tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post6574728606935257609..comments2024-03-29T12:03:37.344+00:00Comments on Bruce Charlton's Notions: Review of Alan Garner's Weirdstone of Brisingamen and Moon of GomrathBruce Charltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-10465348016158574092013-10-09T05:18:52.294+01:002013-10-09T05:18:52.294+01:00@PN - Both of our different analyses are based on ...@PN - Both of our different analyses are based on our different evaluations of quality - I am trying to understand why (by my evaluations) Gomrath and Owl Service were the peak and the later work was over-worked and lacking in inspiration; you are trying to understand why he kept (on the whole) getting better and better. Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-74149811923379271552013-10-08T21:50:20.886+01:002013-10-08T21:50:20.886+01:00I disagree. I read The Weirdstone of Brisingamen a...I disagree. I read <i>The Weirdstone of Brisingamen</i> and <i>The Moon of Gomrath</i> as a child and love them still, but I think that if Garner had continued to write in that vein he would have reached a dead end. Not least of the reasons is that there is just not enough room in suburban Cheshire for tales of elves and wizards on the scale of Tolkien, which is why the story is forced into underground caverns and snowbound conifer plantations for lengthy stretches. More generally, though, there is a fundamental mismatch between the two veins - heroic myth and rural folklore - which he was mining, and one of them had to go. <br /><br />The later Garner often voices sentiments I do not share, and I suspect that his imagined pagan survivals in the English countryside are wishful thinking, but that has no bearing on his quality as a writer. Would you dismiss Eddison or Le Guin for that kind of reason? <i>Elidor</i> is his weakest book, but that is because it is transitional, and even here the problem is the fantasy, while the novel-like sequences show an improvement in dialogue and characterisation. From <i>Red Shift</i> on, dialogue does most of the work, and Garner makes a dramatist's demands of the reader, but that is how he covers so much ground in a small number of short books. I think he has become a better writer, possibly a great one.<br /><br />I am not always in the mood for Garner and I have held off reading <i>Boneland</i>, though I bought it months ago, because I want to do it justice. I will be interested to see whether, and how, he brings things full circle.Philip Nealnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-7863907250220635632013-10-07T16:59:23.579+01:002013-10-07T16:59:23.579+01:00@SJ There are quite a few interviews around the we...@SJ There are quite a few interviews around the web - and a book of mostly biographical essays called The Voice That Thunders. <br /><br />"Or should I just read the novel?" I don't know what you mean by 'the novel' - I was referring to his later work in general - Red Shift and more recent. Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-40231093953417000772013-10-07T15:29:30.619+01:002013-10-07T15:29:30.619+01:00Garner was born into the artisan class but became ...<i>Garner was born into the artisan class but became upper middle class via an elite education... The tension of this transition, and the subsequent attempt psychologically to undo it, are obsessively dwelt upon throughout his later work.</i><br /><br />Really!? I would really love to learn more about this, as it sounds like a very near parallel to my own struggle with class transition - an experience of tension that never seems to be shared by anyone else.<br /><br /><i>But (I infer) the anti-Christian motivation led him inexorably on to brooding on his own class resentments which were so trite, so dull - and indeed so ultimately wicked, that their clichéd nature needed deliberately to be disguised behind ever more experimental and less accessible writing.</i><br /><br />Any way you can expand on this? Or should I just read the novel?Samson J.noreply@blogger.com