Russell Hoban

Russell Hoban
Russell Hoban, London November 2010
Born	Russell Conwell Hoban (1925-02-04)February 4, 1925 Lansdale, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Died	December 13, 2011(2011-12-13) (aged 86) London, England, U.K.
Occupation	Author
Nationality	American
Notable awards	Whitbread Prize (1974) John W Campbell Memorial Award (1982) Australian Science Fiction Achievement Award (1983)
Spouse	Lillian Hoban (1944–1975; divorced); 4 children Gundula Ahl (m.1975); 3 children

Russell Conwell Hoban (February 4, 1925 – December 13, 2011) was an American expatriate writer of fantasy, science fiction, mainstream fiction, magic realism, poetry, and children's books.

Biography

Hoban was born in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia, to Jewish immigrants from Ostrog (now in Ukraine). His father, Abram T. Hoban, was the advertising manager of the Jewish Daily Forward Yiddish-language newspaper and the director of The Drama Guild of the Labor Institute of the Workmen's Circle of Philadelphia. He died when his son was 11, and Russell was raised by his mother, Jeanette Dimmerman. He was named for Russell Conwell. After briefly attending Temple University, he enlisted in the Army at age 18 and served in the Philippines and Italy as a radio operator during World War II, earning a bronze star. During his military service, he married his first wife, Lillian Aberman, who later became a writer and illustrator in her own right. They had four children before divorcing in 1975.

He later worked as an illustrator (painting several covers for TIME, Sports Illustrated, and The Saturday Evening Post) and an advertising copywriter—occupations which several of his characters later shared—before writing and illustrating his first children's book, What Does It Do and How Does It Work.

"About the Artist" in the Macmillan Classics Edition of Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (second printing 1965), which Hoban illustrated, notes that he worked in advertising for Batten Barton Durstine & Osborn and that later he became the art director of J. Walter Thompson: "Heavy machinery later became subjects for his paintings, and this led him into the children's book field with the writing and illustrating of What Does It Do and How Does It Work? and The Atomic Submarine." That section on the artist points out also that at the time the book's illustrations were copyrighted, in 1964, Hoban was teaching drawing at the School of Visual Arts, in New York, collaborating with his first wife on their fifth children's book, and living in Connecticut.

He wrote exclusively for children for the next decade, and was best known for his series of short books starring Frances, a temperamental child (illustrated first by Garth Williams and later by Lillian Hoban as a badger), whose escapades were in part based on the experiences of his four children, Phoebe, Brom, Esmé, Julia, and their friends.

   Frances did not eat her egg.
   She sang a little song to it.
   She sang the song very softly:

   I do not like the way you slide,
   I do not like your soft inside,
   I do not like you lots of ways,
   And I could do for many days
   Without eggs.

A dark philosophical tale for older children, The Mouse and His Child, appeared in 1967 and was Hoban's first full-length novel. It was later made into an animated film in 1977 by the American arm of Japanese company Sanrio.

In 1969, Hoban, his wife, and their children travelled to London, intending to stay only a short time. The marriage dissolved, and while the rest of the family returned to the United States, Hoban remained in London for the rest of his life. All of his adult novels except Riddley Walker, Pilgermann and Fremder are set in whole or part in contemporary London.

In 1971, Hoban wrote a book employing concepts borrowed from "The Gift of the Magi" called Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas, which further reached fans through a 1977 special originally created for HBO by the Jim Henson Company. The book was illustrated by Hoban's first wife, Lillian, whose drawn renditions of these characters were faithfully replicated by the Muppet creators. The story tells of a poor mother and son who do what they must to try to provide a special Christmas to one another, taking a route neither of them expected. His novel Turtle Diary (1975) was turned into a film version released in 1985, which has a screenplay by Harold Pinter.

Family

Hoban had four children with his first wife, Lillian Aberman Hoban, one of whom, Phoebe Hoban, is a writer. The couple divorced in 1975, and in the same year he married Gundula Ahl, who worked in the fashionable London bookshop Truslove and Hanson. With Ahl he had three children, one of whom is composer Wieland Hoban, to whom Riddley Walker is dedicated. Wieland Hoban set one of his father's texts in his piece Night Roads (1998–99).

Hoban's sister, Tana Hoban (1917–2006), was a photographer and children's author; he also had another sister, Freeda Hoban Ellis, born 1919.

Later life

His last published novel was Angelica Lost and Found, published October 2010, in which the hippogriff from Girolamo da Carpi's Ruggiero Saving Angelica breaks free from the 16th-century painting to search for Angelica in 21st-century San Francisco.

Hoban died on 13 December 2011. He had once ruefully observed that death would be a good career move: “People will say, 'yes, Hoban, he seems an interesting writer, let’s look at him again’.” He was cremated in Mortlake, London on 4 January 2012.

His last book, Soonchild, is scheduled for publication in March 2012.

Fan activity

In May 1998, Dave Awl, a writer/performer with experimental Chicago theatre troupe the Neo-Futurists, launched the first comprehensive Russell Hoban reference website, The Head of Orpheus, to which Russell Hoban regularly contributed news and information up until his death. In the fall of 1999, Awl founded a Hoban-themed online community called The Kraken (named after one of the characters in Hoban's 1987 novel The Medusa Frequency), which grew into an international network of Russell Hoban fans.

In 2002 an annual fan activity dubbed the Slickman A4 Quotation Event (SA4QE) (named after its founder, Diana Slickman, also a member of the Neo-Futurists) began, in which Hoban enthusiasts celebrate his birthday by writing down favourite quotes from his books (invariably on sheets of yellow A4 paper, a recurring Hoban motif) and leaving them in public places. By 2004, the event had occurred three times; as of February 2011 it has since taken place each year, seeing over 350 quotes distributed around 46 towns and cities throughout 14 countries.

In 2005 fans from across the world celebrated Hoban's work in London at the first international convention for the author, The Russell Hoban Some-Poasyum (a pun on symposium from Riddley Walker). A booklet was published by the organisers to commemorate the event featuring tributes to Hoban from a variety of contributors including actor and politician Glenda Jackson, novelist David Mitchell, composer Harrison Birtwistle and screenwriter Andrew Davies.

Stage adaptations

In November 2007, Hoban's own stage adaptation of Riddley Walker was produced (for the third time) by the Red Kettle Theatre Company, in Waterford, Ireland, and was reviewed positively in the Irish Times.

In 2011, Trouble Puppet Theater Company produced an adaptation of Riddley Walker, with permission from and the aid of Russell Hoban. Artistic Director Connor Hopkins created the work of puppet theater, with performances September 29 through October 16, 2011, at Salvage Vanguard Theater in Austin, Texas, U.S. The production employed tabletop puppetry inspired by the Bunraku tradition and enjoyed popular and critical success.

Themes

Hoban is often described as a fantasy writer; only two of his novels, Turtle Diary and The Bat Tattoo, are entirely devoid of supernatural elements. However, the fantasy elements are usually presented as only moderately surprising developments in an otherwise realistic contemporary story, i.e. magic realism. Exceptions include Kleinzeit (a comic fantasy whose characters include Death, Hospital, and Underground), Riddley Walker (generally considered science fiction because of its futuristic though primitive setting), Pilgermann (a historical novel about the Crusades), and Fremder (a more recognisably science-fiction novel).

There is frequent repetition of the same images and themes in different contexts: for instance, many of Hoban's works refer to lions, Orpheus, Eurydice, Persephone, Vermeer, severed heads, heart disease, flickering, Odilon Redon, and King Kong.

Works

Adult novels

• The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz (1973), ISBN 0-8128-1624-2
• Kleinzeit (1974), ISBN 0-670-41458-1
• Turtle Diary (1975), ISBN 0-394-40199-9
• Riddley Walker (1980), ISBN 0-671-42147-6
• Pilgermann (1983), ISBN 0-671-45968-6
• The Medusa Frequency (1987), ISBN 0-87113-165-X
• Fremder (1996), ISBN 0-224-04370-6
• Mr. Rinyo-Clacton's Offer (1998), ISBN 0-224-05121-0
• Angelica's Grotto (1999), ISBN 0-7475-4611-8
• Amaryllis Night and Day (2001), ISBN 0-7475-5285-1
• The Bat Tattoo (2002), ISBN 0-7475-6022-6
• Her Name Was Lola (2003), ISBN 0-7475-7024-8
• Come Dance with Me (2005), ISBN 0-7475-7452-9
• Linger Awhile (2006), ISBN 0-7475-7984-9
• My Tango with Barbara Strozzi (2007), ISBN 0-7475-9028-6
• Angelica Lost and Found (2010), ISBN 978-1-4088-0660-9

Selected children's books

• "Frances the Badger" series: Bedtime for Frances, Bread and Jam for Frances, etc. (1960–1970)
• The Mouse and His Child (1968, republished 1990), ISBN 0-06-022378-2 (also filmed)
• Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas (1971, republished 1992), ISBN 0-89966-951-4 (also televised)
• Egg Thoughts and Other Frances Songs (1972) (poetry), ISBN 0-06-022331-6
• How Tom Beat Captain Najork and his Hired Sportsmen (1974), ISBN 0-224-00999-0
• A Near Thing for Captain Najork (1975), ISBN 0-224-01197-9
• La Corona and the Tin Frog (1979), ISBN 0-224-01397-1
• The Marzipan Pig (1986), ISBN 0-224-01687-3
• The Trokeville Way (1996), ISBN 0-224-04631-4
• The Last of the Wallendas (1997) (poetry), ISBN 0-340-66766-4

Other works

• The Carrier Frequency (1984) (stage play)
• Under the heading "Deadtime Stories for Big Folk": Deadsy and the Sexo-Chanjo and Door (1989, 1990) (text and narration for animated films by David Anderson)
• The Second Mrs Kong (1994) (libretto for opera composed by Harrison Birtwistle)
• The Moment under The Moment (1992) (stories, a libretto, essays and sketches)

Film

• Turtle Diary (1985)

Further reading

Hoban, Russell. "Writers' Rooms: Russell Hoban". Guardian, Books (Writers' Rooms Series). Guardian Media Group (2008); retrieved March 22, 2009.

Martin, Tim. "Russell Hoban: Odd, and Getting Odder". Independent on Sunday. January 22, 2006 ("Russell Hoban should be putting his feet up, but his novels are as passionate and perplexing as ever. Tim Martin finds out what keeps the writer firing on all cylinders into his eighties, as he grants us a rare interview.")

McCalmont, Katie. "Interview: Russell Hoban". November 6, 2008; retrieved March 22, 1009 ("Russell Hoban talks to Katie McCalmont about his forthcoming novel and why at 83 years old he's proud of what he's done.")

Wroe, Nicholas. "Russell Hoban: Life at a Glance", in "Secrets of the Yellow Pages". Guardian. March 22, 2009. ("Russell Hoban, an illustrator and would-be artist, was decorated for bravery against the Nazis. After returning to New York he found success with stories for children. He then moved to England and achieved cult status with his novel Riddley Walker. Now 77, he aims to write a book each year.)

External links

• Russell Hoban at IMDb
• Russell Hoban – Entry in The Literary Encyclopedia.
• The Russell Hoban Some-Poasyum, London, 11-13 February 2005 - Report on an international fan convention celebrating the work of Russell Hoban on the occasion of his 80th birthday hosted by The Kraken ("the worldwide community of Russell Hoban fans").
• Slickman A4 Quotation Event (SA4QE): Spreading the Word of Russell Hoban Since 2002 – Website of annual fan event hosted at Blogspot.
• Russell Hoban's page on his publisher Bloomsbury's website
• Russell Hoban's page on his literary agent David Higham's website
• Discussion of 'Pilgermann' at ICA, 1983
• Russell Hoban at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database