magine this as the opening paragraph of a book…

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.

You’d probably do what I did. You’d flip to near the back of the book to see if this is just a clever start, or all the way through 220 pages.

It’s all the way through.

Daunting.

So this was a book written in 1980 by Russell Hoban, and came to me from a literary friend while we chatted about books. And let’s say this – yes, this was a total ass-munch to wade through. Several times I had to back up and read a section over again, just to half-get it. But, like Watership Down, I eventually grew, if not fluent, at least more capable in “Riddley-speak”.

Why is this written this way? Well, the Riddley world takes place 2000 years after some sort of nuclear disaster. Not sure what – there is clear references to splitting the atom, and there is also folklore a power ring around London that was blown (seemingly against invaders) that messed everything so geologically up that the world is not quite the place we know it as. The interesting observation from the characters is that humans are still living in fenced encampments and being preyed upon by wild dog packs. In fact, if anything, dogs have organized and advanced further than the humans have, who are still stuck in the mud and suffering (as shown above) a significant language drift. And should you accept this mission and try to read this very interesting, very deep, yet very difficult novel, let me give you a hint: at lot of the story involves traveling Punch and Judy shows which explain the fall from Good Times to Bad Times in a very simplistic (and garbled) way. It took me a while to “get this” (and led to pages of scowling that needed to be re-harvested once I got the idea of the thing.

And, had you told me in the tough middle section when I was suffering doubts and thinking of my sister (who will sacrifice a book like a bored king slaying a dull jester) that I would be moved in the final pages, assembling my sorrow for this perverted, inert, muddy-dark world, and see Riddley off, roading through the rain, his continuing existence very much in doubt, I’d have thought you were mad. But yes, in the final page, I really suffered sorrow at ending (an admittedly difficult) book.

Worth a look-see.

>>>GIT AH BUK HEAR<<<