Hanging around reality's stage door

For some time now I have been studying the writing of Paul Shepard and have been impressed with how many of his ideas are reflected in Hoban's work. I cannot help thinking that Hoban must have read Shepard's books with an interest equal to or exceeding my own. In Riddley Walker, especially I have seen links to such Shepard oeuvres as Man in the Landscape, Coming Home to the Pleistocene, Nature and Madness, and others. While searches for "influences" are often futile, I believe that in this case the parallels are too obvious to be ignored. Most of Shepard's work was available to Hoban prior to the writing of Riddley. And certainly Hoban was interested in the cultures of the Pleistocene which are replicated in the "roading" culture out of which Riddley emerges (and to which he may return with new vigor). In the mother goddess religions of East Europeans Hoban finds a way out of the impasse presented by conflict with the authoritarian Ram. With this view in mind, the "gunpowder plot," which preoccupies most critics as the great revelation of the book, comes to seem nothing but a colossal red herring, and the ending of the novel, so far from seeming weak or befuddling, takes on all-important significance as Riddley, acting as the hero and consort of Mother Night, ritualizes the cyclic hunt to break once and for all the linear, historic bonds forged by the agricultural stasis of the "formers" and the iron chains of the proto-industrial, pseudoscientific Ram. This ultimate revolution would find enthusiastic approval by Shepard. What's more, it suggests a way out of the dead end we now face environmentally, politically, and spiritually. A new reading of Riddley, it seems, must pick up the banner to reveal this seminal novel's truly radical message.