Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker

       Hoban's novel Riddley Walker is an incredibly complex text, but I think it can certainly be asserted that Hoban is concerned with the two major issues that motivated Drucker's first work that she discusses: "the way in which visual structures actually produce meaning, and the relation between language and experience". The novel is set in a post-apocalyptic society thousands of years after nuclear war has destroyed the planet. Hoban imagines society reverting back to a Dark Ages system of intellectual inquiry, scientific discovery, artistic production, and most importantly for this discussion language. Hoban actually creates a linguistic system for these characters that uses all of the characters of type that we are familiar with, but arranged in an order that at times can be incredibly difficult to interpret. This language changes the way we view the characters' experiences of their reality, but also the way the reader experiences their reality. At times in the story there is also typescript that is set apart in a stanza-like presentation, type that is in italics, and type that is bold and in all capital letters. All of these different typescripts signify different meanings about the subject matter of the text being discussed. Hoban also encourages a radial reading of the text (such as McGann discusses). There is a glossary of some of the words he has created in the back of the book, as well as a history of the St. Eustace portrait upon which many of the characters base their religious and cultural philosophies. There are also other images scattered throughout the text that one can refer to as they read. Hoban has created a world in which language signifies experience differently and in which visuals produce meaning differently and asks the reader to explore this as well through his use of typography and spatial elements of his text.