Flush it Friday: Rolddley Walker
As a master of good cheer and optimism, I make sure to always be caught up on my post-apocalyptic fiction. (These plotlines are then peppered into polite conversation at every possible chance, i.e. FiF.) After finishing up Richter‘s latest, I moved on to Russell Hoban’s 1980 Bildungsroman novel, Riddley Walker, a story set in England two millennia after a nuclear war. The narrator writes in a degraded form of English that makes A Clockwork Orange seem like Pat the Bunny, but figuring out the language and customs of these people is fascinating (and rewarding). Here’s a snippet of the first page for taste:
Yes, the entire book is written like this, and as the story becomes more involved, so do the obscure references and strange “new-Stone Age” concepts. What a great novel to end 2020! Y’all got any of them dystopian fiction recs? There must be a few I haven’t read.
We got some big lists from some big boiz:
McNulty showed us some kaik; AIRSE stuff from Kairon; IRSE:
Spear sifted through the dreck to bring you the techest tech:
Karhu is LITERALLY a machine:
G/B/Us below, or the next 10 articles I write are in Riddley Walker speak. (Pls don’t make me do this.)
