Be Careful What You Wish For

LINGER AWHILE

By Russell Hoban

Godine. 132 pp. $15.95

Twenty-seven years ago, in the middle of a wonderful career that included children's books, adult novels and poetry, Russell Hoban published a masterpiece, "Riddley Walker," an apocalyptic story of a boy-man, Riddley, who wanders through an England ravaged by war perhaps a millennium before. Riddley's job is to try to make sense of a civilization that is irrevocably past and gone, but planes and televisions are as mythic to him as griffins. He visits what we recognize was once a great cathedral and a computer center, but they remain incomprehensible to him. All that passes for culture is brutish "Punch and Judy" shows performed for a ragged and ignorant populace.

Riddley's language has devolved as well; it's modern English gone back more or less in the direction of Chaucer, but with no trace of exuberance or vitality. Pondering the inexorable violence of human nature as he watches ancient puppets, he asks himself, "Why is Punch crookit? Why wil he all ways kil the babby if he can? Parbly I wont never know." Hoban asked his readers to read an entire novel in this crushed language; asked them as well to join him in pondering a central human mystery: What makes us murderous? To have written this novel was an extraordinary accomplishment; to read it, no small accomplishment either.

But when you've been labeled a genius by the happy few (because the vast majority certainly wasn't going to read such a difficult and demanding book), what do you do next? Hoban became a cult figure, a code word for smartness and high sensibility. His books slid over into a kind of "Buckaroo Banzai" category, notable for their pithy quotes and quirky wisdom. For several years now, his birthday, Feb. 4, has been commemorated by fans who post his sayings (on yellow paper) in public places, quotations such as "Your birthday is always the one that is not now." But despite the playfulness and the prolific output, there must have still remained, for the author, the irritating obligation of the blank page.

Thus, "Linger Awhile." How can anyone who has read "Riddley Walker" with even the faintest vestige of a heart bring herself to give Russell Hoban a bad review? Certainly, I'm not going to be the one.

I'll just say that "Linger Awhile" is set in Hoban's beloved London; that it is about Irving Goodman, a too-cool hipster dude in his 80s whose cherished wife has been dead for decades. One night, Irving watches a 1950s American western on TV and falls in love with (mostly with the behind of) Justine Trimble, star of some awful B-movies. Irving is sufficiently smitten that he seeks out his old mad-scientist friend Istvan Fallok to see if Istvan can bring Justine back to life, using celluloid strips from her video images, a frog or two and some other arcane ingredients, all swirled up in an emulsion of the suspension of disbelief. Istvan manages this, but because he's a comparatively young bachelor in his 60s, he also lusts after the fetching Justine, who, when she comes to some form of iffy life, turns out to have a coarse personality and terrible breath. Another old bachelor, the Chinese Chauncey Lim, also falls under her dubious spell.

Justine arrives as an apparition in black and white, and only strenuous sex or, better still, a generous infusion of human blood can put some Technicolor in her cheeks. Irving, with his imprudent longings, and Istvan, with his imprudent ingenuity, have produced a full-on vampire. Moreover, their eyes prove to have been bigger than their other parts; they can't satisfy this very attractive succubus's needs.

The plot is thickened -- just a little -- by Grace Kowalski, a jewelry maker in her 60s who used to have a thing going with Istvan, and now, rejected, turns for solace to Irving. They spend several sensually pleasing evenings together, but Grace will never be the enchantress that Justine, though foulmouthed and disgusting, continues to be.

The novel is filled once more with quotes and mantras of the "Buckaroo Banzai" variety: "If you can't get over it, get under it," or "When the river dries up, the superior woman drinks vodka,"or "From the seed of trouble grows the trouble tree," or "A bow long bent waxes weak." And then there is the theme, the emblem, for what goes on in this novel: "Form is emptiness and the very emptiness is form; emptiness does not differ from form, form does not differ from emptiness . . . the same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses and consciousness." All these are perfectly suited for being posted on yellow paper on Hoban Day.

Oh, why am I being such a prig about this? Why can't I just acknowledge that the brilliant creator of all those children's books about Frances the Badger and the novel behind the movie "Turtle Diary" and all that other wonderful work can do whatever he wants? Just because he once experienced the grand vision of "Riddley Walker" and had the grace to pass that vision on to us doesn't mean he has to be locked up in a glass coffin and revered like Snow White. Sure, Hoban's a genius, but he's a guy, too. He gets to play if he wants. I just feel bad about the result this time, that's all.

Sunday in Book World

� Living with -- and without -- China.

� The education of a black radical.

� Why we still like Ike.

� Percival Everett tortures a torturer.

� And a roundup of new memoirs.