The Voice That Thunders - Couverture souple

Garner, Alan

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1860463320 ISBN 13 : 9781860463327

Editeur : The Harvill Press, 1997

Synopsis

In this collection of lectures and essays, Allan Garner shows how, over the years, his thinking and writing have developed. They also demonstrate the wide range of his concerns and his scholarship: language, literature, education, mental health, anthropology, archaeology, myth, the spiritual quest, philosophy, music and film. Running through it all is his concern for excellence, innovation and humour, based on the effect of his childhood in a rural working-class family of craftsmen, and the combining of their standards with the academic world and his education as a classicist. The book is a poetic autobiography, starting with the description of his hearing himself declared dead at the age of six, and leading to the inevitability of his novel, "Strandloper". In the final essay, from which the book takes its title, he describes how "Strandloper" came to be written, and shows how all his skills were demanded to bring this work about, and how they transcended his previous expreience to prepare him for the work that lies ahead. Alan Garner is the author of "The Owl Service", "The Stone Book Quartet", "Elidor" and "Red Shift".

A propos du livre

Quatrième de couverture

"His is a consummate artist's vision that matches landscape and people and story; his is an artist's ear able to hear preliterate song as well as local speech and adolescent slang. With great skill he has wielded these into tales uniquely blending rustic vigour and classical economy of diction. They have won him a place in the company of English writers"

RALPH ELLIOTT, Labrys 7

Alan Garner is an exceptional lecturer and essayist. This collection, taken form the work of more that twenty years, explores an enviable range of scholarly interests: archaeology, myth, language, education, philosophy, the spiritual quest, mental health, literature, music and film.

The book also serves as a poetic autobiography of one of England's best-loved but least public writers. He hears himself declared dead at the age of six; he draws on the deep vein of a rural working-class childhood in a family of craftsmen who instilled the passion for excellence and for innovation and humour. The disciplines he learnt as a Classicist give a shape and clarity to that passion in this richly various book that would have fascinated his forebears, whose work and lives are also celebrated here. This most unusual, most candid, most vivid picture of an English family and its home, its country's history, is also a devastating revelation of a writer's own life. Alan Garner's account of his mental illness will become a classic, and each strand of the book will be a source of fascination to anyone who has ever fallen under the spell of an Alan Garner story, as also to all who concern themselves with the craft of writing.

"Garner is his own man... taut, powerful and credible..."

PENELOPE LIVELY

"His work has a symphonic quality unique in fiction"

JACKY GILLOT, The Times

Présentation de l'éditeur

Alan Garner is an exceptional lecturer and essayist. This collection, taken form the work of more that twenty years, explores an enviable range of scholarly interests: archaeology, myth, language, education, philosophy, the spiritual quest, mental health, literature, music and film.

The book also serves as a poetic autobiography of one of England's best-loved but least public writers. He hears himself declared dead at the age of six; he draws on the deep vein of a rural working-class childhood in a family of craftsmen who instilled the passion for excellence and for innovation and humour. The disciplines he learnt as a Classicist give a shape and clarity to that passion in this richly various book that would have fascinated his forebears, whose work and lives are also celebrated here.

This most unusual, most candid, most vivid picture of an English family and its home, its country's history, is also a devastating revelation of a writer's own life. Alan Garner's account of his mental illness will become a classic, and each strand of the book will be a source of fascination to anyone who has ever fallen under the spell of an Alan Garner story, as also to all who concern themselves with the craft of writing.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: The Harvill Press
• Date d'édition: 1997
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1860463320
• ISBN 13: 9781860463327
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 224
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible