The Voice That Thunders - Softcover

Garner, Alan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1860463320 ISBN 13: 9781860463327

Publisher: 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".

About this title

Review

"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)

"Garner is his own man... taut, powerful and credible" (Penelope Lively)

"His work has a symphonic quality unique in fiction" (Jacky Gillott The Times)

"Alan Garner's themes are huge, urgent, compassionate, his voice distinguished by clarity, compression, precision, depth of feeling and sharpness of thought" (Neil Philip in A Fine Anger: A Critical Introduction to the Work of Alan Garner)

Book Description

A rich collection of writings ranging through archeology, myth, music, philosophy, language and literature; it also serves as a poetic autobiography of a great and deeply English writer.

Edition details

• Publisher: The Harvill Press
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1860463320
• ISBN 13: 9781860463327
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224