Russell Hoban | |
|---|---|
 Hoban in London, November 2010 | |
| Born | Russell Conwell Hoban (1925-02-04)February 4, 1925 Lansdale, Pennsylvania, US |
| Died | December 13, 2011(2011-12-13) (aged 86)[1] London, England, UK |
| Occupation | Writer, illustrator |
| Nationality | American |
| Notable awards | Whitbread Prize 1974 Campbell Memorial Award 1982 |
| Spouse | •Lillian Hoban (1944–1975, divorced); 4 children (Phoebe, Abrom, Esmé, Julia) • Gundula Ahl (1975–2011); 3 children (Jake, Ben, Wieland)[2][3] |
Russell Conwell Hoban (February 4, 1925 – December 13, 2011) was anAmerican writer. His works span many genres, includingfantasy,science fiction, mainstreamfiction,magical realism,poetry, andchildren's books.He lived in London from 1969 until his death.
Hoban was born inLansdale, Pennsylvania, just outsidePhiladelphia, toJewish immigrants fromOstrog (now inUkraine). His father, Abram T. Hoban, was the advertising manager of theYiddish-languageJewish Daily Forward and the director of The Drama Guild of the Labor Institute of theWorkmen's Circle of Philadelphia.[4] His father died when Russell was 11, and Russell was thereafter raised by his mother, Jeanette Dimmerman. He was named forRussell Conwell.[4] After briefly attendingTemple University, he enlisted in theArmy at age 18 and served in thePhilippines and Italy as a radio operator during World War II, earning abronze star.[3] During his military service he marriedLillian Aberman, who later became a writer and illustrator herself. They had four children before divorcing in 1975.
After leaving military service, Hoban worked as anillustrator, painting several covers forTIME,Sports Illustrated, andThe Saturday Evening Post, and as anadvertisingcopywriter—occupations which several of his characters later shared—before he wrote and illustrated his first children's book,What Does It Do and How Does It Work?: Power Shovel, Dump Truck, and Other Heavy Machines, published byHarper in 1959.[5] His 1962Time cover portrait ofJoan Baez now hangs in theUS National Portrait Gallery.[1]
The note "About the Artist" in the Macmillan Classics Edition ofTales and Poems ofEdgar Allan Poe (second printing 1965), which Hoban illustrated, notes that he worked in advertising forBatten Barton Durstine & Osborn and that he later became the art director ofJ. 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 ofWhat Does It Do and How Does It Work? andThe Atomic Submarine." That note also points out that in 1964, at the time the book's illustrations were copyrighted, Hoban was teaching drawing at theSchool of Visual Arts in New York City, collaborating with his first wife on their fifth children's book, and living inConnecticut.
Hoban wrote exclusively for children for the next decade, and came to be known best for the series of seven picture books that feature Frances, a temperamental badger girl[3] whose escapades were based partly on the experiences of his four children, Phoebe, Brom, Esmé and 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."[6]
Garth Williams depicted Frances as abadger in the first book,Bedtime for Frances (Harper, 1960), and Lillian Hoban retained that image as the illustrator of five sequels and a poetry collection, published from 1964 to 1972.[3][5]
The U.S. national library reports holding about three dozen books written by Hoban and published from 1959 to 1972, including about two dozen illustrated by Lillian Hoban. One was illustrated by their son Brom Hoban:The Sea-thing Child (1972).[7]
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 byMurakami-Wolf-Swenson.
In 1969, the Hobans and their children travelled toLondon, 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 Hoban's adult novels except forRiddley Walker,Pilgermann,Angelica Lost and Found (October 2010) andFremder are set either wholly or partly in contemporary London.
In 1971, Hoban wrote a book employing concepts borrowed from "The Gift of the Magi", calledEmmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas, which further reached fans through a1977 television special originally created for HBO by theJim Henson Company. The book was illustrated by Lillian Hoban, whose drawn renditions of these characters were faithfully replicated by the Muppet creators. The story tells of a poor otter 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 novelTurtle Diary (1975) was turned intoa film version released in 1985, with a screenplay byHarold Pinter.
Hoban had four children with his first wife,Lillian Aberman Hoban. Their daughterPhoebe Hoban is a journalist and biographer who specializes in art.[8] The couple divorced in 1975, and in the same year he married Gundula Ahl, who worked in the fashionable London bookshopTruslove and Hanson.[9] With Ahl he had three children,[2] one of whom is the composerWieland Hoban,[9] to whomRiddley Walker is dedicated. Wieland Hoban set one of his father's texts to music in his pieceNight Roads (1998–99).
Hoban's sister,Tana Hoban (1917–2006), was a photographer and children's author;[10] he also had another sister,Freeda Hoban Ellis (1919–2002).
The last of Hoban's novels published during his lifetime wasAngelica Lost and Found (October 2010), in which thehippogriff fromGirolamo da Carpi'sRuggiero SavingAngelica breaks free from the 16th-century painting to search for Angelica in 21st-centurySan Francisco.
Hoban died on 13 December 2011.[1] 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'."[9]
Two new Hoban books were published posthumously by Walker Books in 2012:Soonchild, illustrated by Alexis Deacon,[11] andRosie's Magic Horse, illustrated byQuentin Blake.[12] Deacon also provided artwork for a new version ofJim's Lion, published in 2014, which changed the format from a traditional picture book to a combination of text chapters and comics.[13][14]
After his death, Hoban's papers were archived by writer Paul Cooper,[15] and in 2016 the archive was acquired by theBeinecke Library atYale University.[16][17]
In May 1998,Dave Awl, a writer/performer with the experimental Chicago theatre troupe theNeo-Futurists, launched the first comprehensive Russell Hoban reference website,[18][19][20] 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 novelThe 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.[9]By 2004, the event had occurred three times;[21] as of February 2011 it has since taken place each year, seeing over 350 quotes distributed around 46 towns and cities throughout 14 countries.[22]
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 onsymposium fromRiddley Walker).[23] A booklet was published by the organisers to commemorate the event featuring tributes to Hoban from a variety of contributors including actor and politicianGlenda Jackson, novelistDavid Mitchell, composerHarrison Birtwistle and screenwriterAndrew Davies.
In 2012 a new "official" Russell Hoban website,www.russellhoban.org, was built and launched by volunteers from the community, with the approval of the author's family.[24]
In 1984, Hoban collaborated with theImpact Theatre Co-operative on a performance entitledThe Carrier Frequency. Hoban supplied the text for the piece, which was staged and performed by Impact. In 1999,The Carrier Frequency was restaged by the theater companyStan's Cafe.[25][26]
In February 1986, a theatrical version of Hoban's novelRiddley Walker (adapted by Hoban himself) premiered at theRoyal Exchange Theatre, Manchester. Its US premiere was at theChocolate Bayou Theatre, in April 1987, directed by Greg Roach.[26]
In November 2007, Hoban's adaptation ofRiddley Walker was produced (for the third time) by theRed Kettle Theatre Company, inWaterford, Ireland, and was reviewed favorably in theIrish Times.[27][28]
In March 1989 a stage adaptation ofKleinzeit was presented by theTower Theatre Company, directed by Peta Barker, who had adapted the novel. One performance was seen by Russell Hoban who wrote a critique of the play, written on yellow paper, which is a major theme of the novel.
In 2011, the Trouble Puppet Theater Company produced an adaptation ofRiddley Walker, with permission from and the aid of Russell Hoban. Artistic Director Connor Hopkins created the puppet theater play, with performances September 29 through October 16, 2011, at Salvage Vanguard Theater in Austin, Texas, U.S.[29] The production employed tabletop puppetry inspired by theBunraku tradition and enjoyed popular and critical success.[30]
In 2012, theRoyal Shakespeare Company announced that it would be premiering a new staging of Hoban's novelThe Mouse and His Child as part of its winter 2012–13 season.[31]
Hoban is often described as a fantasy writer, and only two of his novels,Turtle Diary andThe 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, which ismagic realism. Exceptions includeKleinzeit, a comic fantasy whose characters includeDeath,Hospital, andUnderground;[9]Riddley Walker, a science-fiction novel whose futuristic setting is primitive and post-apocalyptic;Pilgermann, a historical novel about theCrusades; andFremder, a more conventional science-fiction novel.[citation needed]
There is frequent repetition of images and themes in different contexts. For instance, many of Hoban's works refer tolions,Orpheus,Eurydice,Persephone,Vermeer,severed heads,heart disease,flickering,Odilon Redon, andKing Kong.[2]
How Tom Beat Captain Najork and His Hired Sportsmen (1974), apicture book written by Hoban, illustrated byQuentin Blake, and published byJonathan Cape, shared theannual Whitbread Award for Children's Books.[9]
Riddley Walker, a novel published by Cape in 1980, won the 1982John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, juried recognition of the year's best SF novel published in English, and the "Best International Novel" prize at the 1983 Australian SF Convention (Ditmar Award).[32]Pilgermann was one finalist a year later when no best international novel was named.[32]
Her biography of Alice Neel ... will be published ... December 7, 2010.
