for alan garner fans
Mar. 26th, 2009 08:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ewein2412This shows how utterly sievelike my brain is, because I really meant to post this on Tuesday BEFORE it was on. Anyway, John Waite has done an interview with Alan Garner for BBC Radio 4. It's half an hour long and features ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
steepholm as their first introduced Alan Garner expert! The woman from Waterstone's could be me, except I lost the Cheshire accent when I was about 7.
You should be able to pick this up in the US, too, but I don't think they keep the links up for more than a week after the show.
Return to Brisingamen
I am such a Garner freak that I actually have a cassette tape of the radio drama they pull a bit from in the middle of the interview.
you all know The Winter Prince is set in Alderley Edge, right? I put the villa at Camlan on top of my old house. Or more accurately underneath it, I suppose.
steepholm as their first introduced Alan Garner expert! The woman from Waterstone's could be me, except I lost the Cheshire accent when I was about 7.You should be able to pick this up in the US, too, but I don't think they keep the links up for more than a week after the show.
Return to Brisingamen
I am such a Garner freak that I actually have a cassette tape of the radio drama they pull a bit from in the middle of the interview.
you all know The Winter Prince is set in Alderley Edge, right? I put the villa at Camlan on top of my old house. Or more accurately underneath it, I suppose.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Now without formatting problems...
Date: 2009-03-26 09:04 pm (UTC)Apropos of nothing much, hearing that you're a Garner fan made me go oh! Of course! Because there are parts of The Sunbird that I love in the same way I love Weirdstone, despite how different the setting...and characters... and everything else... are.
I think it's because they have the same sort of rich feel-of-place to me, where what I love most is how lived-in the places feel as well as how specific.
Re: Now without formatting problems...
Date: 2009-03-26 11:08 pm (UTC)I never thot of Sunbird as particularly Garner-esque but the influence runs very deep. And in the radio programme, as I was listening to them describing Colin stuck in the 9-inch-wide underground tunnel, it suddenly made me think of the scene in Sunbird where Telemakos gets stuck in the air shaft.
Thinking back on it, I wrote Sunbird after a year of being obsessed with Strandloper. Probably not a coincidence.
It is true that I have to anchor everything I write in a strong sense of place.
Re: Now without formatting problems...
Date: 2009-03-27 09:13 am (UTC)Wow. I've been disoriented when this happens with a short piece, and just that little bit scared it'll never happen again. Thinking about it at novel length makes my head explode.
never thot of Sunbird as particularly Garner-esque but the influence runs very deep.
That's the thing! It's not in any specifics, and yet. (Though the tunnel/shaft might have been what started me unconsciously mapping them, since those two scenes (now that you mention it) evoked similar feelings in me.)
Oh and,
Re: Now without formatting problems...
Date: 2009-03-27 01:00 pm (UTC)Re: Now without formatting problems...
Date: 2009-03-27 01:08 pm (UTC)I have never been unable to read while sick before -- the problem always used to be that I'd run out of books :)
(Incidentally, from your lj, we have a lot of favourite authors in common. Hi!)
Re: Now without formatting problems...
Date: 2009-03-27 10:36 pm (UTC)For two years now I've run into that more and more, my left eye acting up last year and my right eye really bothering me this year, so I can completely relate to the frustration.
We not only have favourite authors in common, I've got one of your drawings for the help_vera donation ^^. Since then I've been sort of lurking at your LJ occasionally *waves back*
My main blog is at bookish.net though (not that I update that more often... and anyway I mirror the entries on LJ).
Re: Now without formatting problems...
Date: 2009-03-27 10:39 pm (UTC)Re: Now without formatting problems...
Date: 2009-03-27 04:11 pm (UTC)It was like that. I wrote a lot in my journal about it at the time because it was such a bizarre experience, but I remember thinking that Alison's description of being compelled to trace the owls from the plates or else she would explode was a good one. I was compelled to write it.
Mark was one year old at the time and would start to scream if I picked up a pen, cause he knew that that was me off in another world. And my husband always shudders when I say I wish it would happen again! Food and housework kind of went on hold for nine weeks.
Oh, and what
Re: Now without formatting problems...
Date: 2009-03-27 08:35 pm (UTC)Wow.
I've had that -- feeling compelled, feeling more like a story's being channelled than made up -- for a few days at a time at most. And that's long enough to reduce me to wet rag status. Nine weeks seems both an amazingly short time in which to write a novel, and an awfully long time to feel that way :)
(And thank you!)
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Date: 2009-03-26 09:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-26 10:43 pm (UTC)That part I didn't know. Yay.
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Date: 2009-03-26 11:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-26 11:12 pm (UTC)If you have trouble finding it, let me know. I have copies.
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Date: 2009-03-27 03:03 pm (UTC)Actually, I never twigged that. I'll bear that in mind next time I reread it.
I made a Weirdstone of Brisingamen pilgrimage to Alderley Edge many years ago, and was delighted to find I could identify so many of the locations in the book.
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Date: 2009-03-27 04:15 pm (UTC)