Subject: Review: MR RINYO-CLACTON'S OFFER by Russell Hoban

From: "Evelyn C Leeper" <[email-masked]>
Date: 10 Apr 1998 13:30:47 -0400

[apologies if this is a duplicate; apparently my attempt to post it last
week failed.  --AW]

               MR RINYO-CLACTON'S OFFER by Russell Hoban
        Jonathan Cape, ISBN 0-224-05121-0, 1998, 182pp, L14.99
                   A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
		    Copyright 1998 Evelyn C. Leeper

     There has been much discussion of magical realism in
rec.arts.sf.written these days, and I think I would classify this as
magical realism.  That is, of course, a meaningless statement, since the
real question is not what category this fits into, but what this is about,
and what it says.

     The offer in question is the following: Mr Rinyo-Clacton will give
Jonathan Fitch a million pounds in exchange for the right to terminate
Fitch's life any time after a year has passed.  Fitch, who has just lost
his girlfriend and his job, agrees.  One thing leads to another, and the
next morning he wakes up realizing that he may have contracted the HIV
virus as well.

     Now, from a strictly logical standpoint, this makes no sense: if he
thinks he's going to die in a year, why worry about a virus which doesn't
even show up in a test for three months and would almost definitely not
progress from an HIV+ condition to AIDS in a year?  I know people who have
been HIV+ for many years now, and they have not yet developed AIDS.  But
people are not rational, particularly about death.

     One of the cliches about AIDS (and by extension, about the HIV virus)
is that those who having it are "living with a death sentence."  But we
all are.  Anyone could be hit by a truck, or choke on a piece of food.
It's just that they know it, and we don't.  So Fitch's reactions are
perfectly reasonable, in a bizarre way: he is more concerned about the HIV
virus that he *may* have, than about the agreement he signed selling his
death in a year.  Something--the media? one hates to blame them for
everything, so maybe it's human irrationality as reported and spread by
the media--something has convinced Fitch that the *possibility* of death
from AIDS at some unspecified future time is a more serious concern than
the virtual certainty of death from Mr Rinyo-Clacton at the end of a year.

     I presume that in mainstream contemporary fiction, AIDS has been
dealt with fairly extensively.  Since my contemporary reading is more in
science fiction, the examples I have seen are somewhat non-standard, and
usually involve a plague which has some similarity to AIDS.  But Hoban has
done the reverse.  Instead of looking at AIDS through the mirror of
another disease, Hoban looks at death through the mirror of AIDS. Fitch
feels that as long as he doesn't have HIV he's safe.  We all do this.  If
we don't have AIDS or don't smoke, or in general don't belong to that
other group over there... we're safe.  Death happens to other people.

     So here we have Jonathan Fitch, dealing with his two deaths, the one
theoretical but known, the other definite but unknown.  And his reactions
help us examine our own attitudes toward death.

     And what of the mysterious Mr Rinyo-Clacton and his gentleman's
gentleman whom Fitch describes as having "hands that looked capable of
crushing a skull like a walnut.  He was also in formal attire and almost
invisible in his attendance.  Except for the hands.  I thought his name
might be Igor but it was Desmond." What is his purpose in this contract?

     Note to fellow Yanks: There is no period in the title, the American
title of THE HOUNDS OF ZAROFF is THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, and
http://www.bookpages.com is my favorite British Web bookseller.  And in
passing I'll note that this is at least the second book in which Hoban
quotes Rilke's line, "For Beauty is nothing but the beginning of
terror..." ("Denn das Schoene ist niches als des Schrecklichen
Anfang...").

%T      Mr Rinyo-Clacton's Offer
%A      Russell Hoban
%C      London
%D      March 1998
%I      Jonathan Cape
%O      hardback, L14.99
%G      ISBN 0-224-05121-0
%P      182pp

Evelyn C. Leeper    |  [email-masked]
+1 732 957 2070     |  http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824
"What has the study of biology taught you about the Creator, Dr. Haldane?"
"I'm not sure, but He seems to be inordinately fond of beetles."