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)…”

In a fourth dimension somewhere, on a windy day, Jackie Leven is carrying a rustling Somerfield carrier bag towards what appears to be the Fareham Burger Van. The man in the van, the Burger Man, seems to be Russell Hoban. Inexplicably, he is wearing a Sunderland team soccer jersey. He is holding a bottle of bright red, almost radioactive chilli sauce.

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.

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.

‘”…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

“Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

(Author: Michael Rad; image: Dean Stockwell, as Ben, in the David Lynch classic Blue Velvet)

A candy-coloured clown they call the sandman
Tiptoes to my room every night
Just to sprinkle stardust and to whisper,
“Go to sleep. Everything is all right.”
Roy Orbison, ‘In Dreams’

Steve Reich’s Music For 18 Musicians is a 33-year-old piece of music I discovered relatively recently that’s had probably the most direct influence on my writing – so much so that I wrote it into one of my later short stories as a character. Steve Reich is now 75; not that you’d guess from listening to this record. I can’t think of a more modern-sounding piece of music – it’s positively futuristic, which in itself is extraordinary, since he uses only orchestral instruments (cello, violin, clarinet, bass clarinet, pianos, marimbas, xylophones, unamplified vibraphone and women’s voices), no electronics, and only the musicians’ breath to create the effect of what could be mistaken for a sequencer.