80 at 80: 80 reasons why we’re celebrating Russell Hoban’s 80th birthday
Yvonne Studer
55. Elective affinity.
56. There is no better navigator through this strangeness called life.
57. He makes you notice and care about things that matter, however inexplicable, ungraspable and nameless they may be.
58. His characters know how to open cans of joie de vivre in emergencies and their canyengue in the mind is infectious.
59. Time and again you learn that losing and finding are necessary stages of the same process.
60. He’s a fabulous writer, innovative, humorous, true to detail, and down to earth despite all the supernatural, surreal or mystical twists in his plots.
61. He made Neaera say: “No one could make me freer by putting me somewhere else. I had as much as the turtles: myself. At least I too could die on the way to where I wanted to be.”
62. Words to live by.