Word: hoban
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PILGERMANN by Russell Hoban; Summit; 240 pages...
Such, except for the unsexed hero, is the stuff of rousing historical fiction. Pilgermann is that and several other things as well. In Riddley Walker (1981), his fourth novel, Russell Hoban proved himself a master of the unexpected viewpoint. He imagined life several millenniums after a nuclear holocaust and then invented the debased, fragmented language that survivors might use to rebuild their civilization. This time, Hoban's English is normal, but his speaker-protagonist is not. He introduces himself. "Pilgermann here. I call myself Pilgermann, it's a convenience. What my name was when I was walking around...
This disembodied voice is speaking in the present tense, now, late in the 20th century, a contemporary witness to old deeds. Hoban invents a spokesman for an entire epoch, one who has not only suffered the mutilation and death of his body but has consciously endured some of the awful burdens of history since those events: "I am a microscopic chip in that vast circuitry in which are recorded all of the variations and permutations thus far. Not all of my experience is available for recall by my Pilgermann identity, only that in which the energy of the input...
Such a cosmic perspective is broadly audacious, and Hoban's Pilgermann enaudacious, and Hoban's Pilgermann enthusiastically embraces the challenge. He tells what happened to him during his physical stay on earth; he also wants to explain why and to speculate on whether he had any choice in the matter. He knows that his troubles began when he entered the upper-floor bedroom window of Sophia, the tax collector's beautiful wife. Deprived of his manhood in consequence, he debates with his Creator: "O God! Why cannot I speak with a pure heart? I have done wrong...
...Hoban, an Irish-born architect who practiced in Charleston, S.C. and planned the South Carolina statehouse, was the winner of the 1792 design competition for the proposed new White House. One of those he triumphed over was Thomas Jefferson, who had submitted his entry anonymously. Hoban's vision of the President's house was influenced by one of the finest examples of the English Palladian style, the famous Dublin mansion of the Duke of Leinster...