This began as a post in praise of the Kindle as a reading device. For writers the Kindle is much more than that. KDP transforms the e-reader into a publishing platform, and the most powerful device a writer has at his or her disposal. But don’t be fooled into thinking you necessarily need professional help to format your e-book. While an editor is invariably beneficial, designers and other opportunists are trying to mystify e-book formatting and cover design for profit. The paybacks of the Kindle will be self-explanatory to anyone who’s held one for longer than a minute. Writers who own a Kindle that doesn’t contain their entire body of work are either slow or have never had cause to refer to their own writing. Being able to instantly search text strings while away from your desk, look up words in the dictionary, research online via a wireless connection, highlight sections earmarked for revision and tweet quotes are just some of the more obvious benefits.

This year is the 10th anniversary of SA4QE, the Slickman A4 Quotation Event, in which fans of Russell Hoban celebrate his 4 February birthday by placing quotes from his books in public places. Diana Slickman, its originator, proposed when SA4QE was established in 2002: “We each, on February 4, write our favorite passage, of any length, from any Russell Hoban book, on a piece of yellow paper and drop it somewhere public and then walk away, leaving chance to do the rest … I would recommend leaving it someplace rather than just dropping it on the ground … The paper should at least include the name of the book and Russell’s name … leaving chance to do the rest … let the mystery of things take it from there, let the paper find its way (or not) to some receptive (or not) person who would then go seek out the book (or not) and become another fan (or not)…”

The best sentence I know in the English language is from Page One of Russell Hoban‘s novel, Pilgermann (Jonathan Cape, 1983):

“Suddenly there came flying towards me with a mouse dangling from its beak an owl, what is called a veiled owl, with a limp mouse dangling from its cryptic heart-shaped face.”

Russell Hoban, chipping away at the limited reality consensus since 1925. For that I’ll love you always, Russ. What follows is the essay I wrote to commemorate his 80th birthday in 2005.

Photo of Russell Hoban at his lamplit binnacle by the wonderful Mr Dave Awl.

The writer Russell Hoban is in hospital having a pacemaker fitted. He’ll be 87 in February. Friends, acquaintance and visitors to this website know he’s frequently in my thoughts. I think about his health more often than I think about that of most members of my family. That’s what happens when you follow a writer for 30 years. They become part of your family, bigger than the books, as important as the language. Russ has in fact been in hospital for a couple of weeks after suffering heart failure. He’s been feeling much better in recent days, and I’m taking the fact that this operation is going ahead to be a positive sign. Russ took the trouble of phoning a member of The Kraken so his fans would know. It was suggested he take it easy, to which Russ – as always in Hobanseque character – replied, “I can’t take it hard.” Again, my thoughts are with him while I head for the bookshelf in search of comfort.

I have little religious knowledge but then, as the disembodied protagonist of this book says, “Theologians and fathers of the Church cannot confound me, they have no firmer ground on which to stand than I.” I know more about “quantum-jumping to the strange brilliance of total Now” because this book helped me to do it.

When I first read Russell Hoban’s Pilgermann in the early 1980s I still believed in a God who moved in strange ways, even if I was not egocentric enough to think He heeded prayers – an expanding Universe, meetings to convene and all that. I can no longer justify belief in a Supreme Being, but I do believe this book asks vital questions of those who still have faith; questions they neither often nor rigorously enough attempt to answer.

Georg Salter was born in 1897. His family emigrated to the US where he worked as a designer at a time when books mattered in a way they no longer do. About his design for Kay Boyle’s novel, Generation Without Farewell, Thomas S. Hansen writes in his book Classic Book Jackets: The Design Legacy of George Salter:

“Salter’s abstract design prevailed over the author’s own wish to present images of amputee soldiers against a background of mutilation … Salter instead chose a symbolic approach showing battered Venetian blinds to symbolize a state of despair about cultural dissolution in postwar Germany.”

Some of his designs prefigure the work of modern day design houses such as Tomato.

‘”…You’ve said that you want to avail yourself of the action of my mind for a work that you’ve had in your mind. Can you now tell me what this work is?”

“I want you to devise a pattern,” he said.

“What kind of a pattern?” I said.

“With tiles,” he said.

“A pattern with tiles,” I said. “For this have you come to the slave market in Tripoli to find yourself a castrated Jew.”‘

© RUSSELL HOBAN, Pilgermann (first edition, page 115), Jonathan Cape Ltd, 1983

“Thomas Wolfe was once his favorite author, though today he prefers Marcel Proust and André Gide, and in painting, his idols were Rembrandt, Daumier, and Goya, who would now be joined with Bonnard, Kokoschka and Vuillard,” American Artist magazine wrote in 1961 of Russell Hoban.

He is best known today for his novels – the blurbs of which hint that he “worked as a book illustrator before becoming a writer” – or for his children’s books. Few today would know that his art wasn’t just a temporary diversion, and yet his work included covers like this for Time magazine. His Joan Baez portrait took 16 days from commission to delivery, and he spent 10 or more of those working on the portrait, with at least one all-nighter required to finish the job. After all that, Baez hated it.

“I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, if we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Think of a time when you didn’t think you were capable of doing something, but then surprised yourself. How will you surprise yourself this week?

(Author: Ashley Ambirge)

Artwork: Frank James Harding Bell, aged three

Steven Pressfield says inspiration comes from the Muse. I no longer believe in angels or muses, but I do believe writers tap into the collective consciousness, and having now read Pressfield’s motivational books I’m willing to suspend my disbelief. I’m not the first writer to confirm his methods succeed – what we have in common is that we’ve sat down and are writing. It’s that simple, so far. As revered screenplay instructor Robert McKee says: “When inspiration touches talent, she gives birth to truth and beauty. And when Steven Pressfield was writing The War of Art, she had her hands all over him.”