Books 2014 - The Body in the Clouds by Ashley Hay
I'm getting behind again - there'll be more books today, I suspect, now that I have my (unfixed) laptop back from the uselessness of PC World's repair shop (by the end of the week... we'll call you to let you know where it's up to in a couple of days if you like... - it hadn't been touched when I finally followed up the two phone calls I made by
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As far as I am aware, he's not in Australia; rather, he's still where he grew up, in Alderley Edge. I believe his house is in an area where land is now so valuable (because of footballers etc moving into the area) that he has made arrangements that on his death, it will not become yet another Des Res but instead become the property of a charitable trust, because there is history in every line of it.
But yes, Strandloper is the one I was thinking of, and it's one I haven't read either, but I have read about it, because he discusses it in his book of essays and lectures, The Voice That Thunders. That is a brilliant, fabulous, fantastic collection, btw, and explains a lot about him and his work, and you should definitely read that, but it's out of print and I lent my copy out and I strongly suspect the recipient has lost it. Waah.
One thing I remember him saying (writing?) wrt to Strandloper was about the Australian aborigines (I'm sorry, I can't remember whether that's the term he uses or whether he refers to the specific people, and I certainly don't remember which group in question he is referring to). And it was about this idea of what time is. Apparently some historian, sociologist, researcher, something (!) person had been told some stories and rituals which were never to be written down. And that person, aware that the people who remembered these things were growing fewer and fewer, felt that they should be preserved. And wrote them down. And there's this line in the essay (lecture?) about how this was 'a mistake'. Wrong. To the people whose stories they were, they might be 'lost' in this Western timeline, but in their thinking, the stories were still available somewhere, even if they were not currently available to people living now. I'm not explaining that terribly well, and, as I say, I can't check because my copy has gone (waah!), but it really struck a chord with me, and it fills in a lot about how he thinks and writes.
Slowing down - ah, well, I speed-read. Always have done, racing ahead. And as a child, these were books I found very difficult until I consciously blocked off all the text except the line I was on, and forced myself to go v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y. He's not a great one for extraneous text in any sense, so every word matters, and you have to fill in the unnecessary words yourself.
Actually - just remembered - this business of time and mutability. There's a bit in The Owl Service where Gwyn is outdoors at night, waiting for Alison to see what she's up to, and there's a reference to him 'playing with time', splitting seconds into fractions that last a year, or compressing five minutes into an eyeblink, something like that. Which apparently is something Garner did when as a child he was very ill. But yeah, more time changing...
(Edited to fix italics, ahem)
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I've heard about The Voice that Thunders, but not read it - I shall have to find a copy (hmmn, Amazon doesn't seem to think it's out of print, that's good!) The Aboriginal/story is interesting - there's some interesting views on the ownership of stories in other cultures (we assume that stories are free and wild things unless commerce gets its hands on them, but actually various cultures also think stories can be owned (if not necessarily commercially) and shouldn't in fact be freely told to anyone who asks... There's absolutely nothing in that idea that resonates with me, but I've a sort of morbid fascination to find out more, so thanks for adding another angle to my research, via Garner...
Ah, I remember your speed reading now - I'm not sure I've noticed about "slowing down" when reading his books, but then I tend to read at the pace of the book to start with, so I probably slow down without noticing when that's the rhythm of the story... if you see what I mean. *g*
Time is mutable...
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