Jim Dodge first had the idea for his 1983 novella while out digging post-holes for a fence on his Californian ranch on a rainy day. As the holes filled with water, he was suddenly struck by the image of “a little duck floating in a post-hole like a miniature pond”. The resulting book, Fup, which Dodge described as being “about the trauma of being bereft in the world and about where you find your consolation”, has seen Dodge compared to Mark Twain. It is also only around 100 pages long.

Despite its short length, it is hard to describe Fup to people who have yet to read it. It’s somewhat about 99-year-old Granddaddy Jake Santee who thinks his moonshine whiskey, Ol’ Death Whisper, makes him immortal; his huge grandson Tiny, who spends his time building fences with wires so taut the wind can play them like an instrument; and their friend, a giant duck who can’t fly and who wants to help Tiny hunt down a wild boar called Lockjaw who is destroying those fences. The duck also likes to dip her beak into Ol’ Death Whisper and has Christ-like qualities.

I could provide dozens of hilarious and beautiful quotes, but given the book’s brevity, I don’t want to overdo it. I love Dodge’s descriptions of his small cast, such as Jake: “Granddaddy was 5’5 in his cowboy boots and weighed just a notch over 100 – though he often allowed, upon the slightest provocation, that he was once 6’ and 200 pounds before hard work and harder women shrunk him down, and that if he was still within hooting distance of his prime he’d kick your ass into cordwood and have it stacked before the slash hit the ground.”

But it isn’t just the funny lines that get you. Fup begins in tragedy when Tiny finds his mother drowned, “floating face down as if she were looking for something she’d dropped on the bottom of a lake”. Jake takes possession both of Tiny, who he’s never met, and the large legacy left by his unfortunate mother. “When he’d heard about the inheritance from Gabriel’s lawyers, it had put a sparkle in his eyes; but when he saw his grandson for the first time, he felt a sparkle in his blood.” How not to love someone who feels like that?

The title itself is also a wonderful joke, but you really have to experience it for yourself. This brings me to the crux of why I want more people to read it. I long to talk about Fup and just how good it is, but I can’t really do that unless you’ve been there. As Dodge writes: “It just ain’t possible to explain some things, maybe even most things. It’s interesting to wonder on them and do some speculation, but the main thing is you have to accept it – take it for what it is, and get on with your getting.”

Dodge himself is almost as fascinating as his book. Among other things, he used to be a professional gambler (which he said was actually quite boring). In the late 1990s, there was a brief resurgence of interest in Fup and a rumour began that Dodge was actually Thomas Pynchon. He himself was keen to scotch the notion, or even the idea that he was a recluse himself, saying he only didn’t see many people because he lived at the end of a 15-mile dirt track. “If people make it out here, I talk to them,” he told the Independent in 1997.

I read Fup again shortly after the social-distancing lockdown began. It felt like getting some of the hugs I’ve been missing. But until you read it, you’ll just have to take it on trust that a story about a fat alcoholic duck made me simultaneously whoop with joy and want to cry.