Turtle Diary
These are notes for Turtle Diary (1975), Russell Hoban's third non-children's novel. It's a bittersweet philosophical semi-comic non-romance about two desperately lonely middle-aged Londoners who connect over a mutual obsession with stealing sea turtles from the zoo and returning them to the ocean.
The novel was adapted into a 1985 film written by Harold Pinter and directed by John Irvin. Hoban disliked the movie, calling it "feeble and flabby";[1] a radio adaptation[2] in 2003 was more positively received by the author.[3]
The novel has 53 chapters, with William narrating the odd-numbered chapters and Neaera the even-numbered ones. The notes below refer to the 2013 edition from New York Review Books.
Major characters
- William G., a recently divorced bookstore clerk.
- Neaera H., a successful writer and illustrator of children's books.
- George Fairbairn, aquarium keeper at the London Zoo.
- Harriet, one of William's co-workers.
- Mr. Sandor and Miss Neap, William's bedsit neighbors.
Chapter 1
One wanted to see SPURS, ARSENAL
British football teams with extremely partisan fan followings, sometimes violently so.
Chapter 2
Great Water-Beetle, Dysticus marginalis
Also known as the great diving beetle. (A Smithsonian video with footage of it swimming)
Laura Ashley dresses
A Welsh fashion designer whose floral-print women's wear would have connoted (in the mid-1970s at least) a stylish kind of outdoorsy nostalgia.[4]
Chapter 3
had a stall on the Portobello Road
A popular outdoor antiques market.[5]
Chapter 4
John Gould ... eagle owl
This lithograph appeared in Gould's book The Birds of Great Britain (1873) and can be seen in the Louisiana Digital Library's collection of prints from that volume. Gould's bird illustrations are widely available from commercial print sellers, and one vendor, apparently less sensitive than Neaera to the alarming effect of this image, described the eagle owl as "a striking addition to any room in the home".[6]
Chapter 6
Jimson Crow ... always stealing things
US readers may be startled to see a "Jim Crow" reference like this casually proposed as a joke for a picture book in England, and it is basically as bad as it sounds but for a slightly different reason. Before the name came to refer to segregation laws in the US, Jim Crow was a minstrel-show clown character—a carefree but untrustworthy Black stereotype. That character, and his theme song "Jump Jim Crow", became internationally known enough that Punch and Judy puppeteers in the UK borrowed the name and applied it to an existing (and equally racist) stock character who had previously been nameless. Up through the 1930s "Jim Crow" continued to be used in Punch shows, so someone of Neaera's generation might think of him as an old-timey reference from her own country, casually ignoring the offensiveness not unlike how a chain restaurant in the US continued to use the name "Sambo's" well into the '70s.
a relationship like that of the figures on Keats's Grecian urn
The guy on the urn can never reach his beloved, since they're painted on an urn, but at least they'll be eternally young and beautiful. ("Ode on a Grecian Urn")
Chapter 8
Polperro
A Cornish seaside town with a population of about 1,500. One travel guide claims that the touristy gift shops do not quite manage to spoil it.[7]
Chapter 10
"The Windhover"
Regardless of whether Neaera is fair to call this "a wet poem and twittish", it does seem fair to say it's got a few mannered words. (Full text)
"Basho's frog"
Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694) wrote in several poetic forms but is best known for haiku, including the one about a frog which one poet described as "almost definitely the most famous haiku ever composed on this planet."[8]
Thomas Bewick diligently followed the patterns of light
Bewick (1753-1828), like Gould, is best known now for his illustrations of animals, birds in particular. (Many are reproduced online by The Bewick Society)
John Clare looked carefully at hedgerows
Clare (1793-1864) wrote many poems focusing on nature and rural life.[9]
Ella Wheeler Wilcox implacably persisted
This is probably a dry backhanded compliment, as Wilcox (1850-1919)—extremely popular in her day, now best known for epigrams like "Laugh and the world laughs with you"—wrote hundreds of poems, nearly all of which were in the same meter and in four-line stanzas.
a round-the-world singlehanded sailing race in which one of the yachtsmen stopped
Neaera is talking about Donald Crowhurst; the story didn't end well.
Footnotes
- ↑ Carter, James. "Nutrition for the Eyes: An Interview with Russell Hoban from 1995". RussellHoban.org, November 2, 2015. Retrieved January 31, 2021.
- ↑ The Saturday Play: Turtle Diary, dramatised by Alison Joseph, directed by Gaynor Macfarlane. BBC Radio 4 FM, April 19, 2003.
- ↑ Cooper, Richard. "Russell Hoban on The Kraken". RussellHoban.org, June 20, 2015.]
- ↑ Thorpe, Vanessa. "How the florals and frills of Laura Ashley came to define an era". The Observer, September 16, 2018. Retrieved January 31, 2021.
- ↑ Walker, Dave. "Portobello Road in the 70s". Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea: The Library Time Machine, March 22, 2012. Retrieved January 31, 2021.
- ↑ Art Haven Prints. "Bird of Prey Eagle Owl Print by John Gould, Home Decor, Home Furnishing, Hunting Bird, Digital Downloads". On Etsy.com, retrieved January 31, 2021.
- ↑ "Polperro". Cornwall Guide. Retrieved January 31, 2021.
- ↑ Takiguchi, Susumu. "A Contrarian View on Basho's Frog Haiku". World Haiku Review, Summer 2005, reproduced online by the New Zealand Poetry Society. Retrieved January 31, 2021.
- ↑ Maye, Brian. "Lines from the Hedgerows". The Irish Times, May 2, 2014. Retrieved January 31, 2021.