Guinea Pigs

There has been a lot of talk in the blogosphere about underrated books, but no one is talking about Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker. How it works: A puts up a post. Readers send comments. If one mentions a book it has had its 2 seconds of fame: other readers think they must come up with a different book.

Meanwhile Blogger has introduced a poll widget. When I mention Riddley Walker in conversation people who've read it say YES, it's a work of GENIUS -- but most people haven't heard of it. That said, I don't tend to go about dragging Riddley Walker into the conversaton. This is what polls are for. So I have put one in the sidebar.

Riddley Walker takes place in a landmass that had been Britain before a nuclear holocaust. Scientific knowledge has been lost, but traces of it survive in the language as mythological explanations for what now makes no sense ('the party cools of Addom and the many cools of stoan'). It begins like this:

On my naming day when I come 12 I 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 time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen. He dint make the groun shake nor nothing like that when he come on to my spear he wernt all that big plus he lookit poorly. He done the reqwyrt he ternt and stood and clattert his teef and made his rush and there we wer then. Him on 1 end of the spear kicking his life out and me on the other end watching him dy. I said, 'Your tern now my tern later.' The other spears gone in then and he wer dead and the steam coming up off him in the rain and we all yelt, 'Offert!'

Riddley Walker again

Patrick Jehle has a post on Riddley Walker on Night Hauling. Of the 25 voters in the Paperpools Riddley Walker poll, 13 think it's a masterpiece of 20th century fiction, 3 have heard of it but never read it and 9 have never heard of it.

This is, of course, a ludicrously small sample, but the pattern is what I would expect to find for an unjustly neglected work of genius (if a similar poll were run for Ulysses, even one vote in 'never heard of it' would be astounding, though it would not be surprising to get many votes in 'heard of but not read' ). More Riddley:

Befor I write down that 1st connexion I bes say a word or 2 about connexions and I myt as wel tel Truth. When my dad ben a live I all ways thot I cud do better connexions nor him when my chance come. How he don it he wud mummel slow and quyet and start and stop with long sylents be twean and mosly his connexions wernt nothing as citing. Every body liket them tho. They all ways went strait to the hart of the matter plus they wer jus that littl bit else nor mos peopl wuntve thot of it qwite the same way.

Like the time wen I ben 7 or 8 when Littl Salting Fents got largent in by Dog Et Form. That ben up on Top Shoar and we ben down by Fork Stoan then in Crippel the Farn Fents. Every body heard of it tho and talking on it. Dog Et tol some cow shit story of a Outland raid from over water they said thats how Littl Salting got ther Big Man kilt plus 8 mor dead and the res of the crowd sparsit out to who ever wud take them in...in that woal story Dog Et tol ther bint a word of Truth only how many dead. Every body knowit Dog Et said, 'Les largen in to gether' and Littl Salting said 'No' which then it wer arga warga for them.

Wel the Pry Mincer and the Wes Mincer don 1 of ther specials dint they. Coarse they don. My dad tol me that show over when he ben learning me. I myt as wel tel it here then when I write down the connexion for it thatwl show his styl.

Riddley Walker poll

Results of poll: Masterpiece: 51. Good but not great: 2. Heard of not read: 7. Never heard of: 27.

One last excerpt from the book for those who haven't come across Riddley Walker, this from a kind of Punch and Judy show of the mythical events leading to the holocaust:

Eusa says to us, ‘This is time back way back like I said. He goes down and he comes up with paper and pen and a measuring stick and a triangl. Hes writing writing hes numbering hes drawing lines all over that paper. Hes thinking hard hes mummering to his self then hes scratching his head and hes thinking some mor. He groans a littl then he says, ‘All these here numbers and that its all too much to keap in 1 head and programming my self. What I nead is a nother head and bigger so it can do some of this hevvy head work for me.’

Eusa does down agen and hes clanging and banging hes huffing and puffing and hammering it souns like hes bellering up a reddying fire and hes beating some thing on a hanvil.

Persoon Eusa comes up agen this time hes got a iron hat on his head. 2 long wires coming out of the top of the hat and littl pegs on the ends of the wires. Plus theres a cranking handl on the side of the iron hat. Eusas trying to shif some kynd of a box its biggern he is. He gets the box heavit up on to the show board. He says, ‘Hoo! Thats a hevvy 1.’ Theres a cranking handl on the side of the box as the 1 on Eusas hat. 2 littl hoals and a slot in the top of the box and a nother slot in 1 end of it.

Eusa says, ‘2 heads are bettern 1.’ He takes them 2 wires coming out of his hat and he pegs them in to the hoals in the box. He says, ‘Now Iwl jus input a few little things in to my No. 2 head.’ Hes terning that crank on his iron hat. Rrrrrrrrrr.
Eusa says, ‘Now les see if it works.’ He takes a peace of paper and he says out loud what hes writing on it: ‘Whats my name?’ He puts the peace of paper in the slot in the top of the box he says, ‘Now les see if you can anser that.’

Eusa terns the crank on the side of the box and a peace of paper comes out of the slot in the end of the box. Theres writing ont he paper. Eusa reads it out: ‘My name is Eusa.’

Eusa says, ‘That the ticket.’

äääääähm

In a café with a Hotspot that supposedly closes at 5. It's 3am. Someone is going around putting chairs upside down on tables.

How this happened.

I went to my gym at 12.30. The guy said the strom was kaput. (Roughly.) My gym has machines and also Internet access. Deprived of access to my cross-trainer I went to Kleisther, a café which advertises itself as closing, as I say, at 5.

And NOW look.

But I did catch the latest xkcd.

I am not getting as much work done as I thought because, as Maureen Howard once said, life gets in the way, but I have been reading a shockingly slipshod book on Durkheim on suicide and rereading Orlando Paterson's brilliant Slavery and Social Death. SSD came out in something like 1982, roughly the publication date of other books that dazzled me (Riddley Walker, Hawksmoor, An Insular Possession, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, If on a Winter's Night a Traveller), but I only discovered it in 1998 and now can't live without it. And I am not linking to anything, obviously, because someone is going around putting chairs upside down on tables.

I am not wanted. They want to close up. They want to go home.

pa pa pa PAAAAAAAAA pa

n+1 held a panel discussion at Fordham back in late October last year, a reprise of an earlier discussion of "What we wish we'd known."  Moderated by Keith Gessen.  Participants, HDW and J.D. Daniels.

(An edited transcript of the event is now available on the n+1 blog, here.)

One thing I will say is that if you ever have the chance to hear J.D. Daniels talk about anything you should go.  You live in Seattle?  He's giving a talk in the inconveniently located Portland?  Expedia is your friend. This will sound crazy only to those who have not heard J.D. Daniels. You may feel like an idiot when you book the flight; when the lights go down you'll be pitying all the friends who stayed sensibly in Seattle.  Click.  Walk out the door. 

Another thing I will say is that Keith Gessen is a saint.

rerererereading

 As I've said, a journalist wrote to me back in November asking if I'd reread any books that mattered to me and asking various questions about the importance of rereading to writers.  I wrote an insanely long e-mail in reply which some readers have said they would like to see.  


I have doubts about this, which strike me more forcefully now that I have read Sheila Heti's piece for the Globe and Mail.  I find that the business connected with publishing a book makes it hard to do any serious writing, which means that I am increasingly cut off from the things I actually care about (one of which is, of course, reading); but in the meantime it is necessary to construct and deploy a social self as a matter of professionalism.  This somehow ends up being a tapdancer with a Gene Kelly grin.  (That's the way it feels, anyway.)  I don't know if Heti feels that way too; when she shows up for public engagements she somehow comes across as genuine, so then I feel there is something wrong with me for covering up alienation with a lot of flippant remarks. Still, I have written 5000 words of a story in the last day, so perhaps the thing that used to be there is coming back.


Maybe if I had taken more time I would have written less manically and at a more sensible length; I had the feeling that if a journalist has a deadline to meet it's unhelpful to spend too much time self-editing. That might not be true. Anyway, this is what I said at the time, with some afterthoughts: