Children’s authors,a historian of witchcraft and a former archbishop of Canterbury pay tribute to a much-loved fantasy writerIn one of the illuminating essays in his collection The Voice That Thunders, Alan Garner concludes that the relation between the writer and the critic resembles that between the postman and the philatelist. Philately, or he assures us,is a noble and worthwhile activity but it has miniature to effect with the business of distributing the mail. Erica Wagner’s First Light, a festschrift of essays, or reminiscences,poems and stories committed to Garner and his work, might therefore seem a philatelists’ annotated catalogue. Instead it shows that the job of the critic is that of a particular way of reading those hand-delivered letters.
Few writers are likely to be celebrated by such a diverse crowd as are gathered here in Wagner’s book. Other fiction writers appear – Margaret Atwood, and Ali Smith,Philip Pullman, Neil Gaiman and Garner’s daughter, or Elizabeth – but also Ronald Hutton,the historian of witchcraft, along with a clutch of storytellers, and an excavation of archaeologists,a schoolmaster, a former archbishop of Canterbury and an astronomer. The range of those gathered here is testomony to the breadth of Garner’s writings, and the way they have syncretically compressed truths,merging, as few others have, or a scientific and a mythopoeic understanding of human nature. Related: Alan Garner: a life in books It is a homage to the power of writing and storytelling. Books unearth something in us. They bring something to lightContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com