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Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban Q1: Riddleyspeak
This novel is narrated by Riddley Walker (who is both Riddley and a Walker). He's writing to us from a far future, one seemingly without writing, or at least without writing conventions. He writes much like he talks, and that's with a Kentish dialect (as Neil shared elsewhere). His spelling is phoenetic, and he's not too enamored of commas.
How did you get on with it? Was it interesting? Was it Shakespearean?
Comments
I found the writing hard going. I normally don't sound out words when I'm reading (and therefore get bemused by people talking about "the rhythm of the writing", as I don't hear the words at all). But for this book, I had to slow down and essentially read aloud to myself. When I did that, the writing was normally clear, and even the worn-down nubs of words were clear in their derivation. I found the writing accessible but frustrating.
Another book with a similar approach to spelling is Feesum Endjin by Iain Banks, and I found that much more approachable than this book.
And is "Riddley" like "Ridley Scott", the film director; or "Riddle-y" as in "like a riddle"?
(I'm curious what our colonial cousins made of some of the phrases, like "Blob's yer nunkle", "doing a greevus", and "like a cock fessin takin off". That last one is a very familiar sound to me..)
I also found it quite difficult going. There were several things at play here - dialect, spelling, grammar, and punctuation. I had no issue with the dialect. We get enough British TV here that I'm used to it, and the place I grew up had a lot of English families, so I was exposed to many kinds of 'English' as a kid. Spelling was mostly ok, but I kept tripping up on the use of the numeral 1 in place of the word 'one' because it looks so much like the letter I. The biggest tripper for me was the lack of commas to separate ideas in the sentences. This made them seem to run on, and I frequently had to read them more than once to separate the ideas. At times, I got tired of doing that, and I just read on with an incomplete understanding of what had passed.
I knew the language would be challenging before we started, but I found it much more so than I had expected it would be. Thanks to everyone who stuck with it!
I took Riddley to be pronounced like Ridley, but to have the second meaning.
Most phrases were familiar to me (like Blob's yer nunkle), 'doing a greevus' is one I haven't heard, but is quite sensible. 'Like a cock fessin takin off' - I guess that's "Like a cock pheasant taking off" and a reference to either speed or a squabble of sound?
Yes, I got caught in the lack of commas too.
"Greevus" I took as coming from the offence of assault causing Grevious Bodily Harm (GBH), a particular charge in the UK, and more sever than Actual Bodily Harm (ABH). A cock pheasant's squawks on take-off sound similar to Punch's voice. (Is Punch and Judy in the Americas?)
Riddley - I took it to be a construction quite familiar in English... wavy = to do with waves, slimy = to do with slime, jokey = to do with jokes, riddley = to do with riddles. So like a lot of Russell Hoban's coined words, this one is taking a familiar pattern and applying it to a currently unused case.
The reading was slow and tortuous for me. I had to re-read and parse each sentence carefully several times, guessing at the meanings. At the end of a paragraph I was tired, and I kept getting nasty headaches after reading a few pages. I gave it up after just 12% of the book. I'm very sorry!
I thought I would really enjoy it - I grew up loving Guy Gilpatrick's Colin Clencannon stories, and Twain's novels. I own both Glencannon omnibuses and everything Twain wrote in hardcover. But they only have the dialogue in dialect, and in both cases I could read these very familiar accents with no trouble. This nut was not worth the trouble of breaking open.
I’m tempted to try reading this book again, but fore-arming myself first about what’s what. And with the picture handy. And I might mark the commas in my book! 👺
We've had three days in a row of glorious sunshine here (albeit cold) so I am behind with commenting... but will catch up tomorrow hopefully