RIDDLEY WALKER by Russell Hoban .... by Adèle Geras

Followers of this blog will know how fond I am of cathedrals. I've written about them often enough, but this post is about something else. It was sparked, however, by a visit to Canterbury Cathedral. This was my first visit. Below is a photo showing towers against the kind of sky that goes with towers very well: full of slightly forbidding clouds. No one who's been here, or who saw the television programme about life in the Cathedral, can be in any doubt about its beauty and majesty and importance as the diocesan church of the Archbishop of Canterbury.  The memorial to Thomas à Becket is here, too.

But what the Cathedral brought to my mind more than anything was a book I read when it first came out in 1980.  Thinking about it since my visit, it occurred to me that the afterlife of books was  a strange thing. When I look back on  my reading youth, there are many writers whose work I used to love and who have almost disappeared from the literary landscape, swept away by a rising tide of the new, the whizzy, the fashionable, the prizewinning and so on. I'm thinking of writers like Charles Morgan, Pamela Hansford Johnson, C.P. Snow, Mazo de la Roche, Elizabeth Goudge , and others. Publishers like Persephone Books have rescued and given a new life to writers we might easily have forgotten, like Dorothy Whipple, who 's a particular favourite of mine, and Elizabeth Jenkins and Molly Panter-Downes and we must all be very grateful to them, because many writers  are unread  when their time in the limelight is past.

Russell Hoban is not one of these. He's remembered in certain quarters. His children's books, many illustrated by Quentin Blake, are loved by many. He wrote a book called THE MOUSE AND HIS CHILD which I think is a classic, though I'm not sure how many people these days know it or read it. And his adult books seem not to be at the top of anyone's agenda any longer. If you said his name at a dinner party, how many of the guests would have heard of him? I am not at all sure.

Because all of us who write on this blog are novelists, I think it's salutary to remind ourselves that our books will soon 'be one with Nineveh and Tyre'. It's a sobering thought, and I don't want to depress either myself or my fellow History Girls, but I do feel that  most of what most of us write will be forgotten.

Still, there is the upside. Some of what we've written may float to the surface, so to speak, in the distant future. Some History Girls in the 23rd century may come across our books and bring them back to a kind of life. It's in this spirit that I am doing my bit to preserve this wonderful novel. I would like it to be remembered.

Bloomsbury are to be congratulated on keeping in print one of Hoban's most interesting books: RIDDLEY WALKER. This edition, from 2012, has a good introduction by Will Self and glancing through the many enthusiastic reviews on Amazon, I can see that it's mainly the science fiction fans and fantasy buffs who love it. I read it, as I say, long ago and in 1986, I saw a production of it at Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre with David Threlfall as Riddley which was completely brilliant. It seemed then  to be the kind of book which could never be adapted, but I suspect that nowadays, people are more likely to have seen RIDDLEY WALKER as a play. 

Back to Canterbury Cathedral. It was when I saw this painting of St Eustace (whose legend is a very strange tale indeed) that I was reminded of Hoban's amazing novel.

 This is  a detail of the painting above. I thought at once of RIDDLEY WALKER because the novel is deeply connected with the story of St Eustace.

 Here is a page from the book, taken at random. When I saw this weird hybrid language, my heart sank. I'd  known Hoban as the author of such novels as TURTLE DIARY and  KLEINZEIT. The latter was odd but marvellous and though it was surreal,  I managed to read it with no difficulty and loved it. It was written in English, which was a great plus as far as I was concerned. 

I must admit straight away that I am not a fantasy or science fiction fan. I do not like books about what happens after nuclear apocalypses. In general, I don't like books I have to decipher.  I opened RIDDLEY WALKER and almost closed it straight away. But I persisted because I was a Hoban fan and I felt that there must be something there. Plus, of course, it was being reviewed and fêted all over the place, back in the day and when I was young, I liked being up to speed with what was new.  I'm much less of a follower of fashion now that I'm older. So I deciphered the first page. Then I deciphered the second and on and on I went, drawn into Riddley's strange language, and his even stranger world. After a few pages, I was reading Riddley's tale with ease.

How to describe this book? How to persuade new readers to try it? It's a bit like THE ROAD, by Cormac McCarthy in that it's post -Apocalyptic. It's set in a world which is very different from ours but in which certain things from our world (Punch and Judy shows, most importantly) have acquired a significance we never gave them. It's set in what is recognisably Kent (there's even a map in the front of the novel) and the Cathedral and St Eustace and his legend are  of great importance. It's a book that's very hard to describe and it's not one that everyone will like, but it's full of humour and some of the sayings like "TRUBBA NOT" (don't worry) have become part of my personal vocabulary. I also like PRIME MINCER for Prime Minister. It's a book which a certain kind of teenager would adore, and did adore when it first appeared. I've written this post in order to draw some attention to it so that hopefully a whole new audience can share Riddley's adventures. And if anyone else out there is a fan, I'd be very happy to read your opinion of this dazzling novel in the comments.

Book launch hell by Tanya Landman

A few months ago I posted on Facebook:-

“I have never had a book launch but woke up vaguely toying with the idea of doing one for Hell and High Water. In my mind it's an elegant affair, on the deck of a ship perhaps, with me in black velvet, chilled champagne in one hand, having elegant, witty conversations with wise and charming people.
In reality 50 + years of life experience have taught me that:
a) I am rubbish at organising events
b) If I did organise one I would have MONTHS of sleepless nights beforehand.
c) Come the day I would be sick with nerves
d) No one would come
e) Except, possibly, the people I kind of wish I hadn't invited
f) I would have a monster hangover the following day (having drunk all the nauseatingly warm prosecco on my own) and wake up rueing the day I was born.
Help me, writerly people. What are your experiences of organising book launches????”

I was expecting a few replies along the lines of  ‘They’re more trouble than they’re worth. Don’t bother.”  Writers are usually full of dire tales of events that have gone disastrously wrong. But to my surprise I had a flood of responses encouraging me to go ahead and have one.  I was still undecided until Lynsey Southern – the extraordinarily wonderful librarian at Bideford College – said she’d organize it for me.

That was too good an offer to refuse.  To have a launch in Bideford – overlooking the river that features in the book – in the library of the school my sons go to and where I’ve just become Patron of Reading all seemed very fitting.

The deal was done. The date was set.

And as time went on it seemed that  Lynsey wasn’t organizing a launch, she was organising a major happening.

After she’d read a manuscript of Hell and High Water (for reasons that will be obvious to readers of the book) she declared, “We need a Punch and Judy man.”

Well that was easy enough – I’m married to Rod Burnett who performs all over the world with his Original Punch and Judy show.  But it didn’t stop there.  She arranged cakes from Donna Marie Kreations, books from the local independent Walter Henry’s, music from the supremely talented students, and even a writing competition with copies of Hell and High Water as prizes for the winners.

I didn’t have any sleepless nights and the librarians, teachers, booksellers, writers, readers, family and friends who have been so supportive over the years all came along to drink wine and eat cake.

It was a truly wonderful evening – better than I could ever have imagined.  An absolutely MASSIVE thank you to Lynsey Southern and the superb staff of Bideford College for making it all happen. Lynsey has confirmed what I already knew: Librarians are extraordinarily wonderful people.  Where would we be without them?

Meeting Mr. Punch, by Y S Lee

As one of the international History Girls, I didn't grow up with Punch and Judy. I knew vaguely who they were, and thought I understood what the show signified: children's street entertainment. What more was there to know?

But just a couple of weeks ago, while holidaying with extended family in Llandudno, I heard a raucous squawking voice that was louder even than the seagulls. I turned around and saw my first real Punch and Judy set-up!

Codman's Punch and Judy, using the original carved puppets from 1860

 My children (ages 7 and 4) immediately drifted over. While I was still reeling from the screeching voice – amplified by loudspeaker - and contemplating Mr. Punch's enormous nose, they settled in for the performance. (Children are such experts in the willing suspension of disbelief.) And while I was startled by the show's violence, the children screamed with laughter and were firmly on Mr. Punch's side. (I only fully relaxed when Jack Ketch, the hangman, appeared. I was on safer ground there, knowing Jack Ketch's reputation for "barbarous inefficiency".)

As my family watched the performance, a woman threaded her way through the crowds, shaking a bottle to collect donations - the main source of income for the show, although there were also souvenirs for sale. The woman turned out to be Jacqueline Codman, whose grandfather founded the Punch & Judy tradition in Llandudno.

There's a delightful story behind Professor Codman's proscenium and set of puppets:



In case you can't read the words in the photo, they say:

Codman's Punch & Judy started in Llandudno in 1860. Richard Codman, a travelling showman, was stranded in Llandudno after his horse died. He gathered driftwood from the beach and hand-carved the Punch & Judy puppets and the proscenium which you still see here today.

I love this kind of family legend, and reading it got me thinking specifically about the Victorian tradition of Punch & Judy. (Ann Swinfen has already blogged here about Punch's origin in commedia dell'arte, and I won’t re-tread that ground.) What I wanted to know was what happened to the character after Samuel Pepys saw "Polichinella" perform in the 1660s. What changed after he was anglicized as Mr. Punch? When did Judy join the show, and how did they migrate from theatres to the seaside?

Although the original Punch was a marionette (as opposed to a hand puppet), most of Punch’s other traits have remained consistent since the seventeenth century: the beaky nose and hunched back, his big stick (or batone, in Italian) – and, of course, that defining squawk. In the 1720s, Jonathan Swift mentions Punch’s “rusty voice” in a poem. Punch novices, like me, will be delighted to learn that the sound is produced by a “swazzle” held at the back of the puppet-master’s mouth. It’s used only for Punch’s voice, of course, which makes the performance of fast-talking multiple characters a miracle of timing and dexterity on the part of the puppeteer, or “Professor”.

In the eighteenth century, Punch acquired an overbearing wife named Dame Joan, who was renamed Judy some time before 1825. Their domestic strife was a central feature of the show – perhaps to give Punch yet another reason to exercise his batone? With Punch now transformed from exotic clown to embattled family man, it makes sense that towards the end of the eighteenth century, there was a dual shift: from marionette to hand puppet, and from formal theatrical settings to street-side performances. These changes are clearly linked. Marionettes are expensive and fragile; hand puppets less so. Marionettes tend to require at least one marionettist (puppeteer) per figure. Once you have sturdy puppets and only one performer, you can also transport a small stage, or booth, and take the show to the audience – or, at least, where you think the audience might be.

By 1828, there was enough interest in Punch & Judy to publish a script of the accepted play (although its accuracy has been challenged), with engraved illustrations by Cruikshank -- yes, the same George Cruikshank who illustrated many of Dickens’s novels. And setting Punch firmly in his new socio-economic context, Henry Mayhew interviewed a Punch & Judy man for his monumental series, London Labour and the London Poor.

Punch’s violently disruptive, anti-authoritarian stance also made him the perfect mascot for a publication that aimed to satirize English society. In 1841, Mayhew cofounded Punch magazine,  borrowing Punch’s energy, popularity, and street cred for his new publication. 

Mr. Punch and Jack Ketch, the hangman

With the expansion of the railways came the creation of seaside holiday resorts like Llandudno, Brighton, and Blackpool – and amongst the sea-bathing machines and donkey rides, there too was Mr. Punch. This brings us back to the Codman family history. Trapped in Llandudno with bills to pay, who better to come to a travelling showman’s rescue than the ever-popular Mr. Punch?

“That’s the way to do it!”, indeed.

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Y S Lee writes the award-winning Mary Quinn Mysteries (Walker Books/Candlewick Press). She blogs every Wednesday at www.yslee.com.