Emily Perkins’ new novel The Forrests made a more noticeable impression on me than any new book I’ve read in 20 years; in fact, by the end of it I was buzzing as though I’d taken a drug. I had to go back over the last 30 pages and immediately reread them because the effect was so powerful. An interview with Perkins has been on the cards (or the books) since The Good Word became required viewing for writers and book lovers, a show that will be sorely missed when the station is closed down in June (boo!). (Photo: Patricia Phelan)

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.

John Lydon couldn’t have become Johnny Rotten if Mervyn Peake hadn’t first created Steerpike, it doesn’t matter whether Lydon ever read Titus Groan. Peake troubled himself to describe the tics that not only make Gormenghast’s denizens come to life but also turn them into supernormal beings; his humour sparks life into them; he makes characters fascinating in the way anything that cannot be fully understood is fascinating. I can think of few other writers courageous enough to glance away from irresistible action to describe “rissoles” of fat on the kitchen floor, but it’s the complexity of Gormenghast that makes it so terrifyingly humdrum; so splendidly real. (Illustration: Mervyn Peake’s Steerpike in ‘Titus Groan’, or Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols?)

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.”

‘Requiem’, a poem by the late Kurt Vonnegut, from ‘A Man Without a Country’, 2005, read on KCRW Bookworm, Thursday 6 April 2006.

He’s been described as having “irrepressible humour, a stand-back imagination, a wondrous facility and control of the English language”. Paul Di Filippo is the author of hundreds of short stories — some of which have been anthologised in ‘The Steampunk Trilogy’, ‘Ribofunk’, ‘Fractal Paisleys’, ‘Lost Pages’, ‘Little Doors’, ‘Strange Trades’, ‘Babylon Sisters’ — and his novella, ‘A Year in the Linear City’.

David Mitchell’s first novel, ‘Ghostwritten’, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for the best work of British literature written by an author under 35, and was shortlisted for the Guardian ‘First Book Award’. His subsequent novels, ‘number9dream’ (“Blade Runner meets Jack Kerouac”) and ‘Cloud Atlas’ (“like Russian dolls”), were each shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. In 2003 he was selected as one of the literary magazine Granta’s ‘Best of Young British Novelists’.

Along with William Gibson, Wired magazine and bloggers everywhere, Douglas Rushkoff has helped shape cyberspace into something more tangible than a mere buzz word. Of his novel ‘The Ecstasy Club’, Gibson, the original cyberpunk, said, “A darkly comic contemporary fable: a brave, very funny, very knowing trip through the neo-psychedelic substrate of the wired world.”