Guinea Pigs

There has been a lot of talk in the blogosphere about underrated books, but no one is talking about Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker. How it works: A puts up a post. Readers send comments. If one mentions a book it has had its 2 seconds of fame: other readers think they must come up with a different book.

Meanwhile Blogger has introduced a poll widget. When I mention Riddley Walker in conversation people who've read it say YES, it's a work of GENIUS -- but most people haven't heard of it. That said, I don't tend to go about dragging Riddley Walker into the conversaton. This is what polls are for. So I have put one in the sidebar.

Riddley Walker takes place in a landmass that had been Britain before a nuclear holocaust. Scientific knowledge has been lost, but traces of it survive in the language as mythological explanations for what now makes no sense ('the party cools of Addom and the many cools of stoan'). It begins like this:

On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen. He dint make the groun shake nor nothing like that when he come on to my spear he wernt all that big plus he lookit poorly. He done the reqwyrt he ternt and stood and clattert his teef and made his rush and there we wer then. Him on 1 end of the spear kicking his life out and me on the other end watching him dy. I said, 'Your tern now my tern later.' The other spears gone in then and he wer dead and the steam coming up off him in the rain and we all yelt, 'Offert!'