In 1983, Fup came to life. Now it's a modern classic. Greg Eden from Waterstones.com looks back over twenty-five years of the mallard noone wants to mess with.
It is entirely appropriate that Jim Dodge chose to preface the brilliant and unique fable Fup with a haiku by Matsuo Basho, the acknowledged master of the Japanese verse form. In the finest tradition of the genre it is deeply rooted in nature, has a strong spiritual aspect and resonates long after the reading is over. Most tellingly of all, it is a short masterpiece that is far greater than the sum of its parts. Just like Fup.
There is comedy and tragedy in the first few pages, before we are introduced to the unforgettable Granddaddy Jake, one of my favourite characters in all of American fiction. Irascible, foulmouthed, stubborn and morally unhinged, he is a wonderful creation.
Taking a decidedly picaresque route that includes every card table and whorehouse in California, he lands up on a ranch in the back of beyond, where he dedicates himself to the production of the purest moonshine (Ol' Death Whisper), having been handed the recipe by an Indian dying after a street fight.
Not long after, he becomes unwitting guardian to the son of his estranged daughter. The boy grows into the gentle giant, Tiny, who adapts easily to country life and develops twin passions for fence building and pig hunting. Everyone needs a purpose in life, after all.
On a fencing expedition, he comes across his porcine nemesis, a giant wild hog named Lockjaw, in pursuit of a tiny bedraggled duckling. Revived by the miraculous powers of Granddaddy Jake's Ol' Death Whisper, the tiny duckling grows into a twenty-pound hen mallard with an enormous appetite, prodigious intelligence and a distinctive personality, the eponymous Fup.
Without ever plumbing the depths of comical anthropomorphism, Dodge brilliantly sketches Fup's development into an expert hog hunter, drive-in cinephile (she prefers weepies to either horror movies or Westerns) and occasional whisky drinker, and his language is beautifully expressive and poetic:
'Her walk was foolishly graceful, a hunched, toppling waddle that barely managed to sustain itself, a wobble continuously and precariously balanced by her outstretched neck, head swaying like a charmed cobra: a movement somewhere between a clumsy sneak and a hypnotic search. She was ungainly, yet effortlessly so; she proceeded at a steady lurch.'
The dynamics of the relationship between nonagenarian Granddaddy, benign Tiny and the mighty Fup supply the heart of this novel. Moments of real tenderness and laugh-out-loud, earthy humour are interspersed with brilliant, colourful dialogue.
While he has been compared to the likes of Mark Twain and Tom Robbins, Jim Dodge undoubtedly has a unique style of his very own, and this delightful book is an eloquent demonstration of his talents. I strongly urge you to sample a drop of them for yourself.
