- (8:19) "some girt big rottin iron thing some kynd of machine"
From What Does It Do And How Does It Work?
Riddley never describes the ancient structure in any more detail, but it seems likely that Hoban had some shape in mind—if only because his first published book,
What Does It Do and How Does It Work? (1959), featured his own drawings and explanations of large machines. Jamie Madden notes Hoban's "interest in things mechanical," and describes the beasts in
What & How as "
chthonic," since "every single machine in this book is an earth-mover." (
Russell Hoban/Forty Years) In his dark, expressionistic illustrations, even a working machine looks almost as if it has already started to become one with the dirt, like the ruins at Widders Dump.