‘Garner lives and works close to the Edge and is neither metropolitan nor provincial, He’s closer to being parochial, in Patrick Cavanaugh’s sense, never being ‘in any doubt about the social and artistic validity of his parish'. But he’s more than that. He goes under the parish to fetch out stones, he cleans them, he inspects them, he turns them into steeples and into walls, he lifts them up to the stars above. He turns stones to words. He is the first in his line to use words not things...’ David Almond.
The postman
– late today – hands over the package. It is beautifully packed, so I open it
carefully to find a book that I’d forgotten I’d ordered. It’s a finely produced
book – good paper, good bindings. I smell it, as I always do with new books: a
seductive smell for a lifelong reader,
I had
forgotten it, because it’s months since I made my contribution to this important
book – a crowd-funded publication by Unbound of London. My own name
is there in the back, with hundreds of other individuals who contributed to the
publishing process.
First Light, meticulously edited by Erica Wagner, comprises a series of
celebratory essays and tributes to Alan Garner - that leading shamanistic
literary writer of his generation - that magus of the stones and the earth -who
can take us back with ease to into the magical ages of bronze and iron and the
Celtic sunrise.
Children are
at the centre of Alan Garner’s novels which speak clearly to children who read.
But he does not speak just to children. He speaks to all of us in the language
of storytelling which links the reality of today with the the myths and magic embedded
our human identity that we have inherited from with our Iron Age, Bronze Age and
Celtic ancestors.
One important
element in all Garner’s writing is that – unlike many so-called; fantasy
writers today – it derives nothing from the more esoteric escapist fiction of
CS Lewis or Tolkien. Looked at properly, Alan Garner – like David Almond,
quoted above - is much better labelled a
reality writer than a fantasy writer.,
This volume,First Light, features tributes from a
wide range of writers: from
David
Almond’s contribution is my favourite. As a writer he is closest to Alan Garner
in having the magical skill of using child characters to give us access to the
everyday magic all around us. Children
today can do this, still wrapped as they are, in the birth-caul of innocence.
We can do it too, using the child inside us as a conduit for wonderful insights.
These days an
increasingly rigid desire to catologue literature has led the public
imagination to categorise the work of supreme writers such as Garner and Almond
as ‘Children’s Literature’. Both of them are garlanded with prizes and awards
acknowledging their success specifically in this field. But they are much more
universally significant writers than that,
This
collection of essays – in which every contributor has her or his own personal story of the impact of Alan
Garner on their lives and their writing - convinces me even more that it’s time
we stop marginalising writers inspired
by and accessible to children and honour them in the mainstream of literature.
Every reader
will have their favourite in this collection. As I have said my favourite is
David Almond’s .And I was touched by the very different contributions from two
of Alan’s children the novelist Elizabeth and the scientist Joseph.
Philip
Pullman, in a fine appreciation, embraces the difficult task of analysing the
depth and complexity of Garner’s craft: ‘There’s an area of human activity where wiliness and cunning
share a border with magic and the ability to call spirits from the vasty deep,
and to call a storyteller crafty is not to disparage his craft but to
acknowledge the borderland between conscious skill and inspiration from
somewhere unreachable by logic and reason.’ He
goes on: ‘There’s much I’ve
stolen from Garner but this interest in craft, and the craft of story-telling has
been the most rewarding.’
As T S Eliot once said, ‘All good writers steal. The trick is to steal from the best…’
For me, as a
writer, the most inspiring words come Alan Garner himself. ‘At the bottom level, my
stories have to work as entertainment, keep a reader turning the page to find
out what happens next. At the top level, they have to work for me, say what I
want to express. In fact, I must write poetry, making words work on more than
one level, subjecting myself to the poetic disciplines - pace, compression,
simplicity.
Most of all I hope First Light will send
shoals of readers back to reading the excellent novels of Alan Garner.
