There is limited space in the function room, but you can of course also meet in the public bar downstairs. (Fans of Russ are recommended to identify themselves by approaching likely-looking members of the public and whispering "Trubba not!" or similar quote from Riddley Walker, the subject of the Guardian interview.)

If you can't make The Fellow there will very likely be the opportunity for socialising after the event.

If you're on Twitter, you can register your intention to attend the tweetup at http://twtvite.com/russellhobanfellow

@fortuna_nul_1 November 2010

Posted on Twitter:

Well, it don't make the sun shine, but at least it don't deepen the shit.

Chris Bell November 2010

Posted on Twitter here and here:

I wan tu go I wan tu stay I wan tu dark I wan tu lyt I wan tu day I wan tu nyt I wan tu big I wan tu littl I wan tu aul I wan tu nuthing.

...

Some times theres mor in the emty paper nor there is when you get the writing down on it.

Olaf Schneider November 2010

It puts us on like we put on our cloes. Some times we don't fit. Sometimes it cant find the arm hoals and it tears us a part. 

(Posted on Twitter)

Facebookers and Twitterers 2010

Yellow paper found its way into various social networking sites in 2010. Here is a selection of the Russell Hoban quotes found on Twitter and Facebook on 4th February.

One assumes that the world simply is and is and is but it isn't, it is like music that we hear a moment at a time and put together in our heads. But this music, unlike other music, cannot be performed again.

from Pilgermann
Facebooked by the Russell Hoban Page

'She said, "Be the world-child with me"' said the head. I will.

- from The Medusa Frequency

Facebooked by PA Morbid

The above from Fremder Facebooked by Tim Haillay

The sword has crumbled into rust and the wind has blown the rust away but still I am, still I am of the world.

from Pilgermann
Facebooked by Chris Bell

We must find in ourselves the shapes of letting go because we're not free to become what we're going to be next until we let go of what we are now.

- from 'Mnemosyne, Teen Taals, and Tottenham Court Road' from The Moment under the Moment
Facebooked by Lara Hoffenberg

Sometimes I don't know anything at all for large spaces; sometimes I know many things all in the same place. My perceptions are uneven, my understading patchy but I have action; I go. I can't tell this as a story because it isn't a story; a story is what remains when you leave out most of the action; a story is a coherent sequence of picture cards ...

from Pilgermann
Facebooked by Dave Awl

I dont have nothing only words to put down on paper. Its so hard. Some times theres mor in the emty paper nor there is when you get the writing down on it. You try to word the big things and they tern ther backs on you. Yet youwl see stanning stoans and ther backs wil talk to you.

from Riddley Walker
Facebooked by Olaf Schneider

The fog made everything more personal, as if it were taking me aside to tell me a secret.

from The Bat Tattoo
tweeted by Lindsay Edmunds

At three o'clock in the morning the moments patter like rain on the roof of night; the silence is a road to anywhere.

- from The Medusa Frequency
tweeted by Richard Cooper (at three o'clock in the morning*)
*courtesy of HootSuite's scheduling facility :-)

The moment will not stay. We seek out places where the sorrow will be lessened, places where there is heart's ease in the sorrow, heart's comfort amidst the pain. For good or ill the moment will not stay. How fast the world flees in all directions from us!

- from 'Mnemosyne, Teen Taals, and Tottenham Court Road' from The Moment under the Moment
Facebooked by Lara Hoffenberg




The above from Pilgermann Facebooked by Tim Haillay

Even a small mountain is always a surprise, it is always so much itself.

from Pilgermann
tweeted by Olaf Schneider

Here's to Art and all who sail in her.

from My Tango With Barbara Strozzi
tweeted by Lindsay Edmunds

There were times when it seemed to him that the different parts of him were not all under the same management.

from The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz
tweeted by Dave Awl

The action never stops, it only changes, the ringing of steel is sung in the stillness of the stone.

from Pilgermann
tweeted by Chris Bell

Chris Bell 2010

Apologies for the delay in sending this through. As you’ll have seen from my Twitter tweets, that site is where I spent most of my 4 February this year — I’m attaching a screen-grab of one of my Twitter pages and, as you’ll notice, they’re mostly Hoban quotes.


With a two-year-old boy to mind at home, I don’t get out much any more. So a physical quote drop wasn’t possible. I decided to restrict my 2010 quotes exclusively to my favourite Hoban novel, Pilgermann, this year. Space permitting, I endeavoured to include links to the SA4QE website on my tweets. I also re-tweeted other 4Qations on Twitter like a madman.

Here’s a screen-grab from my Facebook page, too.

[image redacted for copyright reasons]

The sword has crumbled into rust and the wind has blown the rust away but still I am, still I am of the world.

- from Pilgermann

I also posted a Pilgermann quote to my blog, NZBC.

[image redacted for copyright reasons]

This is probably my favourite Hoban sentence of all. Russ’s voice radiates from it; instantly recognisable, incontrovertibly beautiful. I 4Qated it before, in 2002, but it’s so good it bears repeating.

Twilight it was, the dying day shivering a little and huddling itself up in its cloak. Suddenly there came flying towards me with a mouse dangling from its beak, an owl, what is called a veiled owl, with a limp mouse dangling from its cryptic heart-shaped face.

- from Pilgermann

What a great year for 4Qating it was — there was a real buzz on Twitter and Facebook, and it was fun watching the Twitter ‘ticker’ on the SA4QE home page to see who else was 4Qating.

Well being,

Chris Bell
New Zealand