Review of Alan Garner's Weirdstone of Brisingamen and Moon of Gomrath

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Alan Garner. The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (1960); and The Moon of Gomrath (1963).

I have just finished reading aloud the two earliest Alan Garner books, which is always a good test. I first encountered them in my mid teens, Gomrath first, caught fishing in the village library shelves -  therefore read them initially in reverse order.

I can still recall (sitting on my tree platform retreat! - book in hand) an almost delirious excitement at finding a book featuring two children encountering the world of magic surviving (hidden) into modern times, and containing Tolkien-like dwarves and a wizard, and convincing but strange elves.

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Garner adds his own distinctive elements, in the very detailed setting of both stories is his birthplace and home Alderley Edge in Cheshire; and an element of British folklore which is blended with the fantasy.

The folklore element comes partly from his own local knowledge, but also substantially from the 'neo-pagan' revival including the methods and stance of Robert Graves The White Goddess.

Garner has indeed remained within this neo-pagan world view ever since - dropping the fantasy and focusing more on the folklore. Consequently, the metaphysical basis of these books (and his others) is in reaction-against Christianity - but not reacting into secularism, but into the past as perceived through a neo-pagan lens as a place of where life was real, enchanted and deep (and with Christianity implicitly regarded as working against this enchantment and depth).

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The Moon of Gomrath (specifically) contains some really thrilling and memorable writing - the passage where Colin sees The Old Straight Track revealed by the rising full moon is wonderful; and indeed whenever the subject matter is The Old Magic (that is, nature magic as contrasted with the learned High Magic of wizardry) the writing is exhilarating. And this applies to the very last sentence - it is rare and unusual for a book to end so well.

(In fact Garner has said that he often works back from the last sentence, which comes to him by inspiration).

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My conclusion is that my teenage evaluations were about right: Gomrath is an outstanding work, Weirdstone much less so - being rather dull in some stretches, in particular the sixty something pages (about a fifth of the book) in underground tunnels.

(I think the dullness comes mostly from Garner having inserted too much literal detail from results of his geographical researches into the Alderley Edge terrain, including explorations of its mining remnants.)

Nonetheless, both are well worth reading, and the Weirdstone has several memorable parts, including in the otherwise overlong underground sequence.

The pursuit across the plains below Alderley Edge is very evocative - and the 'baddies' are well realized: the svart-alfar (i.e. dark elves - i.e. goblins), and the terrifying Mara are (unfortunately!) unforgettable.

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Garner went on to write Elidor, which was a step down in quality, and had something about it I didn't like - probably the typically mid-sixties Leftist theme of brooding class consciousness and resentments.

Garner was born into the artisan class but became upper middle class via an elite education - the famous Manchester Grammar School and Magdalen College, Oxford. The tension of this transition, and the subsequent attempt psychologically to undo it, are obsessively dwelt upon throughout his later work.

These class conscious elements also featured at the core of The Owl Service, which was pure folklore without fantasy elements; but were triumphantly swept up into a near perfect novel of mounting fear and tension, resolved at the very last with a triumphant twist and elation when Garner brilliantly transcends his own prejudices.

After The Owl Service came Red Shift which is almost incomprehensible - being almost entirely in pared-down dialogue and without explanation (Owl Service was sometimes on this path, but avoided excess) - and from that point Garner disappeared into - or underneath - a self-consciously 'crafted', pretentious but constipated prose with less and less of substance (or goodness) to make it worth digging-through the overlying inspissated matter.

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In sum, Garner's writing career demonstrates both the special strength and ultimate weakness of the neo-pagan reaction. In the Weirdstone and Gomrath he was briefly able to re-enchant modern life by presenting it as a thin skin concealing ancient folklore and behind that magic.

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.

All that aside - if you like Tolkien, do read The Moon of Gomrath at least - and probably Weirdstone too.

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Review of Boneland by Alan Garner (2012)

Overall rating Two Stars (from a maximum score of five stars) - Note: This review contains multiple 'spoilers', because I do not recommend reading the book.

Alan Garner wrote two of my favourite ever books - The Moon of Gomrath (1963 - which I will be re-reviewing soon) and The Owl Service (1967) - ostensibly written for children.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/review-of-alan-garners-weirdstone-of.html

But, I have considerable reservations - varying in strength - about the bulk of Garner's work. This reaches the maximum for the book under review - a novel called Boneland of 2012 (pp 149 - which retailed for £17, which runs at more than a pound for ten pages - steep!).

This seems to be Garner's final book - in the sense that he was in his seventies when he wrote it, and in the sense that the book tries to include references (some explicit and others coded) to all of his previous fiction, and to aspects of his autobiography (which can be found in the worth-reading, albeit very irritating, essay collection The voice that Thunders, 1997).

Boneland is supposed to be, in some sense, the final part of a projected trilogy which began with The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath - albeit in my view Gomrath ends superbly, perfectly, with - indeed - one of the best endings of any novel ever!

In one sense, Boneland is  indeed a third part of the series, because it (sort of) contains the child characters of Colin and Susan at a later stage in their lives. In another - more realistic - sense this is not the end of a trilogy - because this is hardly a novel at all and written for adults not children.

Indeed, at 149 pages and not much written on each page; Boneland is actually a novella not a novel; and despite its terse-to-the-point-of-incomprehensibility form, Boneland is actually not a tightly written novella, but rather a padded-out short story - since it is full of linguistic repetitions, sprawling doggerel and song lyrics, and a feeling of dramatic redundancy and slackness of plotting.

On the positive side, I did read the whole book (in about three or four hours, not hurrying - and I am a slow reader) - so it had enough to keep me going to the end. But having struggled throughout to understand what was going on...

(Since he wrote Red Shift in 1973, ostensibly for teens, Garner has been deliberately telegrammic; and the novels and stories consist mainly of short sentences of unattributed and unamplified dialogue - often with untranslated dialect words - so it is very hard to know who is speaking, what is happening, and what they mean. Garner - just about - gets away with it in Red Shift, given a reader's willingness to put in extra research and multiple re-readings it has raw power; but not since. In other words, post Owl Service, Garner is deliberately hard work - presumably on the basis that he believes it makes the writing deeper and more poetic if you cut out all 'inessential' words, and then a few more... This places later Garner as a very late example of the Imagist and experimental tradition of Ezra Pound and Basil Bunting.)

And having spent the whole novel setting up the final encounter...

When the end actually comes: it is lame.

In a nutshell, Boneland amounts to one of those 'clever' kid's stories which end "And then he woke up and it had all been a dream!"

As the final line of Boneland puts it: "It is a true story, said the other. It is a true Dream. Sleep now."

This means the book is not fantasy; and not only not-fantasy but actually anti-fantasy because it retrospectively re-frames and falsifies both the Weirdstone and Gomrath as happening only in Colin's 'dreams' And then claiming this makes them 'true' stories - presumably on the basis that these dreams effect his healing and individuation, or personal growth.

What Boneland actually is then - is a novel of psychotherapy, of Jungian analysis. The book accounts the inner story of a self-cure achieved via the ultimate self confronting autonomous archetypes of the collective unconscious - which present themselves as a full-blown psychosis of hallucinations and delusions (these psychotic phenomena including the previous two novels).

Thus: Colin finally, climactically (i.e. on page 147) meets his twin sister Susan and they embrace - she appears as a blank shadow; and he asks "Who are you?" to which she replies "You." And when 'Meg' (the psychiatrist who also, apparently, does not really exist - despite taking-up most of the middle half of the novella) afterwards asks where Susan was; Colin replies "Here".

In case we don't know our Jung; Meg explains that Susan "is the shadow that Shapes your light". Susan is merely Colin's shadow-self, his unacknowledged, suppressed, disapproved-of, private and shameful Self. And then Meg gives the typically psychotherapeutic advice to "Forgive yourself. Accept." to which Colin agrees: "Yes".  

I call that a shallow, clichéd and nihilistic cop-out of an ending.

Therefore, my advice to those who value Weirdstone and Gomrath is not to read, but instead to avoid, Boneland.

Review of Elidor by Alan Garner (1965)

The cover of my teenage copy of Elidor

I have always been disappointed by Alan Garner's Elidor (1965); coming as it does between two of my very favourite children's fantasy books The Moon of Gomrath (1963) and The Owl Service (1967). Indeed, I simply did not enjoy Elidor when first I read it (aged 14 0r 15), or at subsequent attempts. 

Yet, Elidor has been the most well-known of Garner's four children's fantasies; being often taught in schools, and leading to a BBC TV series. So I thought I would give the book another try - this time in the audio version read by Jonathan Keeble. 

I can see why I was not much taken by the book, since it is structured more like a thriller than a fantasy. The fantasy elements are swamped by the detailed, realistic descriptions of physical and social life in Manchester and its suburbs - which are often grimy; replete with arguments, angst and stresses; and containing implied 'social commentary' (which are very likely the exact reasons why British school teachers appreciated this book above Garner's true fantasies).  

Furthermore the book starts slowly and with a miserable tone. Following a deal of childish bickering, the fantasy land of Elidor is briefly glimpsed and seems almost-wholly unpleasant and hazardous. Malbron - the only Elidorian man the children talk-with - is a callous and unsympathetic character, and we know hardly anything about him - or indeed Elidor. 

The early chapters set up the main interest of the book which is that four siblings have been given (against their will) the task of guarding four treasures of Elidor, needed to stop the land being destroyed. 

However; I felt that I did not know enough about Malebron to be confident that he was honest, or to care whether Elidor was a place worth saving at great risk to the children. 

The siblings return to modern Manchester with the treasures disguised as modern objects - and the best part of the book is the exciting middle section during which the children gradually realize that the treasures are hazardous (giving-off a strong and disruptive electromagnetic field).

The treasures are also attracting sinister warriors from Elidor - who are repeatedly trying to break-through to the modern world, and getting closer and closer... 

After the slow pace and detailed descriptions of the main book; the ending is abrupt, feels incomplete, and is emotionally unsatisfying. 

Furthermore - it is so complete a plot re-set, as to leave the children in their modern world without any record or residue of their experiences: apparently the modern world is completely unchanged by its period communication with Elidor. 

So, the retrospective reframing of the Elidor narrative - looking back from its ending - is that its only purpose was to save a land we barely know; and that the process has been futile from a modern perspective.

Everything that happened 'might as well' have been a dream or a delusion (as some of the siblings tend to believe, about halfway through the story)...

And this was, unfortunately, Garner's own retrospective reframing (in Boneland some half century later) of his first two novels (Weirdstone of Brinsigamen and Moon of Gomrath) - as nothing more than dream-delusions of one of the child protagonists. As I remarked in my review - this is anti-fantasy, being subversive of fantasy - as evidenced by its rejection of eucatastrophe. 

The actual ending of Elidor comes across as cynical, pretentious, and indeed aggressive. 

This is very interesting to me in contrast with Garner's previous Moon of Gomrath; which ends with the liberation of the Old Magic into the modern world, and the implication that things will never be the same again - that, indeed, the modern world is just about to be transformed (for the better, it is implied) by a resurgence of enchantment and a renewed contact between Man, nature and the spiritual powers. 

My best guess would be that Garner underwent some kind of profound disillusionment between the writing of Gomrath and Elidor - which left him increasingly bitter and resentful (which is how he generally strikes me, as a person). 

But this is speculation; what is clear from the texts is that Garner lost his youthful optimism and decided to explore and evoke downbeat pessimism and despair in his later fiction, lectures and essays. 

My evaluation of Elidor is that overall it fails structurally as a novel and as a fantasy; and fails to establish credible characters and motivations in relation to Elidor. On the plus side, it is genuinely tense and exciting through the middle section and until near the end - which section, after all, includes most of the book.  

 

Why The Owl Service is best: Ressentiment and Alan Garner

Alan Garner has often claimed to be motivated, as a writer, by anger - which he present as a righteous anger on behalf of others. But the sad reality is that he is all-too-often motivated by ressentiment: Nietzsche's term for a selfish, brooding, envy and spite - resentment, a kind of pride.

My conviction is that Garner began, all-but free of resentment - so in the first two books (Weirdstone of Brisingamen, Moon of Gomrath) it is absent. But it makes an appearance in Elidor as class consciousness - and, for me, significantly mars that book.

But with The Owl Service, which was written next - and perhaps because it is set in Wales rather than Garner's native Cheshire, giving distance - the ressentiment is taken-up into the story; and is overcome triumphantly in one of the best endings of any book, ever.

Consequently, the Owl Service is the summit of Garner's achievement - a 'perfect' (ie. unimproveable) book for older children to set alongside the greatest in that genre.

With Red Shift, the ressentiment returns in force, with endless brooding-on, depiction-of, the problems of a working class intellectual (i.e. Garner himself, or how he sees himself). And the pretentiousness of writing style (belated late modernism - of the Ezra Pound, Basil Bunting type) becomes solidified and inescapable.

His last novel, Boneland, ends with a categorical repudiation (to me, a betrayal) of the vision of his early novels - consigning them to a psychotherapeutic pseudo-reality.

After all, in the end - Garner's great gifts and vision and dedication and honesty are all overwhelmed by his lack of spiritual development - by his spiritual degeneration through adulthood. Since the writing is constrained by the man; how could it be otherwise?

Nobody - through a long life - not the genius artist - not anybody; can escape the malign consequences of rejecting God, of setting oneself against God...

Alan Garner versus JRR Tolkien - the "Anxiety of Influence"

The book in which Garner decisively began to react-against Tolkien

I discuss Alan Garner's work in term of his Anxiety of Influence with respect to JRR Tolkien, over at my Notion Club Papers blog. 

Alan Garner's Elidor reviewed by John Fitzgerald

"Every word in Elidor is freighted with gold.

"Published in 1965, Alan Garner's third novel does for Manchester (and all cities by extension) what The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (1960) and Moon of Gomrath (1963) did for the valleys, woods and hills of Cheshire. He imbues the cityscape with a numinous depth charge. The stuff of everyday urban life - lamp posts, railway bridges, terraced houses - take on an almost sacramental glow, pointing to a level of understanding beyond the reach of materialist models of reality. One world segues into another. Take this passage, for instance":

Roland ran along the wider streets until his eyes were used to the dark. The moon had risen, and the glow of the city lightened the sky. He twisted down alleyways, running blindly, through crossroads, over bombed sites, and along the streets again. Roland stopped and listened. There was only the noise of the city, a low, constant rumble that was like silence.

He was in the demolition area. Roof skeletons made broken patterns against the sky. Roland searched for a place that would be safe to climb, and found a staircase on the exposed inner wall of a house. He sat on the top in the moonlight. It was freezing hard. Roofs and cobbles sparkled. The cold began to ache into him. He wondered if the others had decided to stay in one place and wait until he came.

This thought bothered him, and he was still trying to make up his mind when the unicorn appeared at the end of the street. His mane flowed like a river in the moon: the point of the horn drew fire from the stars. Roland shivered with the effort of looking. He wanted to fix every detail in his mind for ever, so that no matter what else happened there would always be this. (pp.188-192)

"Who can forget writing like this? No-one in my experience. I've never known a book, at least among my circle of friends, which retains its impact for so long in the reader's imagination. People can recall whole scenes. Either that or specific images, such as the fiddler in the slum clearance area, leap into their minds as soon as the book is mentioned."

 

http://albionawakening.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/this-charged-land-alan-garners-elidor.html

Bad endings in books (and movies) - what do they mean?

I can never really endorse a book (or movie) that ends badly - and there are a lot of them. I mean works that begin well and fall to pieces to end poorly. It seems to be much more difficult to end well than to begin well. 

It is interesting to speculate why this might be. There might be many reasons - but one is clearly that the author is technically able to write, but does not have anything to say. The book goes nowhere, because there is nowhere for the book to go. 

This is a product of the fact that the work cannot be greater than the man - and there are a lot more technically-adept Men than there are great Men. 

For the same reason, there are a lot more first-rate minor writers, than major writers; and many problems arise from a minor writer trying to give the impression he is major. The word for this is pretentious.  

Another, related phenomenon is more modern - which is an author striving for originality or to 'make a point' - usually of a socio-political nature. Such authors sabotage their own works by their desire to avoid at all costs being clichéd; avoiding what they regard as tropes or stereotypes; wishing to be known as to be 'subversive', edgy, dark... 

That is; the desire primarily to please critics, editors, scholars and 'pseuds' in general. Naturally, this leads to poor works. 

Such self-sabotage with the intent of garnering the praise of those whose world view is primarily ideological can, itself, be a mask for incompetence; but is not necessarily so. 

One of the most notorious self-sabotages in literature is the ending of Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw; which has Eliza Doolittle marrying Freddie instead of Higgins - as the narrative irresistibly suggests she would. 

Shaw was trying to make an anti-romantic ideological point - as he explained in a (very unconvincing!) post-script; and for this he was prepared to wreck the end of a brilliant play - and he then doubled-down on this error. 

Because the actors who were successfully touring Pygmalion away from London changed the ending (without telling Shaw) by adding some unspoken 'business' to imply that Eliza would actually marry Higgins. This 'played' much better with the audiences; who were otherwise leaving the theatre confused and dissatisfied.

Shaw was incensed when he found-out, and did his best to stop it; yet when Pygmalion was converted to one of the most successful musicals ever - My Fair Lady - the anti-Shaw pro-Higgins ending was retained.  

Shaw was setting his undoubted genius against the autonomous and irresistible demands of natural narrative - and not even Shaw could make anything else work. 

In writing Pygmalion; Shaw had something to say, and said it - which is why the work has lasted. But for the play to be truthful, there can only be one ending - and it is not the ending that Shaw wanted to write. 

There are many works that contain much that is good, but are marred by a bad ending; and whether one responds to such works is a matter of preference. 

A couple of examples from my experience are Phillip Pullman's 'Dark Materials' trilogy; which begins very well indeed but begins to fall to pieces even before the end of the first volume - and of course ends very poorly. 

(The reasons why have been definitively described by John C Wright in his essay collection Transhuman and Subhuman). 

Another example is Elidor by Alan Garner - which is generally well-liked but which has an ending that is both abrupt and unsatisfying. 

Why this should be, I believe to be related to an element of bitter, disillusioned (apparently guilt-motivated) class-resentment; that seems to have grown in Garner throughout adult life almost to overwhelm him - and to spoil most of his books (and especially the endings).

Both Pullman and Garner are technically very gifted writers who are limited by their own natures, which are significantly stunted by their (very typically modern) failure to learn from experience and consequent doubling-down on a false and nihilistic world view. 

That same critic-pandering, reality-rejecting pathway was pioneered by James Joyce with Finnegans Wake, and Samuel Beckett from 'Godot' onwards. 

From the above analysis it can be seen why so many movies of the past few decades fail to end well - after a promising start. 

There is this determination to be praised for 'courageous' (ha!) subversive/ edgy/ dark qualities - for imposing value, sex and plot inversions without regard for the natural demands of narrative. So the movie draws us in, sets-up a situation - then delivers... nothing. No closure. No meaning. 

(And then gets Establishment-praised for 'bravery'!)

To construct a coherent and satisfying movie remains possible (e.g. Groundhog Day, Dunkirk), but is never easy nor common - and these all have a strong sense of inevitability about their unfolding and resolution.  How much simpler to write politically-correct dross - and reap the awards...

Surprising plot twists and ends can be done effectively - e.g. Maleficent, Rogue One; but always by deploying some alternative 'traditional' story trope - such as self-sacrificing heroism. 

In other words, new story shapes are possible; unpredictability and surprising twists may be effective. But these require exactly the kind of endorsement of narrative inevitability that the subversive/ edgy/ dark anti-heroic impulse rules-out.  

In sum; some of the poor endings (and, indeed, middles) of novels and movies can be explained in terms of authorial limitations; but even-more is subtracted by authors trying to make socio-political points, or curry the favour of cultural gatekeepers at the cost of narrative destruction. 

People in the night sky?

 Star Child by 'Emerald Seed'

This is just an example of the way my mind 'works' - the way a train of thought emerges, gets picked-up and followed-through...

I was thinking about Alan Garner's novel Boneland, which I disliked pretty strongly - but which (being by Garner) had some interesting aspects that stuck in the mind and worked there. One was that the protagonist Colin was a radio-astronomer who was (somehow) using the Jodrell Bank astronomical radio-telescope to try and dicover signs of his long-lost sister Susan in the night sky.

It is never explained what he was trying to do, what he expected to find or why - but that basic idea rather fascinated me: using a vast radio telescope to look for someone in the night sky.


I was also thinking, as one does, about the extraordinary fact of resurrection: that Jesus did not only promise us eternal life, as our-selves, but life everlasting as embodied persons. Eternal life might have been (usually is) thought to be in the form of a spirit; but no - we Christians are going to live forever with bodies. Amazing!

Because everything we know about bodies - in this world, in our mortal lives - suggests that a body could not be eternal; that it would (soon or late) wear-out, get-broken or somehow destroyed - maybe exploded... Yet not so: we will live forever, and we will have bodies.


(No wonder that so many people think Christianity incredible, in the sense of beyond credibility! No wonder so many Christians play-down this aspect of the faith - and indeed seem secretly, implicitly, to believe is discarnate spirit life beyond death.)


So, those who love, have faith in, follow Jesus will live forever in bodies that will not age, will not suffer disease - and are indestructible.

And since these are bodies, they have a location. Heaven is not some abstract state of being or consciousness - it must be an actual place (or places), inhabited by solid-bodied immortal human deities.


Where, then, is Heaven?

Well, I don't know - but it must be somewhere (or several/many somewheres). And, since it is apparently not here on earth - Heaven might well be somewhere in 'outer space' - somewhere out there among the stars...

Maybe a planet, or (and this is where it starts getting weird) it could be a star...  because if resurrected Men are indestructible, then they could inhabit... well, anything; even including a star that is hot enough to melt rock, hot enough to fuse hydrogen.

(Just imagine that! Being able to go right up to, get inside, our sun - or some other star...)


Therefore... Maybe it was not such a crazy idea for Colin to look for his sister Susan (who had 'died' from this world, in some way) among the stars, and - given that she may have become an immortal (small-g) god - maybe it would be possible for her to signal her presence to her brother in a way detectable by radio telescope; if, for whatever reason, there was some purpose to her doing so.

All of which brings an interesting new aspect to looking at the night sky: a fair sky-field, full of folk*, perchance.

*Piers Plowman by William Langland, c1380 - Lines 13-19.

The numinosity of hilltop tree clumps

This landscape feature is one that much appeals to me, and which seldom fails to induce a yearning kind of numinosity.

I realised recently that the interest and feeling probably came from the cover of my teenage-bought edition of Alfred Watkins's The Old Straight Track.

So that is the (suggested) link between such tree clunps and ancient landscape features - they are supposed to mark 'ley lines', which - according to Watkins - were Neolithic pathways criss-crossing Southern England.

I heard about Watkins's book from the references at the end of The Moon of Gomrath by Alan Garner - and found a copy in the Bristol City Library; Garner has the Old Straight Track as a magical path visible only at full moon, as the moon rises - it plays an important part in the story, and provides its most memorable scene.

Later, John Michell (in A View over Atlantis) took Watkins's Ley Lines and made them into lines of spiritual power - but I knew nothing of this during my teens.

Anyway, all this seems to have left me with a particular sensitivity to a particular landscape feature. The Hundred Acre Wood in Winnie the Pooh is also sometimes depicted like this - which may have been a further latent aspect of my interest; as also a very good children's book called Borrobil by William Croft Dickinson (1944) - a kind of neo-pagan precursor to Narnia, and also written by a Professor.