I remember being a child out of doors in the dark of summer evenings, winter evenings, late dark and early. One saw perfectly well, it never seemed really dark until I came in the house. Then the night outside the windows would be very black.
Its some kynd of thing it aint us but yet its in us. Its looking out thru our eye hoals. May be you dont take no noatis of it only some times. Say you get woak up suddn in the middl of the nite. 1 minim youre a sleap and the nex youre on your feet with a spear in your han. Wel it wernt you put that spear in your han it wer that other thing whats looking out thru your eye hoals. It aint you nor it dont even know your name. Its in us lorn and loan and sheltering how it can.
What I like about Badru is that its so much what it is, so much the appearance of itself printed on the very thin membrane that we call reality. On the other side of that membrane is the endless becoming that swallows up years and worlds, Badr al-Budur, Mikhail’s Intergalaktik, even the dream rats and their sacred objects, in the darkness of no remembrance.
...
Being is not a steady state but an occulting one: we are all of us a succession of stillness blurring into motion on the wheel of action, and it is in those spaces of black between the pictures that we find the mystery in which we are never allowed to rest. The flickering of a film interrupts the intolerable continuity of apparent world; subliminally it gives us those in-between spaces of black that we crave. The eye is hungry for this; eagerly it collaborates with the unwinding strip of celluloid that shows it twenty-four stillness per second, making real by an act of retinal attention the here-and-gone, the continual disappearing in which the lover’s kiss, the shots are fired the horses gallop; but bellow the threshold of conscious thought the eye sees and the mind savours the flickering of the black.
"15. Owt uv thay 2 peaces uv the Littl Shynin Man the Addom thayr cum shyningnes in wayvs in spredin circels."
I trusted you with the idea of me, and you lost it.- from The Medusa Frequency
"I exist, said the mirror."
What about me? said Kleinzeit.
"Not my problem, said the mirror."
24 January 2003. I don’t think of my daughters very often. Wherever they are, they have done alright, that I know. Sometimes I think of Elias because there are things I want to tell him. These things he knows maybe, maybe not.
...
Everything is twice itself, this I often think. Things are what they are every day, but then sometimes they are not. Sometimes I see people talking, crossing the road, running to catch a bus. Suddenly it is like TV with the sound turned off and I see that this is really Death dressing himself up as these people talking, crossing the road, running to catch a bus. So that is what is really happening, no?
...
But who am I that I should say this? My mind is like a top that spins crazily just before it falls over.
Learn the speech of ravens and they will feed you.
...
‘Piss off.’
‘Make me.’
The colours of my craziness roared and bellowed in my ears.
‘I’m lost,’ said Klein.
‘In what sense?’ said Dr DeVere.
‘In the sense of I don’t know where I am.’
‘Can you elaborate?’
‘I am of a people who have always been fearless navigators of the mind. The dead sail with us as we make our way from idea to idea, steering by the stars and sea-marks named by those before us. Such a wide, wide ocean! But you always know where you are by the waves, by the swells, by the loomings and the stars. Then one dark night the waves change, and the swells; the winds blow from not the usual quarters. Black squalls come, and heavy seas, the stars are blotted out, the wind moans in the rigging. You suddenly realise that you might never make your landfall, you might drown. A great wave hits the boat and takes you with it, you feel yourself going down, down, down and then you don’t know any more which way is up and you can’t hold your breath a moment longer and the wild wide ocean fills your lungs and then you’re gone: down among the dead men.’
Dr DeVere kept respectfully silent for a few moments. ‘It’s good that you could get that out,’ he said.
By their in-your-face humble posture I [Angelica] recognised them as Jehovah’s Witnesses and went to meet them. One was a young woman, the other a middle-aged man. The woman was modestly frumped-up but she was pretty in a way that made me think her name might have been Tiffany or Amber before she went into the witnessing business. The man had painfully sincere horn-rimmed glasses and grey hair.
‘Hello,’ said the woman. ‘My name is Ruth and this is my father Jonathan.’
‘How do you do,’ I said.
We shook hands.
‘We’ve been going around,’ said Ruthany, ‘asking folks how they feel about the world today. Would you say you feel optimistic about it?’
‘Definitely pessimistic,’ I said.
‘Many people tell us that,’ she assured me without placing a hand on my arm, ‘and Scripture gives us an answer in Isaiah, Chapter 65, Verse 17.’ Her fast-draw Bible appeared open in her hands before my reply had cleared the holster.
I read, ‘For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.’
‘But that’s imaginative displacement,’ I said, ‘and believing that wishing will make it so. It’s a Ghost Dance!’
‘Say what?’ said Ruthany.
‘Wovoka, the Paiute holy man from Nebraska, in 1888 had a vision during a solar eclipse, and he started the Ghost Dance Religion.’ I read off my computer printout: ‘ “He claimed that the earth would soon perish and then come alive again in a pure, aboriginal state, replete with lush green prairie grass, large buffalo herds and Indian ancestors.”
‘He told the Indians how to earn this new reality, with prayer and meditation and especially dancing “through which one might briefly die and catch a glimpse of the Paradise to come”.
‘The government banned the Ghost Dance, the Indians didn’t stop, so on the morning of 29 December 1890, at Wounded Knee, the soldiers killed a hundred and fifty Indians and wounded fifty, all of them wearing Ghost Shirts to stop the bullets.’ By this time I was crying again.
‘She’s upset,’ said Jonathan to Ruth. ‘We’ll talk about this another time,’ he said to me as I sat there in my Ghost Shirt, weeping by the rivers of Babylon.
‘And what did she ever see in you?’
‘Flickering images.’
...
The idea of a club of people eating lunches was frightening to me.
Time back way way back befor peopl got clevver they had the 1st knowing. They los it when the got the clevverness and now the clevverness is gone as wel.
VIRGIN STATUE WEEPS, said the headline at the newsstand outside the station. ‘As well it might,’ said Klein.
...
Klein thanked her and walked home, still seeing Lucifer in pinks and greys and greens.
When she told me that her name was Bertha Strunk I said, ‘Is Bertha’s trunk anything like Pandora’s Box?’
‘That isn’t something you can find out in five minutes,’ she said.
On 1 March 2012 Walker Books published Russell Hoban's final young-adult book Soonchild, with amazing illustrations by Alexis Deacon. Read a lovely review in the Guardian, see some exclusive spreads from inside the book and get more details and a text extract at the Head of Orpheus website. Walker tweeted photos of Russ and Alexis at their offices in January 2011.
Also, on 4 October 2012 Walker published a beautiful new children's book. Rosie's Magic Horse is illustrated by the legendary Quentin Blake (with whom Russ had formerly collaborated on Trouble on Thunder Mountain, among other titles) and tells the story of a little girl and her collection of ice-lolly sticks, which dream of being a horse.
On 4 February 2012 the Slickman A4 Quotation Event celebrated 10 years of sharing Russell Hoban quotes, with many fans across the world posting their favourites in public places both real and virtual. This site was updated daily between 4 February and 10 March 2012 with these quotes. See all 2012 quotes
Russell Hoban's last novel Angelica Lost and Found was published in November 2010 and is available from Amazon and all good bookshops. There were good reviews of the book in the Guardian and Independent and an excellent interview with Russell Hoban in the Scotsman, as well as a revealing audio interview at Tim Haigh Reads Books.
The London restaurant Gaby's Deli, which is mentioned in Russell Hoban's books The Bat Tattoo and Linger Awhile, is under threat. The landlords want to close it and, reportedly, replace it with a chain restaurant. Give their Facebook page a like or sign their petition.
In 2005 the first international convention for Russell Hoban fans took place in London, and was marked by the publication of a fantastic 48-page booklet featuring exclusive contributions from innumerable fans and associates including novelist David Mitchell and actress Glenda Jackson. A wonderful memento of the event, it's also a beautiful collector's item and must-have for any Hoban fan. Although in limited supply, copies of the booklet are still available at £6.00 each plus p&p. Order direct from the Russell Hoban Some-Poasyum website.
Russell Hoban turned 86 on 4 February 2011 and fans celebrated in traditional style by leaving quotes from his books in public places. Browse their quotes here. The Russell Hoban community group The Kraken sent Russ a birthday gift of The Kraken Rum. Read a report about this at the Fantastic Reads blog.
To celebrate 30 years in print of Russell Hoban's most famous novel Riddley Walker, SA4QE broke with its February tradition and conducted an extraordinary SA4QE on 5 November 2010 in which participants shared their favourite quotes from the book. This site was updated throughout November 2010 with the quotes submitted.Richard Cooper's 2003 Hoban Adventure: 1 day. 29 London locations. 33 Hoban quotes. 2 sore feet.
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