Riddley Walker
"The "straight passage" is a crucial moment, I believe. For those missing pieces here and there, it grounds the Eusa story in something concrete, and though we've known it all along, quite plainly puts forward the severity of the gap between our world and theirs. This moment both pulled me closer to Riddley's world in terms of pathos, and firmly planted me outside of that world. Without the magic of Riddley's language, the passage seemed almost naked to me, sad in its matter-of-factness. Oh, I thought, I'm one of them, and so far away."
Passages like this make the manifold idiocies of the Onion AV Club's discussion series on Riddley Walker much easier to bear. (No, fans have not come up with some inventive notions of where the book's places *might* go in modern England, you fool, those *are* the damn places, as Hoban makes entirely sodding clear). Still, there's enough insight to make the series worth keeping an eye on, and the idiocies have damn near stirred me into action on a long-threatened plan to scribble down some thoughts in this yere LJ...
Passages like this make the manifold idiocies of the Onion AV Club's discussion series on Riddley Walker much easier to bear. (No, fans have not come up with some inventive notions of where the book's places *might* go in modern England, you fool, those *are* the damn places, as Hoban makes entirely sodding clear). Still, there's enough insight to make the series worth keeping an eye on, and the idiocies have damn near stirred me into action on a long-threatened plan to scribble down some thoughts in this yere LJ...