Backlisted - Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban

Episode Date: August 5, 2019

Russell Hoban's extraordinary novel Riddley Walker (1980) is the subject of this episode recorded live at the Port Eliot Festival in Cornwall on Friday July 26th 2019. Joining John and Andy to discuss the book are Max Porter, author of Grief is the Thing With Feathers and Lanny, and New York Times best-selling sci-fi novelist Una McCormack. (Apologies for the sound on this episode, which is muffled at points, we had a few live recording hiccups. And read the book!)* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm*If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance. Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books. You find us once again in the sunny, well it wasn't sunny last year, but you find us once again at the Port Elliot Festival. Or should I say, lay off your gruelling and smiling, you be at the good show. Pot tell you it. And this be the watcher. For the governor's symposium, call it Backway Backlisted.

I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound, the website where readers crowdfund the books they really want to read. And I'm Andy Mirra, I'm the author of the Year of Reading Dangerously, and joining us today we have Max Porter. Max is a writer, editor and former bookseller, whose first novel, Grief is the Thing with Feathers, was a bestseller and winner of several prizes. It has been translated into 27 languages. 29? Oh, wow. Sorry, Max. His new novel, Lanny, has just appeared on the long list

for this year's Booker Prize. Woo! Max is a novelist and poet with interests in language and landscape, and that's related to the book that we're going to talk about today. We're also joined today by Una McCormack. Una is a New York Times best-selling author of more than a dozen science fiction novels. She also teaches and mentors writing students and has been a judge for the Arthur C. Clarke Award,

and her specialism is science fiction and that's why we've asked her to join us today to talk about this particular book and we should also say that Max and Una are both returning guests to Backlisted. Max joined us to talk about the novelist Joyce Carey and Una has been on a few times to talk about variously Anita Bruckner, Georgette Heyer and J.R.R. Tolkien. And if that's not range, I don't know what is. So the book we're here to discuss is Ridley Walker by Russell Hoban, first published by Jonathan Cape in the UK in 1980.

A book that Anthony Burgess said, this is what literature is meant to be. The American critic Hugh Kenner said, a book where at first sight, all the words are wrong and at second sight, not a sentence is to to be. The American critic Hugh Kenner said, a book where at first sight all the words are wrong and at second sight not a sentence is to be missed. It failed to get onto the long list or the short list of the Booker Prize, but it did get included in Harold Bloom's The Western Canon of the Greatest Works of Literature in English. I should ask you, the audience here at Port Elliot, how many people here have read Ridley Walker by Russell Hoban? Absolutely everyone. That is amazing. Yeah.

But for the few lightweights who haven't tried it yet, it's quite a difficult, challenging book. John introduced us... I think they should keep their hands up, actually, so we know who to direct our thoughts yeah. We'll aim like pure... Not you, madam! But the experience of Ridley Walker, as John suggests, it's written in its own particular language.

So it's quite a challenging book. And so my first question to you, Max, is when did you first encounter Ridley Walker and what did you think of it the first time you read it? I read it in my early 20s, I think, and I had heard about it. You know, you hear tell of it, don't you, I think, before you read it. You know, like a prophecy. And weirdly, I read it at the same time as I read my other favourite book. It's silly to talk about favourite books, but two of my very favorite books is Ridley Walker and In Parenthesis by David Jones. And I read them around about the same time and they have a lot in common and they're both

hard work, deemed to be hard work for different reasons. And they're not hard work once you crack them, they both reward, they both teach you how to read them. So my earliest memory of reading Ridley was to phone my brother up who had had read it, I think, at that time, and say, do you get used to it? Does it get easier as you go along? And he said, by page 14, was what he said. You won't think about the dialect anymore. You'll be in that world. I think it's about page 24 for me, because I'm a bit slow. That's about that long before you're absolutely sucked into its linguistic world and you no longer see it as a challenge it's taught you. It's a bit like that.

Very appropriate. That was actually from the back of my throat. Projecting. A short reading. They said in the New York Times, those quotes that John was just reading, they said in the New York Times, John Lennon said, this book is delicious and is designed to prevent the modern reader from becoming stupid.

Pretty harsh, tough love from us to you. Una, we're going to talk about the different ways this book, this novel, could be defined. Let me ask you, do you see this as a science fiction novel? Well, I do. I think people didn't at the time. I think when science fiction readers sort of coming to a kind of pulling away from the language, science fiction readers, of course, or fantasy readers as well, are used to kind of having to interpret bits of Elvish and all sorts of nonsense. Usually what we do is skip those bits. You can't do that with Ridley Walker. You've got to stick there.

You've got to follow the words. Let him take you into this world. It did okay in Science Fiction Prize. I think it picked up a Nebula nomination. It won a Campbell Award. But on the whole, people were a bit snooty about it in the science fiction world. They kind of went, oh, the world building's not this,

the world building's not that. I think why I would call it science fiction, it's a post-Holocaust novel. It's a quest for lost knowledge. People are pursuing information, bits and blips. They're trying to find out something about the world. And they are in a sort of haphazard way constructing the scientific method. That's why it's science fiction for me. And it's been massively influential. You see it on Chris Beckett's books, you see it in Cloud Atlas. Absolutely a science fiction novel for me. Max, what is the, Una was talking about the influence of the book there. Where do you see Hoban's language in Ridley Walker manifesting itself in other places? Oh, well, there are loads, aren't there,

of people that have tried to write novels in invented dialects. Yeah, Ridley Speak. Yeah. In Banks' Fearsome Engine. Yeah. Owes it a debt. There's a section in Cloud Atlas. Yeah, there's that.

And Will Self did the Book of Dave, which is written in a... There's various things, aren't there? Paul Kingsnorth's The Wake. Paul Kingsn North, yeah. Very much. That sort of constructed language. Well, to just give you a true picture, I think everyone's going to try and read a little bit for you, but we thought we'd start with, this is a recording from 1990. We've got a few clips of Russell Hoban talking about the book and reading from the book. And here is

a clip of Russell Hoban reading the opening of Ridley Walker. And this will give you a fair idea of what's going on, I think. And then we'll tell you a bit about what the book is about. On my naming day, when I come 12, I gone front spear and killed a wild boar. He probably been the last wild pig on the bundle downs. Anyhow, there hadn't been none for a long time before him, nor I ain't looking to see none again. He didn't make the ground shake nor nothing like that when he come on to my spear. He weren't all that big, plus he look it poorly. He done the required. He turned and stood and clattered his teeth and made his rush, and there we were then him on one end of the spear kicking his life out and me on

the other end watching him die I said you return now my turn later the other Spears gone in then and he were dead and the steam coming up off him in the rain and we all yelled offer the whole thing felt just that little bit stupid us running that bore through that last little scrump of woodling with the forms all round cows mooing sheep buying cocks crowing and us foraging our last bore in a thin gray gurgle on the day I come a man the burnt arse pack been following just out of bow shot when the shout gone up their ears all pricked up. Their leader, he were a big black and red spotted dog.

He come forward a little, like he'd been going to make a speech or something, to one or two blokes up at bow. Then he slumped back again and kept his farness following us back. I took notice of that leader, though. He weren't close enough for me to see his eyes, but I thought his eye bent on me. Great. Oh, it's incredible. It sounds more hillbilly than I was expecting it with him reading it. I said your turn now, my turn later. Yeah. Right. So who wants to have a stab at describing the plot of Ridley Walker? It's a quest. It's a...

That hard? That answer could take us the next four weeks, or else you say, yeah, it's a quest story. It's people hunting for stuff, isn't it? Across a blasted landscape of misery, nasty dogs... Two and a half thousand years. God, I think I've read the wrong book. I'm so sorry, I've come to the wrong thing.

No, go on, go on. No, that is it, that is wrong book. I'm so sorry. I've come to the wrong thing. No, go on. That is it. Paul Mac McCarthy, The Road is next door. Two and a half thousand years in the future. So it's like a sort of new post-technological stone age. So what's happening is there has been a hunter-gatherer society and that's breaking down as people are beginning now to farm and to gather together into communities that I

think are all behind fences. They're all fenced off because the dogs have gone feral. And if you're out, unless you're dog-friendly, if you're dog-friendly, which is a sort of a bit of a gift, you can get along with the dogs. If not, they rip out your throat and your genitals. Your cocks and your balls. Your cocks and your balls. So it's a fearful, difficult, dark, a lot of rain in the book. And Ridley, should we tell them what Ridley is? Ridley's a connection man and his dad was a connection man and his dad dies early on in the book. Get trapped underneath this huge piece of iron. They mine for iron, salvage iron, old bits of the industrial world. And his dad dies with really...

Ridley's just like... Fuck it. Unfluttered by that. How old is Ridley? This is an interesting question. He starts with his naming day when he's 12. The fact that Ridley's 12 is just an astonishing thing to consider when you've read this whole book.

Anyway, so Ridley then jumps over the fence in one of the most moving passages of the book and goes off. Do we really want spoilers, do we? But that's the basics. We should also say it's set in Kent or what was left of Kent. Yeah.

Yeah, well, I live in Kent. The book is set in dystopian Kent, or as I call it, Kent. And there's a little map here at the beginning of the book. And Hoban has renamed the towns of North East Kent and Fannet. So Whitstable has become Widder's Bell. Herne Bay has become Horny Boy. Ramsgate has become The Ram. What's Ashford become, appropriately enough?

Burnt Arse. Burnt Arse, that's right. Which one is Bollockstones? I don't know. Do you know what? I don't know. Do it over, isn't it? Yeah, yeah.

And Canterbury is Canbury. Now, how long did it take Russell Hoban to write this book? Well, he started. Colin Midson, who used to do publicity. I think it was longer than four years, Colin, because he had the idea in 74 and he published in 1980. And he was just banging out tea and jam with Francis in the gap while he was doing it.

It started out as a 500-page manuscript and he felt that he hadn't captured... And he wrote it originally in modern English, I think. Yeah, yeah, it's quite straightforward, isn't it? And he whittles it down and whittles it down. And then he kind of whittles it down and whittles it down and whittles it down. I think it's important to say also that there's a the background it's a it's a book about it's a philosophical book as well about what it means to to to know anything to understand anything and the religion is a religion called Eusa that has grown up

that is based on this legend of St Eustace, which is there is a wall painting in Canterbury Cathedral. I saw it last week. I went into Canterbury Cathedral just to go and look at it. On your own some? On my own some, yeah. And it takes up nearly a whole wall in the North Coral nave of Canterbury Cathedral. And in fact, we have, I hope, we have a clip here of Russell Hoban talking about

the process of writing Ridley Walker and where it came from. and where it came from. This is dated 14th of May, 1974, which is when I first had a go at a first chapter of what became Ridley Walker. It took me five and a half years to get it done, and the five and a half years were mainly spent in getting rid of what didn't belong there, because after the first two years, I had 500 pages, and they weren't it.

So I discarded them. And when, I mean, the 500 pages were not just written straight ahead. I'd get to page 37, go back to page 1, get to page 43, go back to page 15, so forth and so on, back and forth. After five years, I discarded the 500 pages., yeah it was 500 pages, and started again. And this time I realized that what it wanted to be was pretty spare and pretty bare and not too many people, not covering not too much ground, but doing it in a concentrated way. Una, you were saying to me earlier that you would love to have written this book. What is it about the way he has honed it and sanded it? What he's done there is what any

really, really good writer does, which is that he has consistently imagined this world. Now, it's okay if you're writing about a hamsteread dinner party, kind of get in on a, you know, a running start. But he's gone, no, I'm just going to invent a kind of futuristic Iron Age civilization that talks in a rubbed down English. And then they're about to go on this sort of journey to discover new technology. And that's going to take me a bit of time to fully imagine myself into that space. And that's why the draft gets more and more and more condensed. And at the same time, as well as doing all that, because, you know, you'd be happy just juggling those plates,

he goes, and I'm going to remix a load of mythology. I'm going to talk about the legend of St Eustace. I'm going to mix it up with images of the crucified Christ or the tree of knowledge or I don't know, whatever's there. I'm going to make some really bad puns along the way as well. And then just when you think it's incredibly bleak, I'll throw in a curveball so funny that you laugh about a man's head getting cut off, which is, he just keeps on delivering and delivering. And every moment that you spend with this book, it's a really hard read. I had this book on my shelf for about eight years. And every so often I kind of sidle up to it and go,

oh, I know, oh, I know. And when I finally took it off the shelf, I had about four days or something. I'm going to commit to this book. I'm going to read it at his pace. That Ridley sort of makes you go on that journey of, you learn the world as Ridley learns about the world. You become immersed.

It gets easier and easier to read. You fall into the language, like you would do with a potluck orange or something. And at the other end, you fall into the language like you would do with a potluck orange or something and at the other end you're going if I could write something a quarter that good I'd be happy not to write anything else in my life. It's just a major piece of post-war writing. I agree and Max you were saying you read it again last week right and how did you find it coming back to it right now? Well, I mean, it's prophetic. And it's the same age as me. And if you think about, you know, for those of us that are worried about nuclear apocalypses any day of the week,

it's amazing to see how fresh his anxiety is then, but also how funny it is and how robust and sort of fluid he is with the mixing of iconographical oddities, as you were saying, you know, the mixing of the green man with the Christian stuff. Yeah. I mean, to read it now, I mean, post-internet, I mean, it's an Anthropocene fable. It's about the lies we're telling each other.

Yeah, exactly. And whether we bother to tell each other the truth. Yeah. How we play with the words. There's a character in it who's like the boss man. And he goes around, he's called the, because the language has got rubbed down, he's called the pry mincer. Okay, all right. And you go, all right, well, it's a rubbed down prime minister, obviously, but pry, looking at something, he's mincing around all importantly. He's, you know, biting and nibbling and picking away at things. Down at every single little word, he's playing something and he's leaving the meaning just that tiny bit open for you to go,

what am I taking from this? What's this book conveying to me? It's an anti-propaganda book. The book is all the time about trying to get things right. Every time he thinks he's got the meaning of the use of story. So as well as the Yusa story, which is communicated to people through a puppet show, which is a kind of a...

It's sort of, you know, a reinforcement of the myth, but it's the mincery, the government, that are sort of sponsoring this show. And as part of the discovery, as a connection man, Ridley uncovers or is shown for the first time a Punch and Judy show, which is anybody who's ever been to a Punch and Judy show and has been unnerved and slightly terrified. I remember they tried to ban them recently

as being deeply politically incorrect, which they joyfully are. They're incorrect on every level. But this is the great, if you ever wanted to say, God, there's something really interesting going on in a Punch and Judy show, I don't quite know what it is. This book is the book that makes you feel that you're right. There is something really going on. And hey, guess what? You don't really know what it is, because that's Ridley's sort of task. I think that's what you've got to a really key thing about the book,

which is that you don't know what is going on. And any attempt to fully interpret Ridley Walker is a fool's errand. And I don't believe Russell... I mean, he wrote about it a bit. I don't think he ever wanted it fully worked out, the ideological architecture, but the meaning. Things don't have meaning. Meaning is slippery, as in real life.

Because it's an anti-ideology book. Exactly, yeah. If there's a heroism in the book, it's actually of the kind of bringing down of any hierarchy between good or bad, or any binary between good or evil. The point is, we are all in the shit together, and stories are our way of both inflicting harm on one another, and also of falling in love. And friendship, these odd friendships bubble up. So the whole point of not knowing what's going on and the fact that the language constantly gives you permission to not quite know what's going on

and then it's up like a kind of air in the sail. Suddenly you absolutely know what's going on and it's conventional stuff from stories like heroism or bravery or love. And that's why I wrote to you last week to say it made me cry this time. What it means to be powerful. What it means to give up power. I think it's a... And to be young.

And it's like the spirit of the child. And he says, you know, the sacred heart of the wood and the child. And you realize that there's a reason why some of these myths are generative, which is because they contain love. And some of them are tyrannical because they contain control. Why do people throw away happiness just for pain or stuff? It's so fresh. It's got everything in it, guys.

I was thinking about what you were saying, Max. I mean, I think one of the things that Ridley Walker is about, if it is about anything, and it's a book about power. Yeah. It's power. We could have both senses. Nuclear power, the power of the individual, the power of nature, the balance between those powers, what one should do with power.

And I found a little essay by Dr Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, who's a huge fan of Canterbury. He also appears in the book. Who's a huge fan of Russell Hoban and of Ridley Walker. And this is something that he wrote about Ridley Walker. And I ask you both to comment on this. Human beings still have the ability to put themselves right with the power that lies around them.

Such ability depends on their readiness to loosen their grip on the world that is crushed and torn by the force of their holding. Only in doing so can they achieve a fusion of natural and human energy and a beauty that is so intensely harmonious that it hurts. It is anything but a passive response to the world. It requires our own focused attention, listening for the flow of life to discover an energy that pulls together and not apart. This is what human power is when put right, an alignment with nature that rather than being destructive, leaves behind the violent battles for control and domination. Yes, doctor. Right. Honestly, I mean, love Rowan

Williams. In the week we got the new prime minister, we didn't ask for. Yeah. You know, and on the hottest day on record, when power is out of alignment, that seems to me a very good interpretation. But you can see why it all got a bit tangled up in David Jones and ecstatic Catholicism and all this. Like, that's the Dostoevsky-Ridley-Walker crossover.

But for me, that's why I would always define, I'm very happy with science fiction, I'm very happy with literature, experimental, it's bloody blah, all novels are experiments, it's all by the by. But I always thought of Ridley as a children's book for that exact reason. As a children's book?

Yeah. Partly because I read... In the way that Alan Garner gets the same thing, I think you would... Well, it the coming coming of age of a young man and it's the coming it's a portrait of an artist as a young man and coming to terms with the responsibility of being human and and and the ecstatic the sort of jouissance of language and and the sort of recognition of death you know like the death instinct erupting in a person is what all his children's books are about in a way, you know, as well. And he's a young man who's offered various

types of power. He's sort of, you know, the prime answer says, well, come with me. And other people say, well, come with me. And others say, come with me. And what Ridley finds is, well, there's this line, the only power is no power. But he goes beyond that and goes, well, my power actually is in creating art art in saying no in speaking truth to power and that's where ridley kind of discovers himself and we're set up in the first paragraph aren't we the kind of heroic moments of your first kill ridley goes whole thing felt a bit stupid really you know yeah ridley's always pushing on he is also grace and unforgiveness i like the fact that he,

what you consider to be major betrayals, for example, Good Polly being a sort of bad, you think, oh, Ridley's done for now. You know, 20 pages later, Ridley recognizes that person's faults and is able to process them in a highly sophisticated forgiveness machine, which is probably the most radical philosophy available to human beings, really, is the power, the ability to forgive and what that might mean. I think it's so good that you read Rowan Williams because, as you said, it's a major philosophical work, isn't it, Ridley Walker? And it doesn't settle in any way. Its philosophy is fluid.

And it doesn't flinch. It doesn't come down clearly. I mean, in a way, it's beautiful what Rowan Williams said, but he's almost saying the genius of the novel is it doesn't come down clearly. I mean, in a way, it's beautiful what Rowan Williams said, but the genius, he's almost saying the genius of the novel is it doesn't give you even that degree of easy resolution. And the ending of the novel, which is an incredibly powerful ending, I think, of them setting off on a new journey

with a ragtag of people joining his new show. His band of players sort of go off. It's positive and affirmingming but it's also you know they're surrounded by they're surrounded by threats but for us now as well like it carries the hurt there's something very um aboriginal in that like they go back into the dream time stained by the trauma of the violence that humans have done to one another and that the nuclear and the holocaust done and that and the dogs up and walking you know it's really visionary that that movement past pain. In case this seems scary it's also extremely funny. Really funny. Here's a little bit just gives you a bit of that sense of how he manages

to get to big issues in a way that that would I think defeat anyone who was trying to write this in kind of in a different way the prose is the point he's snuggled up in a sleeping bag with um with Lorna she were the oldest in our crowd but her voice weren't old it made the rest of her seem young for a little it were cold night but we were warm in that dust bag listening to the dogs howling afterwards and the wind, yeah, he's, what did he do? He's been, he freshened the luck up there with old Lorna as a 12-year-old. So yeah, R18 certificate already. Listening to the dogs howling afterwards and the wind weathering and wearying and nattering in the oak leaves, looking at the moon or coal and white and onsen, Lorna said to me, you know, Ridley, there's something in us that don't have no name.

I said, what thing is that? She said, it's some kind of thing. It ain't us, but yet it's in us. It looking out through our eye holes. Maybe you don't take no notice of it, only sometimes. So you get woke up sudden in the middle of the night. One minute you're asleep and next you're on your feet with a spear in your hand. Well, it weren't you get woke up sudden in the middle of the night. One minute you're asleep and next you're on your feet with a spear in your hand. Well, it weren't you that put that spear in

your hand. It weren't that other thing what's looking out through your eye holes. It ain't you, nor it don't even know your name. It's in us, lawn and loan and sheltering how it can. I said, if it's in every one of us, there's more than one of it, there's got to be a million, there's got to be a million and more. Lorna said, well, there is a million and more. And I said, well, if there's such a million of it, why is it lawn then? Why is it loan? She said, because the million and the million, it's all one thing. It don't have nothing together with. You look at lichens on a stone. It's all them tiny minions of it. And maybe each part of it might think it's separate. Only we can see it's all one thing. That's how it is with what we are. It's all one great big thing

and divvied up amongst the many. It's all one great big thing, bigger than all the world, divide up amongst the many. It's all one big thing, bigger nor the world, and lawn and loan and unsome. Tremor in it is and fear it. It puts us on like we put on our clothes. Sometimes we don't fit. Sometimes it can't find the armholes and it tears us apart. I don't think I took all that much notice of it when I was young. Now I'm old, I notice it more. I don't really like to put me on no more. Every morning I can feel how it's tired were young. Now I'm old, I notice it more. I don't really like to put me on no more. Every morning I can feel how it's tired of me and readying to throw me away. I'll tell you something, Ridley, and keep this in memberment. Whatever it is, we don't come natural to it. Brilliant. I think we'll have a round of applause for that.

Yeah, well done. Brilliant. I think we'll have a round of applause for that. Yeah, well done. So this is a little bit... As I said, it's on one level, it's the origins of religion. You know, it's kind of Golden Bough, James Fraser. Another, it's also Jung's collective unconscious. And yet you can get that kind of the brilliance of Hogan as he manages to get all of

those, all of that resonance into something that is also quite a funny back and forth dialogue. I says, you says, she says. Yeah. Here's a clip of Russell Hoban talking about his creative method. What I do doesn't come through rational thinking. It doesn't come through organization of structures. rational thinking. It doesn't come through organization of structures. It's a repetitive opening of the self to what will come in and an encouragement to whatever is out there to elicit any kind of a response that will get me going or keep me going if I'm started. Well, I can't say what's right for other people, but for me that's a practical way in art, is to try continually to be more and more responsive to what there is. That's why, especially like the small hours of the night, like 3 o'clock in the morning when the bricks of the self move aside and things can come in through the chinks.

Questions? He just says questions at the end. He's delivered that amazing definition of remaining open to creativity. 3am in the morning, the moment where the light comes through the chinks, when the light, when you begin to get something. It's like Seamus Heaney's idea of the raid on the inarticulate, that that's what you're doing at 3am is gathering enough booty from your raid so that when you next go back to the page, you've got so much to hit the inarticulate with. And Hoban, one of the things I found really interesting I didn't know about Ridley Walker is that that idea of Russell Hoban remaining open to whatever influences sparked his imagination.

So he's 49 years old and he's invited to speak at the teacher training college in Canterbury. And he comes and does an event and three people come to it. This is 1974. And the person who's invited him takes him the next day to Canterbury Cathedral. And they look at the painting of St Eustace on the wall. And Hoban says this incredible thing. He said, I looked at the painting of St Eustace and I'd just done this event three people had come I was going through a midlife crisis my wife and my children were on the other side of the world and I was all alone

and then Ridley came in yeah that the book is actually, we've talked about it in intellectual terms, it also has that almost visceral, this thing must be channeled through me so I can get it out because it's coming from the brain and the heart and the... It's one of the great, I think, one of the great stories like Beckett on the end of the pier in Dun Laoghaire and coming back and having written all these novels that nobody's interested in and coming back and he basically writes Waiting for Godot and all the great plays at the end of it. Russell Urban's also a total badass about his own talent. Have you seen the video where someone says,

how could you possibly have written a book as complex as Ridley Walker while you're always doing this? And he goes, they call it talent. Now, here are our sponsors telling you what to do. Can I quickly tell my meeting Russell Hoban story? No. Yes. Well, I was working in a bookshop and the phone rang and this guy said,

this is an extremely strange request, but I'd like an English dictionary, just a very huge English dictionary, the biggest English dictionary you have. My name's Russ Hoban. Could you cycle it round to me? And I was like... So I said, I mean, obviously it could only have been Russell Hoban, but I was like, do you mean Russell Hoban? And he went, yeah, come on over.

So I just cycled down with this English dictionary and he was in there and he was surrounded by costume jewellery. Little tiny druggie bags, you know, plastic bags of cabochon and like costume. He did car boot sales, you know, he loved it. And we talked about how he used to live with Maurice Sendak and had a bit of a falling out with Maurice Sendak. He invited me back to sign my copy of Ridley. It was a bit smelly in his kitchen. That's it, that's the end of the story. And then he died.

I am absolutely there for the sitcom of Russell Hoban and Maurice Sendak in a flat together. Rachel, my wife, I know Colin did publicity, but Rachel also did publicity when she was at Cape for him. And she loved him. He wrote Ridley Walker, which did do very well, and he became briefly famous. But then he wrote Pilgrim Man, which is brilliant,

but it's totally different, even though I think everybody was expecting something similar. But he never really, I think it would be fair to say, he never really achieved the level of fame. And he once said to Rachel, she was sitting in his office at his study at home, which his thought was, as you say, a cave, Mr. Punch sitting on one shelf and the lion from the Lion of Juckinbars. And then there was also the mouse, the little clockwork mouse, the mouse and his child. I mean, he'd been a children's, known as a children's writer until, really, until Ridley Walker started. But he said, yeah, the thing is, Rachel, he said, my readers, they tend to trade and use paperbacks. And I remember she telling me that story, and I had literally been on holiday,

where the five of us who'd been in one house in Italy had all passed the Picador copy of Turtle Diary to one another. But he's that kind of writer. And he was quite pissed off about the fact that he wasn't. And he was pissed off that everybody wanted to talk to him about Ridley Walker all the time because he was one of those artists who couldn't do the same thing twice.

And I haven't read all of his books but no no Ridley Walker probably is the one that will last. Una do you want to give us a bit because you want to set this up for us. Sure absolutely I love that he was coming for a dictionary because he famously said that he couldn't spell after writing. Yeah he just can't you know that was it so this little is set, Ridley's kind of been questing through the Badlands, through the wasteland, and he ends up in the ruins of Canterbury Cathedral. And he goes down into the crypt

and has this moment of revelation. I don't know who's been to the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral. It's these sort of stone trees. The pillars sort of come up like this, and they're carved like trees, and they come over a sort of stone canopy. So he comes down into the crypt, and this is what he finds there. I don't have nothing, only words to put down on paper.

It's so hard. Sometimes there's more in the empty paper than there is when you get the writing down on it. You try to word the big things, they turn their backs on you. Yet you'll see standing stones, and their backs will talk to you. The living stone will always have the living wood in it, I know that, with the heart of the child in it, which that heart of the child is in that same and very thing, what lives inside us and a fear to being birthed.

The wood became stone in the womb of her, what has her womb in Cambry. That place under the ground where I were, it were a wood of stone. It was stone trees growing under the ground. Probably that stone being cut and carved by them has made them giant music pipes I've never seen. Round trunks of stone and each one had four stone branches curving up and over, north and east, south and west. All them curving branches, they connect it, one tree to another. Stone branches holding up the overhead and groats into it. Stone branches under a stone sky. A stone wood under the ground, the heart of the wood in the heart of the stone, in the womb of her, what has her womb in Cambry.

I fell down on my knees then. I couldn't stand up. I couldn't lift up my head. The one big one, the master changes. It were all around me. Wood into stone and stone into wood. Now it's show it one way, now another. The stone stands. The stone moves. In the standing and the moving is the tree. Pick the apple off it. Hang the man on it. Out of the holler of it comes the burning child. the man on it. Out of the holler of it comes the burning child. Under the stone, see the bird bone, thin as grass, becoming grass. I opened my mouth and mummering, only didn't have no words to mummer, just letting my throat make a sound. Because it came to me, what it were, we'd lost. It came to me, what it were, has made them people, time back, way back, better than us. It were knowing how to put their selves with the power of the wood become stone. The wood in the stone and the stone in the wood, the idea in the heart of everything. If you could even just only put yourself right with one

stone, that's what kept saying itself in my head. If you could even just only put yourself right with one stone, you'd be moving with the great dance of the everything, the one big one, the master changes. Then you might have the rest of it and not the boats in the air or whatever. Whatever you've done would be right. Them as made Canterbury must have put themselves right. Only it didn't stay right, did it? Some as in between them, stone trees and the power ring, they must have put themselves right. Only it didn't stay right, did it? Summers in between them stone trees and the power ring, they must have put themselves wrong. Well, now we didn't have one or the other. Them stone trees were standing in the dead town,

only we'd lost the knowing of how to put ourselves with the power of the wood, the power in the stone, plus we'd lost the knowing what would wish the power around the power ring. Maybe all there ever been were just only one minim when anything ever could be right. And that minim always gone before you seen it. Maybe soon that one stone tree stood up, the wrongness hung there in the branches of it. The wrongness being the first fruits of the tree.

Whoa. the first fruits of the tree. Whoa! I've just got to say, I found that incredibly moving. I found that really moving. Did anyone else feel the same way? I've got the hairs on my arms. Me too, actually. Because I can remember reading that for the first time and not understanding it.

And I read it again last week and I was a bit more on it. And then hearing Una read it then for the third time, I was going, oh, my God, of course, this is what this is about. But also, can you feel the texture of it and the rhythm of it, how it plays like a long solo in a piece of music. It's just incredible, right, Max? The kind of the poetic flow of it. It's like the novel is all flow. It is a prose poem. And the fact that it has these dips and these troughs and these sudden acceleration moments is very musical. But to hear it read so beautifully as well, you're almost translating it as you read,

as a musician might interpret a score very differently on a different instrument. That was gorgeous. The language is interesting. I think there are two things. One is it gets into your... I said this before, I think, on the podcast, that this book gets into your DNA like very few books do.

Once you've read Ridley Walker, it's kind of in there. And you can't not, you don't forget it in a way that so much... You might even grow around it. Yeah, yeah. The other thing is he says, which is brilliant, he says it forces the reader to read it at the speed of Ridley's thoughts. Yeah. And that's, I mean, it looks like a slim volume, right?

That is not a quick book to read. You cannot skim read. That's like The Inheritors by William Golding, isn't it? It is. There's a kind of deliberate holding the reader up to make them decode as they read. This is Ridley's attempt to decode the word, the world around him.

You're in his thoughts all the way through it. Hoban's paying you the compliment that you will listen to every word that he's put there. And I think you have to pay him the compliment of taking your time. I think we're used to reading things quickly, aren't we? And scampering onto the next book. But slow it down with Ridley

and let Ridley talk you through this story. So here's a clip of Russell Hoban talking about his influences, and they might not be the influences you expect. Nobody has influenced me stylistically. Authors have exerted an influence over me to bear in mind certain standards of writing so that Dickens has fostered in me a recognition of a certain kind of energy in writing that is a good thing to aim for. I never tried to write in

Dickens's style, but I try to get as much energy into my writing as possible. Conrad also, for the density and the wovenness of it, Conrad's writing is like muscle fibre almost. And it's very dense. And Conrad, with a system of baffles and screams, and screams, he keeps you from getting to the heart of the matter until he wants you to. He keeps you from getting to the heart of the matter

until he wants you to. And actually what you were saying, Max, about Hoban with this book is he wants to walk you to the heart of the matter until he wants you to. And actually what you were saying, Max, about Hoban with this book is he wants to walk you around the heart of the thing and then send you on your way. I think that's why it's really up there with Milton, Dickinson, Dante. I mean, it credits its reader with so much intelligence, which therefore makes it very unusual in the history of the novel, which is to belittle and patronise its readers.

You said it. There's your inspirational take-home quote, everyone. That's the pull. Well, you know, these days it would be like, dear reader, once upon a time people spoke a bit differently. Are you ready? Here's a lexicon to help you understand why people speak differently because there's been a nuclear attack.

Yeah. I give the first section of Ridley to my creative writing students. I give it completely cold. And I read it out to them and I say, OK, well, where do you think this is from? What accent is it? And some of them get to estuary, but they never get to post-apocalyptic chaos.

They never do. It's incredible, really, isn't it? The other nice thing about Ridley Walker, on Backlist, we always tell the truth. I was very stoned when I first read it. I did. And Ridley stops to smoke hash the whole way through it. They barter with hash and Rizzlers. And that does affect one's reading of it.

And if we're making recommendations. But it's interesting going back. I've read it probably every four or five years since I've grown, I've had kids, I've become someone really interested in professionally in writing and particularly in the, you know, where prose and poetry meet and things like that. All books change as you read them. And that's the point because we change when we go back to them. I mean, that's such a cliche, obviously. But something about the prose here, it's almost as if the book is enchanted. It literally changes. It's like a choose-your-own-adventure.

That scene you read there, when I got to that this time, I was like, I don't remember them linking up. I don't remember him having a kind of Christian epiphany. I don't remember him inventing the Bible in the middle of Ridley Fung in Walker. And he does. I've underlined all kinds of different passages 20 years ago. Yeah, she's underlined a whole book.

What I like is finding things I've underlined and gone, oh, that's little 25-year-old me. Yeah, yeah. Mind blown, you know. I notice more when I get old. Yeah. Do you want to, Max, do you want to? Have we got time?

Yeah, you're sober and straight. Read us a bit. Yeah. I've had nothing Read us a bit. Yeah. I've had nothing more than a bit of Cornish mineral water this morning. Well, this is the stone song which carries straight on from where Una read. He's in the... The womb. The womb.

And he says, I just had to sit down and write this, and he doesn't explain why. I mean, it is a shamanic thing, really, and it's this sort of oral tradition. It just erupts out of him, and he thinks, I must write this down, and this is and he doesn't explain why i mean it is a shamanic thing really and it's this sort of oral tradition it just erupts out of him and he thinks i must write this down and this is what he writes down i think i'll read it at the clip because i know we're probably running out of time it's very good stone stones won't be listened to then brick brown stones in the former's field don't stand up and talk like men sometimes you'll see him lying on the ground with their humps and

hollers they'll say to you sit a while and rest easy. Why don't you? Then when you're sitting on them, they'll talk and they'll tell if you listen. That's them what's in them and you won't hear nothing what they're saying. Won't you go as far as the stone? You might think a stone is slow. That's because you won't see it moving, won't see it walking around. I don't mean it's slow though. There are so many cools of Adam, which there are the party cools of stone moving in their millions, which is the great dance of everything. It's the face thing there is. It keeps the stillness going. The reason you won't see it move so far away into the stone, if you could fly way up like that satellite bird over the sea and you look it down, you wouldn't

see the waves moving. You'd see them change one way to another and you won't see them moving. You'd be too far away. You wouldn't see nothing, only a change in stillness. It's the same with a stone. There's a kind of stone, it's almost like a mudstone. It ain't hard. Sometimes you'll see one broke open, almost like it, and shape it with an axe. It looks like one cut, then another making a point like a short beak, owl beak, or hawk beak. Sometimes you see the eyeball done and the skin in the stone. When the stones ain't been axe-shaped, they've been broke themselves open. It's that bird head in the stone what peck at the stone apart.

Sometimes you'll see the two pieces still together, the bird head and the other together. They look like a broken heart. Come back another time, the bird head won't be there no more. No, it didn't grow a bird body onto itself and fly away. What it done, it grow it a man body onto itself and off it gone itself, walking itself away. Stone men grow out of the bird head in the stone one for every one of us. Where there are there upside down in the ground like you'll see a picture of yourself up down in the water, there's a stone self of yourself in the ground and walking foot to foot with you. You put your foot down, they'll put their foot up and touch yours,

walking with you every step of the way, yet you'll never see them. They'll stay on the ground as long as you're on top of it. Come your time to lie down forever, then the stone man comes to the top of the ground, they'll think they'll stand up then. They can't do it, though. Only a strength they've been when you've been aligned. They're lying on the ground trying to talk, only there's no sound. There's green vines and leaves growing out of their mouth. Them vines getting thicker and pulling the sides of the mouth

wide and the leaves getting bigger, curling around the head. Vines growing out of the mouth. Vines and leaves growing out of the nose holes in the eyes. Them breaking a stone man's face apart back into earth again. Them stones been trying to talk only they never will. They're just one of your earth stones. You are the walkers. Trying to be men only can't talk. They had earth for sky whilst you had air. It's just only stone men walking under the ground like that. Women have something else. Your other stones, your stone stones, not earth stones, they talk their own way, which is stone talk. They've been there whilst you've been walking. They'll be there when you lie down.

The heart of the wood is in the heart of the stone where the great dance is. That come to me in the user hall in Cambridge. Thank you. The bookshop has 50 copies of Ridley Walker in stock. Don't be lightweights. Don't leave here and not go and buy this book. You're challenged today.

You must go and buy this book. Max, that was amazing. Thank you very much. No worries. Trouble not. Trouble not. Do you want me to end it now? We've got to come to the end. So we want to... We've got five minutes. We've got five minutes.

Just for the humour value, I thought you were going to do the little bit about... They find an explanation of the painting of St Eustace in Canterbury. Oh, yeah. It's the real... But just to give a little bit of the humour of St Eustace in Canterbury. Oh, yeah. It's the real... But just to give a little bit of the humour of it, this is Good Polly. Do you want to read it, Andy? He's the prime mincer, Good Polly.

So Good Polly is the prime mincer, passed down from generation to generation, is a printout of the legend of St Eustace. So you've been reading all that really dense prose that we've been hearing, and suddenly the book goes, The Legend of St Eustace dates from the year AD 120 and this 15th century wall painting depicts with fidelity the several episodes in his life. The setting is a wooded landscape with many small hamlets, a variety of wild creatures are to be seen and a river meanders to the open sea.

Well, as soon as I began to read it, I had to say, I don't even know half these words. What's a legend? How do you say a governoress with a little T? Good Paul, he said, I can explain the most of it to you. Some parts is easier to work it out than others. There's bits that we'll never know for certain just what they mean. Some parts is easier to work it out than others. There's bits of it we'll never know for certain just what they mean. What this writing is, it's about some kind of picture or diagram,

which we don't have this picture, all we have is the writing. Probably this picture been some kind of secret thing, because there's here writing. I don't mean the writing you're holding in your hand. I mean the writing time way back when I wrote the same as. It's certainly secret. It's blipful. It ain't just only what it seems to be.

It's the sign and follower of something else. A legend. That's a picture of what depicted it, which is to say, pick it on a wall. It's done with some kind of paint. Call it fidelity. Stur, saint, is short for scent. Meaning this bloke used to say, he didn't just turn up, he was sent.

81, 20, that's the year. Couldn't they used to have it gone from year one the right way to bad time ad means all done 120 years all done they're saying that same way you've done this picture of 120 nor never got it finished till 1480 it says here well you know what there ain't no picture could take 13 60 years to do these were year numbers is about something else we may never know about. I said, what year is it now by that count? And he goes on to say, well, since we call it Stanton, it's come to 2347 OC, which means our count. I said, do you mean to tell me then before us, by the time they'd done 1997 years, they had boats in the air and all them things. And here we are, we've done 2347 years and more and still slogging in the mud.

He put his hand on my shoulder and he said, now you're talking just like me. I don't know how many times I've said that. Very good. Righty-ho, and blobs your nuncle. Yes, we're totally done. Show's over. Now everyone can do as they like. Governor, thank you to Max and uncle. Yes. We're totalling done. Show's over. Now everyone can do as they like.

Governor, thank you to Max and Una, to the whole Pot You Tell It team, and to our poo elite at the back, Nicky Birch,

for sweetening the sound. Andy. You can download all 98, 98 of our shows, plus follow links, clips and suggestions for further reading by visiting our website at batlisted.fm. We're always pleased if you contact us on Twitter, Facebook and Boundless.

Could we have a round of applause for these amazing guests? Matt Porter. Una McCormack. Can I plug the podcast? What. Can I plug the podcast? What? Can I plug the podcast? Yeah. I'm not into podcasts.

I don't really do podcasts. I don't know when people find the time to do them. But Backlisted is phenomenal. It is a treasure trove. And people always say, oh, you led me to this, you led me to this, you bankrupt me and everything. But also, you two are such good talkers about books. There's no preaching or ego

or no conventional ideas about hierarchy. You just love chatting about books. It's glorious. I would heartily recommend you all have a listen to it. It's the best book podcast in the world. Hey! You can choose to listen to Backlisted with or without adverts.

If you prefer to listen to it without adverts, you can join us on our Patreon, patreon.com forward slash backlisted, where you also get bonus content of two episodes of Locklisted, the podcast where we talk about the books and films and music that we've been listening to over the last couple of weeks.