What passes for reality

Abstract

In an attempt to rid himself of a case of writer’s block, Herman Orff is having his head zapped by an old friend in an obscure basement studio in London’s Soho. However, instead of finding inspiration for a new novel, he begets the blind, green-slimed, barnacled head of the Orpheus of Greek mythology, which rises up out of the sea. Herman instantly realizes that the head is a mere hallucination; but that insight does not enable him to ignore it. Whether he’s wandering the streets of London, travelling the Circle and District Lines, hooking up with girlfriends old and new, attempting to breathe new life into Page One of his novel-to-be, or embarking on a trip to Den Haag, the Netherlands, in search of the girl in a Vermeer painting, the head keeps popping up at unexpected and often embarrassing moments. Each time, he is forced to turn his attention to some untold aspect of its non-chronological, mythical tale of love, loss, music and death which—not unsurprisingly, given the hallucinatory nature of the head—displays numerous parallels with Herman’s own life story and current situation. ![Graphic][1] Herman Orff is, of course, the protagonist of Russell Hoban’s cult classic The Medusa Frequency . And, like so many of Mr Hoban’s fictional characters, he takes us on a journey involving splendidly wrought, hyper-kinetic and often darkly humorous adventures in that border area between the mundane and the fantastic. In Mr Hoban’s universe, nothing is ever ordinary. Herman Orff may well be aware of that fact when early on in the narrative he sighs: ‘No, what passes for reality seems to me mostly a load of old rubbish invented by not very inventive minds. The reality that interests me is strange and flickering and haunting’ (Hoban, 1987, p. 8). Russell Hoban (1925–2011) did not … [1]: /embed/inline-graphic-1.gif