The Return of Manny Rat
Posted by deleted name in Yellow Paper on 10 March, 2020 - 21:26
I only found this site a few days ago, and so I've registered for the forum in the hope of some assistance. In reading Margaret Meek's afterword to a particular edition of The Mouse and His Child, I found out that there was a partially written sequel, following which I located and bought the relevant copy of Children's Literature in Education which has a lecture delivered by Russell Hoban in Exeter in 1970 in which he quotes some passages from this sequel. I also know there's some of this in The Russell Hoban Omnibus, and I was wondering if there's more in the latter, or if it's the same stuff.
Any help would be gratefully received, thank you.
Tim replied on 24 November, 2020 - 07:49:
The previously published extracts from 'The Return of Manny Rat' that appeared in the article 'Thoughts on a shirtless cyclist' in 'Children's literature in education' (2, pages 5–23(1971)) are identical to those published on pages 817-821 of the Russell Hoban Omnibus.
In the preface to the omnibus, Russ says: 'The Return of Manny Rat is one of my starts that didn't go all the way. Manny first appeared in The Mouse and His Child, and he seemed to have enough in him for another book, but by the time I was eighty pages or so into it, I found that I wanted to leave animals and toys for a while in order to write about men and women and the strangeness of life'.
So there was more written but all that has been published thus far is what you have seen in the article... the only place you may find any more is at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University https://orbis.library.yale.edu/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=13101254
Cheers, Tim