|
|
|
|
To stop the animations press the 'stop' button in your browser or ESC on your keyboard.
What is SA4QE and who is Russell Hoban?
Are there any figures on the number of quotes dropped, most popular quotes etc?
I've found a yellow paper quote. What do I do?
Can I join The Kraken? How do I do it?
Help! I can't see the left-hand frame. Please show it to me.
I'd like to find out more about Russell Hoban and/or where to buy his books.
Is there a guestbook I can sign?
Who runs this site and how can I get in touch with him/her/it?
Is there any other small print I should be aware of?
|
|
Click on Pearl to return to the top of the page. |
February
4th is Russell Hoban’s birthday, and...
Who
is Russell Hoban?
Born in
Pennsylvania in 1925, Russell Hoban is the author of many extraordinary novels
including Riddley Walker, Turtle Diary, The Medusa Frequency, Kleinzeit,
The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz, Angelica’s Grotto and most
recently Linger Awhile, Come Dance With Me and Her Name Was Lola.
He has also written many classic books for children including Jim’s
Lion, The Mouse and His Child and the Frances series.
He has lived and worked in London since 1969.
Okay,
carry on.
To show
their appreciation of a dedicated life and a great (and continuing) body of
work, the online Hoban discussion forum-cum-fanclub
The Kraken has
for several years clubbed together to buy Mr H a birthday bottle.
In 2002, in addition to the gift, it was felt something a little extra
was in order. Various ideas were
knocked around, to wit (as Chris Bell summarised in the birthday greeting to
Mr Hoban):
-
Driving around London reading Kleinzeit through a loudspeaker;
-
Tiling Trafalgar Square with sheets of yellow A4 printed with the Hidden Lion
pattern;
- A
volunteer offered to be buried up to his neck in the mud on the Thames at
Putney, pretending to be the Head of Orpheus and telling his story to anyone
who happened to pass by;
- In a
conflation of 'Turtle Diary' and 'The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz', it
was proposed Kraken members might sneak into London Zoo and set free a lion to
roam around the Embankment;
- A
Krakenite submitted that several of us might busk with glockenspiels at
randomly selected underground stations;
-
Another suggested buying several hundred reams of yellow A4 and wrapping
Fulham Broadway tube station in it, Christo style.
However,
it seemed that the better the ideas were, the less feasible it was that
someone wasn’t going to get arrested, committed or, frankly, killed trying
to carry them out. Hearts sank...
and then longtime Krakenite Diana Slickman had a bolt of inspiration and
suggested the following to the group:
I propose that we each, on February 4, write our favorite passage, of any length, from any Russell Hoban book, on a piece of yellow paper and drop it somewhere public and then walk away, leaving chance to do the rest. I am a vehement hater of litter, so I would recommend leaving it someplace rather than just dropping it on the ground - a seat on the train, a table in the library, in the elevator at work, along with a tip for your waiter ... The paper should at least include the name of the book and Russell's name ... leaving chance to do the rest ... let the mystery of things take it from there, let the paper find its way (or not) to some receptive (or not) person who would then go seek out the book (or not) and become another fan (or not)...
The
Kraken instantly approved Diana’s proposal, Head of Orpheus webmaster Dave
Awl dubbed it The Slickman A4 Quotation Event, or SA4QE for short, and the
group members set about engaging in one of their favourite occupations –
re-reading Mr Hoban’s books – in order to locate and choose their quotes.
The SA4QE website, launched in the autumn of 2002, forms an online record of the quotes chosen by participants, together with details of why they were chosen and where in the world they were distributed. The site received an impressive number of hits over the following months, and was referred to in an excellent profile of Mr Hoban by Nicholas Wroe in the UK’s Guardian newspaper on Saturday 23rd November 2002.
Altogether the event was such a success and proved so popular with Krakenites that the group has made SA4QE an annual event. On 4th Februaries 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006, both long-standing and new members of the group left more quotes around the world, and on 15th February 2004 the event was the subject of a full-page feature in Talk of the Town, a magazine supplement with the UK's Independent on Sunday national newspaper.
You are most welcome to take part in SA4QE. There are very few (if any) rules, but the following forms something of a guideline to 4qating For Beginners.
1) Select your quote from the works of Russell Hoban.
2) Write (or type, print, etc) the quote on a piece of paper of your choice (the standard stock is yellow A4, but whatever takes your fancy, really - as Kleinzeit said, 'Cigarette papers? Backs of envelopes?').
3) Generally it helps to write 'SA4QE' or 'www.sa4qe.com' somewhere on the sheet, so curious finders of the quote can discover more about the event, but this is not obligatory.
4) Add any other information (e.g. your contact details, a birthday message etc) to taste.
5) There is no point 5.
6) There is no point 6 either.
7) There just is no point.
8) Select the spot where you'd like to leave your quote.
9) No earlier or later than 4th February of the prevailing year, leave your chosen quote in your chosen location.
10) If you wish, take a photo of the quote in situ.
11) Congratulations! You have 4qated.
12) Walk away and fondly contemplate your 4qation, perhaps in a coffee shop, public house or bookstore of your choice.
13) If you are a member of The Kraken, you will probably want to share with the group the quote you chose, the location, why you chose both, and a few details about yourself. If so please post them to the list in the usual way. If not, no worries - we're very laissez-faire.
14) If you are not a member of The Kraken, you can still send your 4qation and associated details to this website using the email at the bottom of this page.
15) Either way, if you would like your photo to appear on the site please also email this to us. (Kraken members can also if they wish upload their photo to the 'Files' or 'Photos' sections of the Kraken website.)
16) Feel free to disregard any or all of the above (especially points 5-7). There is nothing stopping you from, say, handing out yellow paper quotes to strangers, covering the Empire State Building in yellow paper quotes or turning yourself into a walking, talking, living yellow paper quote. Just please be kind to the environment and bear in mind that the founders and administrators of SA4QE, Russell Hoban and his agents and publishers disclaim any responsibility for any trouble you might get into as a result of any such behaviour.
The
yellow paper to which we refer is not an arbitrary choice.
It made its first appearance in Mr Hoban’s work in Kleinzeit
(1974) as a particular brand of typing paper with mysterious qualities
discovered in the Underground by the eponymous hero.
In common with a number of other themes and images throughout Mr Hoban’s
oeuvre, the yellow paper has had a number of cameo roles in his books since
– for example in The Medusa Frequency (1987), novelist Herman Orff
carries a sheet of it around with him to make notes on, and in Amaryllis
Night and Day (2001) Peter Diggs makes a Möbius strip out of a sheet of
yellow A4. In his 1989 essay Blighter’s
Rock (from The Moment under The Moment), Mr Hoban explains:
One of the earliest symptoms [of blighter's rock] is a growing dread of blank paper, and at this stage preventative action may still have some effect... I always use 80-gram yellow A4; it’s the kind of yellow the paper manufacturers call gold, and gold is what one is trying to refine the base metal of one’s thoughts into... I never use white paper – to intensify the blankness of a blank sheet by using white paper is to run to meet trouble considerably more than halfway.
Are there any figures on the number of quotes dropped, most popular quotes etc?
Yes. As at March 2008, over 350 quotes from 31 Russell Hoban books have been dropped by 70 participants in 46 towns and cities around the world. For more fascinating facts, including the record-holders of longest, shortest and highest number of 4qations and the most popular quotes and books, go to the Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About SA4QE (but were afraid to ask) page.
I've found a yellow paper quote. What do I do?
If you've found an SA4QE quote, first of all congratulations for getting this far, and please accept a warm welcome to the work of Russell Hoban. If the quote you've found has inspired or interested you, please let the participants in SA4QE know. There are several ways to do this: if the person who dropped the quote has included some personal contact details such as an email address, you might like to contact them direct. If you've been especially inspired by the quote (to the extent, say, of reading a Hoban book for the first time), you may wish to consider joining the Hoban discussion forum The Kraken (see below), and sharing with the group your story of finding the quote and what you think about it. If you'd prefer to make a less public comment, use the email below.
Can I join The Kraken? How do I do it?
The Kraken is a public Yahoo group, so anyone interested in Russell Hoban's work can join. For more information, go to this page on the Head of Orpheus site.
I'd like to browse the quotes dropped by the SA4QE participants. Reveal to me the ways in which I can do this.
Option 1. Click on the name of a particular contributor in the side navigation menu (the ones marked 'new' and 'updated' have been added and updated, respectively, this past 4th February).
Option 2. Go to the SA4QE around the world page and browse 4qations by location.
Option 3. Click on random page in the sidebar to be sent to a random participant's page.
Help! I can't see this 'left-hand frame' (aka 'side navigation', 'sidebar' or 'main menu') of which you speak.
This is because this is a frames website (I know, grr) and you have either navigated to an SA4QE page directly from a search engine or you have a browser problem. You can resolve either issue immediately by opening the whole site in a new window. If the problem persists, ask your greengrocer for a new cabbage.
|
|
JUST CAN'T GET ENOUGH HOBAN? HEAD FOR IT |
|
Dave Awl's comprehensive and fully authorised site The Head of Orpheus is your first stop for the latest Hoban news, biographical information, a full list of published works (including some 60 children's books), interviews, essays, and some fascinating links.
To read more information on the individual books quoted on this site, click on the links in the left-hand frame to read Dave's essential summaries.
For even more quotes, have a browse around Dave's Quotable Russell Hoban Page.
BUY THE BOOKS
All of Russell Hoban's novels are currently in print in the UK and most are available in the US. If you can't find any on the shelves of your local bookshop, please keep your bookshop going by asking them to order them in for you. However, if you simply can't wait to get your hands on a copy of a Hoban opus, you can order them online direct from Mr Hoban's publisher:
Is there a guestbook I can sign?
Unfortunately we've had a lot of problems with guestbooks, with unscrupulous characters posting links to their dodgy sites and genuine comments being inexplicably deleted. Instead, please post a message to the Kraken or send an email to the webmaster as outlined above.
Who runs this website and how can I contact them?
The SA4QE website is administered by Gombert F. Yawncher II A.W.O.L. on behalf of Slickman Eccentricities Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Yawncher-Blipvert Inc, for Thoughtcat Enterprises LLC, a division of Cthulhu Media GmbH, 31st Floor, Thelonious Monk Plaza, 6900 Nexovollma Boulevard, Los Angeles 90095, California, USA. The site is maintained on an old PC with a crap graphics card and not enough memory on a rickety plain-deal table in a draughty back room somewhere in the Midlands (UK) when the impoverished and increasingly time-starved webmaster gets time. Click on the button below to make a donation to the 'Keep Gombert Warm' fund!
another
production
Contact: thoughtcat [at] gmail [dot] com
All quotes attributed to a Russell Hoban work (e.g. “from FREMDER”) are copyright © Russell Hoban.
This
is a non-profit-making (indeed, non-money-making) fan site and no infringement
of Russell Hoban’s copyright is intended or should be inferred.
Copyright © in all other text reverts to the individual contributors identified on their page.
Although Russell Hoban has given his approval of the reproduction on this site of the quotes distributed by his readers, it should not be implied that Mr Hoban is himself in any way responsible for where, or in what manner, the quotes were distributed. SA4QE is conducted with the best of intentions, both towards Mr Hoban and anybody who may happen upon a quote, as well as towards the environment. In true "message in a bottle" spirit, none of the quotes dropped by participants are aimed at anyone in particular.
The Moebius strip and Klein bottle animations were rendered by Oliver Knill and are taken with his kind permission from the website of Harvard University's Mathematics Department. See more animated surfaces. To stop the animations press the 'stop' button in your browser or ESC on your keyboard.
How can there be meaning? said Hospital. Meaning is a limit. There are no limits.
from Kleinzeit
(Unless you mean 'What the hell is all this "4qation" and "4qate" gibberish?', in which case please click here.)
Click on the "yellow paper in the underground" logo anywhere on the site to return to the home page.
