The Voice That Thunders, page 9
My plausible structure had collapsed, and there was no other in sight to support me. Yet the story I had begun was, I found, still alive and working. It was called “The Weirdstone of Brisingamen”, and it would not go away. I had to write it, for its own sake and mine; so I began again, and, this time without any consideration for any kind of audience.
It is often said that one has either to suppress or forgive a first book; and The Weirdstone of Brisingamen has the strengths and weakness of all first books; but it was as good as I could make it at the time, which is as much as a writer can ever do. When a book is finished, it has to be let go. And that is how it has been with every one. I have made it as good as I could and let it go. I have written for the book, and have left the readership to take care of itself.
It would be convenient if I could make that bald statement and leave it at that; but the twenty-five years have shown me a less simple truth.
Despite my protestations about ghetto writing, it would seem that what I write is read by young people, if left alone, with greater intelligence, willingness, sensitivity, understanding and attack than most adults are prepared to allow me. Why this should be, I have no idea. If I do, after all, speak more clearly to a group than to the whole, I feel that the reason must lie rather with my psychopathology than with literary criticism, and I should be unwise to press the matter further.
I have fewer letters from children than from adults, but it is not the numbers that count. It requires involvement, I would call it disturbance, to produce the energy needed to compose a letter. That involvement most commonly registers as marked approval, or as a more marked anger; but it is not always so simple.
Because a writer is exposed in a book, sometimes the reader presumes a familiarity that the writer can find hard to handle. Letters can be explicit cries for help, and the writer must learn to deal with them properly, for even the most grotesque is a response to the words that were written; and such response begets responsibility. Yet that reponsibility has to be defined in the writer’s mind, otherwise that mind is at risk. The point of cut-off must be clear.
But does the writer have a responsibility to the reader? The primary responsibility is to the text. What the reader makes of the text is outside the writer’s control.
Does the reader have a responsibility? In a sense, no. Having established the contract by buying the book, or by borrowing it from a library, what you do with the book is your concern, and I must not complain. You may use it as a doorstop, or to press flowers, or even to teach from, provided you do not expect me to make the book heavy with the door in mind, large enough for your favourite poppy, or more convenient for your syllabus or philosophy.
Both writer and reader have further duties, if they are to benefit from their experience. A book, properly written, is an invitation to the reader to enter: to join with the writer in a creative act: the act of reading. A novel, it has been said, is a mechanism for generating interpretations. If interpretation is limited to what the writer “meant”, the creative opportunity has been missed. Each reading should be a unique meeting, leading to a new interpretation. Nor should the writer’s duty end at the text.
Writing is solitary and isolate, but only in execution. I work alone, in an empty room; yet that work, though solitary, is not private. Somewhere, in another place and another time, which will become another here and another now, there will be a communication with another mind. My duty is first to the text, because the writer is, by writing, above all making a claim for excellence. In working the language, as a farmer works the land, we seek to strengthen it against abuse, to protect it against decay, to encourage it towards growth. We hope to leave the language the better for our writing; and that writing is achieved only in isolation. Yet, at the end, there is always somebody, an unknowable “you”, whom I wish to reach. And, for that contact, I am responsible.
Because you are unknowable, because reading should be itself a creative act, I cannot predict your response; but equally, I cannot ignore it. Response does beget responsibility; and the question of where that should start and finish is the question that is asked in every letter and becomes the challenge of each reply.
“I am writing to you rather in desperation, as I don’t know of anyone else who might know. I have been drawn to witchcraft for a number of years, but as yet have never succeeded in contacting a coven. I read some books of yours a year or two ago, and I remember deciding at the time that if you did not actually belong to a coven, you were at least au fait with the subject. I wonder if you could suggest a good way to contact a local coven. Since witches generally keep the business to themselves, they’re rather hard to find, at least round here. I would be grateful if you could help. But even if you can’t, thank you for some beautiful books.
Love . . .”
“I am writing to you to bring to your notice, if you have not already seen it, an article in the Daily Telegraph of March 3rd. This states that a Wilmslow policeman saw an object surrounded by an eerie glow, a hundred yards from his beat on the A34 just south of Wilmslow.
“The U.F.O. was then said to have streaked off in a south-westerly direction, which is, according to my rough calculations, with the aid of the maps in The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, in the general direction of the Devil’s Grave and the Iron Gates!
“Do you think that this has any connection with the Legend of Alderley?”
“I don’t know whether or not you are familiar with the ‘theory’ of R. R. Shaver, a welder from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but it would seem that your first book. The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, and J. R. R. Tolkien’s book, The Lord of the Rings, and many others deal roughly with the same subject. ‘What has Shaver to do with the above books?’ you may ask. Well, Mr Shaver once had published a ‘science fiction’ story. This was all published as ‘science fiction’, but Shaver, and many other people, not only say they agree with him, but say that it is a FACT! No publisher would publish the story unless it was labelled ‘science fiction’. They feared it wouldn’t sell if otherwise labelled. Now, in your book, and those of others dealing with underground ‘civilizations’, there are two rival factions, one evil, the other warring on evil. Is your book based on fact?
“If by any chance your book is based on fact would it be possible for you to let me know how you came by such information? I repeat, it is possible that it could reveal the mystery of flying saucers. If the answer is in the negative, I am sorry to have troubled you.”
“I have been besieged by college boys at Brighton Technical Institute. The word has been put round that I know of the Secret of the Third Race, and where are the entrances of these caves. One asked me, where was the city of Lorr, was it in England?
“Some of the boys have been potholing in Derbyshire. Flying discs have been seen hovering over Yorkshire moors and Derbyshire for several weeks. I have been contacting people through the students. One I traced in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, a very elderly man who worked in coal-mines. He has a map and some very rare knowledge. I have written to him and he spends his time fishing in the canals near Wisbech. The locals call him the Professor and they bait him. He wrote me a very guarded note of where to meet him, fishing at Floods Ferry, March, Cambridgeshire, in the Middle Level Catchment Board area; he has some secrets to impart; but I would have to treat him to dinner; he drinks light wine but does not get drunk. One student gave him my address when he did a tour this year with his friends. The student says he has some maps of the caves in Derbyshire and some unusual knowledge of the green men who come from the bowels of the earth.
“I wrote and told him that as a Cambridgeshire man and a keen fisherman, could we have a Research talk; he responded that he would be pleased to meet me, a real Fenman. He would exchange the knowledge for certain knowledge of the Isle of Ely. I have not the fare to travel with and put up for one night. Could this be a lead, do you think? Is it worth it? If I could get a small loan for the journey for Research work, I would go. Things are very sticky in Brighton at the moment. I am under the doctor, so would be able to travel on convalescence for a day or two to see the maps. The old man has explored several miles of caverns and seen the green men, and talked with them in sign language. Also some pieces of, or fragments of stars from outer space found thousands of feet underground. He has sent me a sample of a strange object; I have loaned it to a college student for chemical tests; and a fossil called a Shepherd’s Crown given by the green men to the gentleman; it’s a small one, very rare. I now believe that we might have a lead,
Best wishes,
Bill the Caveman”
“Re your beautiful Weirdtone, are you at all interested in subsurface matters? Our club has collected quite a lot of fantastic information we would gladly share, e.g. a major who says he entered Speedwell cavern, Derbyshire, and found a network of tunnels known to Boadicea. We quite understand authors are not obsessively interested in what they write about, but you seem to have ‘more than mortal knowledge’”.
From the whole correspondence (which includes the formula for making interstellar fuel from sea water), I have been able to infer what this “more than mortal knowledge” is that I possess.
Some two million years ago, a colonizing party from Alpha Centauri landed on Earth and established a base under the ice of the South Pole. Since then, the Alpha Centaurians have been monitoring the development of human intelligence. A tunnel-system has been made in the Earth’s crust connected to the base at the South Pole, and at various significant places, mainly in northern Europe, including Alderley Edge, depots of equipment and resources have been set up against the day, now imminent, when homo sapiens will have reached a level of sophistication that can accommodate the greater wisdom that the Alpha Centaurians are prepared to reveal to us.
Culture shock is seen as such a danger that the Alpha Centaurians have decided to prepare us by feeding our collective unconscious with images of the forthcoming truth. Their way has been to enrol certain individuals, of whom I am one, to supply parables through the ages, and, now that the day is at hand, to prepare young minds for the coming revelation that they will live to see.
That, briefly, is the state of things at the moment. And, when all the material, from different, yet cohering, sources, is read together, it has a compulsion and a momentum of its own. The main flaw is that it is all news to me. I am not a missionary. I just tell stories; unless the Alpha Centaurians are being subtle with me beyond my knowledge.
However, this exchange, of which I have given only a part, provides one of the clearest examples of the unpredictability of the reader’s response. For most of the time, one’s ingenuity is not so severely tested.
“Dear Mr Garner,
I have read both your books, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath. They are the best books I have ever read. They are lifelike and exciting. I have never read a book so quick, then straight on to The Moon of Gomrath. I have read them over and over and over again. So, Mr Garner, I hope you will write more books like this about Colin and Susan. Please could you inform me if you do write any more books, will you inform me so I could get them?
Your admirer,
Frank Brooks, age 14.”
That letter, from an address in the backstreets of inner-city Manchester, is typical of the headlong enthusiasm children can show for a book, if the reading of it has not been shackled by an adult. For the writer, the most heartening response is the repetition of the reading. And with the willingness to read goes a level of comprehension that such a complete engagement alone seems to produce.
“I am at the moment reading The Owl Service for the fourth time, although I should really be working for my History and English ‘A’ levels! I simply can’t leave it, even though I know exactly what is going to happen. When I read it, I was inspired to read The Mabinogion, which I think is a marvellous book. Are the characters in The Owl Service meant to coincide exactly with those in The Mabinogion? I’m always a bit puzzled by that, though that is not intended as a criticism. I wish, too, that I knew what happened after the end of the book, although the ending is so good that anything else would have been a perfect anti-climax.
“I have read your other three books several times, but I can’t go on re-reading four books for ever. So when are you going to write another? The last was published five years ago. Have you given up writing, or is the next book going to be a masterpiece? I hope it will be.”
“I am a thirteen-year-old student in Tasmania. I have read The Weirdstone of Brisingomen, The Moon of Gomrath and Elidor and enjoyed them immensely, but even that did not prepare me for The Owl Service. I have read this book twenty-seven times! Each time I read it, I enjoy it more.
“Every time, I find more symbolism. How long did it take to write it? Things I especially liked were the way you used dialogue most of the time, and the way Margaret never actually appears in the book, although she controls everything. I didn’t realize that until the second time I read it.
“However, for me, one of the best things about your book is the way you never tell the reader anything; you only show us through what is said and through events. I really enjoy writing – don’t panic! I’m not sending you something ‘for you to have a look at, sir’”.
“I am a sixteen-year-old Australian schoolgirl, J—— P——, greatly interested in European folklore, particularly English. But being both Australian and a schoolgirl, my interest exceeds my knowledge. I bought The Weirdstone when I was twelve, and began to do ‘research’ on the origins of the names. I have discovered many, but there are just as many about which I can find no information.
“Do you think you could answer the following formidable list of questions? Do not, if you have too many other demands on your time, but I would be grateful if you would. Here goes . . .”
And here went. The list was, in truth, formidable in its length and in its detail. It took me two days to answer the questions, but they implied such a close reading of the text that I could be no less thorough in my reply. Miss P. did not leave the matter there.
“About nine months ago I wrote to you with a catechism on The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. I am now following this up, thanks to your kind encouragement, with another on The Moon of Gomrath.”
The second catechism followed, which was another day’s work in the answering. Then the letter continued:
“It is, despite being a distinguished Matric Literature student, impossible for me to be coherent in praising. All I can say about Gomrath is: blood on a silver sword across a fire is its atmosphere as I see it.
“Forgive me if I talk about myself when I say I’m talking about Gomrath. Literary criticism’s a funny thing when it’s not criticising, and I have nothing to criticise, for it either has to say: ‘lovely, beautiful, marvellous’ or make poetic similes like I did. So I’m writing a book. Writing helps you to understand writing, and I appreciate more such scenes as Colin on Shining Tor now I have tried to do the same myself.
“Could you please tell me something about spells and magic manuscripts? Oh, how awful it is to live in Australia! You are so out of it as far as information goes. And I love information. I get almost as much pleasure from tracking down your sources as from reading your books. I am copying out the Elder Edda by hand, having done the Prose Edda. Bother Australia and being sixteen!”
That was the end of the correspondence. Three years went by; then I had a postcard from Australia, scrawled on by Miss P., to tell me that she was about to take up a place at the University of Reykjavik to read Icelandic Studies. Nothing before or since has made me feel more elated and justified in what I try to do. To be able to stimulate the imagination of a Frank Brooks, age 14, in the slums of Manchester, and to trigger the motivation of an Australian teenager to find out how to cross the world to achieve what she needs, and for her then to do it, is worth all. There are just as many letters that make less comfortable reading.
“I hope you don’t mind me writing to you, but I am currently undertaking a small piece of research for a postgraduate course at Loughborough University. I am particularly interested in the selection of texts for the English literature ‘O’ levels, ‘A’ levels and even degree. It concerns me that exams might actually discourage creative thinking about literature.
“I wonder if you have any thoughts, or reactions, about your material being used. As far as your novels are concerned, they never actually appeared on the exam syllabus I did, and I had read The Owl Service, Elidor and The Weirdstone of Brisingamen before being officially ‘introduced’ to them at school.
“After this introduction, I dropped any other of your works immediately: it was almost as if my recreational reading had been made ‘respectable’ by appearing on the school curriculum. I don’t think mine was a unique experience, either.
“I have since returned to your novels, but something is missing from that original experience: perhaps the intensity of the reading. I know I seemed to wander across the literature-field indiscriminately, absorbing it like some sort of ever-dry sponge. I read your work now (and I don’t think it’s a fault of yours) and that ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ has gone.
“To be fair, my changed experience of reading your work is not a fault of the exam system. But I think I might have continued reading your novels if they had not emerged in the classroom.
“The conclusion I am coming to in my work is that maybe English literature is unsuitable as an exam subject. It does not ‘test’ reader-response, rather the reader’s memory of teacher-response, the ‘correct’ interpretation of the book.
“I would value any thoughts you have on the subject.”
Here is my reply:
“You have touched on a sore point. It’s a matter I’ve had ambivalent feelings about for years. I didn’t know that The Owl Service was being used for a GCE text; and there was a time when the news would have made me run amok.
“I fear I have to agree with your initial conclusion that English literature is unsuitable as an examination subject.
It is often said that one has either to suppress or forgive a first book; and The Weirdstone of Brisingamen has the strengths and weakness of all first books; but it was as good as I could make it at the time, which is as much as a writer can ever do. When a book is finished, it has to be let go. And that is how it has been with every one. I have made it as good as I could and let it go. I have written for the book, and have left the readership to take care of itself.
It would be convenient if I could make that bald statement and leave it at that; but the twenty-five years have shown me a less simple truth.
Despite my protestations about ghetto writing, it would seem that what I write is read by young people, if left alone, with greater intelligence, willingness, sensitivity, understanding and attack than most adults are prepared to allow me. Why this should be, I have no idea. If I do, after all, speak more clearly to a group than to the whole, I feel that the reason must lie rather with my psychopathology than with literary criticism, and I should be unwise to press the matter further.
I have fewer letters from children than from adults, but it is not the numbers that count. It requires involvement, I would call it disturbance, to produce the energy needed to compose a letter. That involvement most commonly registers as marked approval, or as a more marked anger; but it is not always so simple.
Because a writer is exposed in a book, sometimes the reader presumes a familiarity that the writer can find hard to handle. Letters can be explicit cries for help, and the writer must learn to deal with them properly, for even the most grotesque is a response to the words that were written; and such response begets responsibility. Yet that reponsibility has to be defined in the writer’s mind, otherwise that mind is at risk. The point of cut-off must be clear.
But does the writer have a responsibility to the reader? The primary responsibility is to the text. What the reader makes of the text is outside the writer’s control.
Does the reader have a responsibility? In a sense, no. Having established the contract by buying the book, or by borrowing it from a library, what you do with the book is your concern, and I must not complain. You may use it as a doorstop, or to press flowers, or even to teach from, provided you do not expect me to make the book heavy with the door in mind, large enough for your favourite poppy, or more convenient for your syllabus or philosophy.
Both writer and reader have further duties, if they are to benefit from their experience. A book, properly written, is an invitation to the reader to enter: to join with the writer in a creative act: the act of reading. A novel, it has been said, is a mechanism for generating interpretations. If interpretation is limited to what the writer “meant”, the creative opportunity has been missed. Each reading should be a unique meeting, leading to a new interpretation. Nor should the writer’s duty end at the text.
Writing is solitary and isolate, but only in execution. I work alone, in an empty room; yet that work, though solitary, is not private. Somewhere, in another place and another time, which will become another here and another now, there will be a communication with another mind. My duty is first to the text, because the writer is, by writing, above all making a claim for excellence. In working the language, as a farmer works the land, we seek to strengthen it against abuse, to protect it against decay, to encourage it towards growth. We hope to leave the language the better for our writing; and that writing is achieved only in isolation. Yet, at the end, there is always somebody, an unknowable “you”, whom I wish to reach. And, for that contact, I am responsible.
Because you are unknowable, because reading should be itself a creative act, I cannot predict your response; but equally, I cannot ignore it. Response does beget responsibility; and the question of where that should start and finish is the question that is asked in every letter and becomes the challenge of each reply.
“I am writing to you rather in desperation, as I don’t know of anyone else who might know. I have been drawn to witchcraft for a number of years, but as yet have never succeeded in contacting a coven. I read some books of yours a year or two ago, and I remember deciding at the time that if you did not actually belong to a coven, you were at least au fait with the subject. I wonder if you could suggest a good way to contact a local coven. Since witches generally keep the business to themselves, they’re rather hard to find, at least round here. I would be grateful if you could help. But even if you can’t, thank you for some beautiful books.
Love . . .”
“I am writing to you to bring to your notice, if you have not already seen it, an article in the Daily Telegraph of March 3rd. This states that a Wilmslow policeman saw an object surrounded by an eerie glow, a hundred yards from his beat on the A34 just south of Wilmslow.
“The U.F.O. was then said to have streaked off in a south-westerly direction, which is, according to my rough calculations, with the aid of the maps in The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, in the general direction of the Devil’s Grave and the Iron Gates!
“Do you think that this has any connection with the Legend of Alderley?”
“I don’t know whether or not you are familiar with the ‘theory’ of R. R. Shaver, a welder from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but it would seem that your first book. The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, and J. R. R. Tolkien’s book, The Lord of the Rings, and many others deal roughly with the same subject. ‘What has Shaver to do with the above books?’ you may ask. Well, Mr Shaver once had published a ‘science fiction’ story. This was all published as ‘science fiction’, but Shaver, and many other people, not only say they agree with him, but say that it is a FACT! No publisher would publish the story unless it was labelled ‘science fiction’. They feared it wouldn’t sell if otherwise labelled. Now, in your book, and those of others dealing with underground ‘civilizations’, there are two rival factions, one evil, the other warring on evil. Is your book based on fact?
“If by any chance your book is based on fact would it be possible for you to let me know how you came by such information? I repeat, it is possible that it could reveal the mystery of flying saucers. If the answer is in the negative, I am sorry to have troubled you.”
“I have been besieged by college boys at Brighton Technical Institute. The word has been put round that I know of the Secret of the Third Race, and where are the entrances of these caves. One asked me, where was the city of Lorr, was it in England?
“Some of the boys have been potholing in Derbyshire. Flying discs have been seen hovering over Yorkshire moors and Derbyshire for several weeks. I have been contacting people through the students. One I traced in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, a very elderly man who worked in coal-mines. He has a map and some very rare knowledge. I have written to him and he spends his time fishing in the canals near Wisbech. The locals call him the Professor and they bait him. He wrote me a very guarded note of where to meet him, fishing at Floods Ferry, March, Cambridgeshire, in the Middle Level Catchment Board area; he has some secrets to impart; but I would have to treat him to dinner; he drinks light wine but does not get drunk. One student gave him my address when he did a tour this year with his friends. The student says he has some maps of the caves in Derbyshire and some unusual knowledge of the green men who come from the bowels of the earth.
“I wrote and told him that as a Cambridgeshire man and a keen fisherman, could we have a Research talk; he responded that he would be pleased to meet me, a real Fenman. He would exchange the knowledge for certain knowledge of the Isle of Ely. I have not the fare to travel with and put up for one night. Could this be a lead, do you think? Is it worth it? If I could get a small loan for the journey for Research work, I would go. Things are very sticky in Brighton at the moment. I am under the doctor, so would be able to travel on convalescence for a day or two to see the maps. The old man has explored several miles of caverns and seen the green men, and talked with them in sign language. Also some pieces of, or fragments of stars from outer space found thousands of feet underground. He has sent me a sample of a strange object; I have loaned it to a college student for chemical tests; and a fossil called a Shepherd’s Crown given by the green men to the gentleman; it’s a small one, very rare. I now believe that we might have a lead,
Best wishes,
Bill the Caveman”
“Re your beautiful Weirdtone, are you at all interested in subsurface matters? Our club has collected quite a lot of fantastic information we would gladly share, e.g. a major who says he entered Speedwell cavern, Derbyshire, and found a network of tunnels known to Boadicea. We quite understand authors are not obsessively interested in what they write about, but you seem to have ‘more than mortal knowledge’”.
From the whole correspondence (which includes the formula for making interstellar fuel from sea water), I have been able to infer what this “more than mortal knowledge” is that I possess.
Some two million years ago, a colonizing party from Alpha Centauri landed on Earth and established a base under the ice of the South Pole. Since then, the Alpha Centaurians have been monitoring the development of human intelligence. A tunnel-system has been made in the Earth’s crust connected to the base at the South Pole, and at various significant places, mainly in northern Europe, including Alderley Edge, depots of equipment and resources have been set up against the day, now imminent, when homo sapiens will have reached a level of sophistication that can accommodate the greater wisdom that the Alpha Centaurians are prepared to reveal to us.
Culture shock is seen as such a danger that the Alpha Centaurians have decided to prepare us by feeding our collective unconscious with images of the forthcoming truth. Their way has been to enrol certain individuals, of whom I am one, to supply parables through the ages, and, now that the day is at hand, to prepare young minds for the coming revelation that they will live to see.
That, briefly, is the state of things at the moment. And, when all the material, from different, yet cohering, sources, is read together, it has a compulsion and a momentum of its own. The main flaw is that it is all news to me. I am not a missionary. I just tell stories; unless the Alpha Centaurians are being subtle with me beyond my knowledge.
However, this exchange, of which I have given only a part, provides one of the clearest examples of the unpredictability of the reader’s response. For most of the time, one’s ingenuity is not so severely tested.
“Dear Mr Garner,
I have read both your books, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath. They are the best books I have ever read. They are lifelike and exciting. I have never read a book so quick, then straight on to The Moon of Gomrath. I have read them over and over and over again. So, Mr Garner, I hope you will write more books like this about Colin and Susan. Please could you inform me if you do write any more books, will you inform me so I could get them?
Your admirer,
Frank Brooks, age 14.”
That letter, from an address in the backstreets of inner-city Manchester, is typical of the headlong enthusiasm children can show for a book, if the reading of it has not been shackled by an adult. For the writer, the most heartening response is the repetition of the reading. And with the willingness to read goes a level of comprehension that such a complete engagement alone seems to produce.
“I am at the moment reading The Owl Service for the fourth time, although I should really be working for my History and English ‘A’ levels! I simply can’t leave it, even though I know exactly what is going to happen. When I read it, I was inspired to read The Mabinogion, which I think is a marvellous book. Are the characters in The Owl Service meant to coincide exactly with those in The Mabinogion? I’m always a bit puzzled by that, though that is not intended as a criticism. I wish, too, that I knew what happened after the end of the book, although the ending is so good that anything else would have been a perfect anti-climax.
“I have read your other three books several times, but I can’t go on re-reading four books for ever. So when are you going to write another? The last was published five years ago. Have you given up writing, or is the next book going to be a masterpiece? I hope it will be.”
“I am a thirteen-year-old student in Tasmania. I have read The Weirdstone of Brisingomen, The Moon of Gomrath and Elidor and enjoyed them immensely, but even that did not prepare me for The Owl Service. I have read this book twenty-seven times! Each time I read it, I enjoy it more.
“Every time, I find more symbolism. How long did it take to write it? Things I especially liked were the way you used dialogue most of the time, and the way Margaret never actually appears in the book, although she controls everything. I didn’t realize that until the second time I read it.
“However, for me, one of the best things about your book is the way you never tell the reader anything; you only show us through what is said and through events. I really enjoy writing – don’t panic! I’m not sending you something ‘for you to have a look at, sir’”.
“I am a sixteen-year-old Australian schoolgirl, J—— P——, greatly interested in European folklore, particularly English. But being both Australian and a schoolgirl, my interest exceeds my knowledge. I bought The Weirdstone when I was twelve, and began to do ‘research’ on the origins of the names. I have discovered many, but there are just as many about which I can find no information.
“Do you think you could answer the following formidable list of questions? Do not, if you have too many other demands on your time, but I would be grateful if you would. Here goes . . .”
And here went. The list was, in truth, formidable in its length and in its detail. It took me two days to answer the questions, but they implied such a close reading of the text that I could be no less thorough in my reply. Miss P. did not leave the matter there.
“About nine months ago I wrote to you with a catechism on The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. I am now following this up, thanks to your kind encouragement, with another on The Moon of Gomrath.”
The second catechism followed, which was another day’s work in the answering. Then the letter continued:
“It is, despite being a distinguished Matric Literature student, impossible for me to be coherent in praising. All I can say about Gomrath is: blood on a silver sword across a fire is its atmosphere as I see it.
“Forgive me if I talk about myself when I say I’m talking about Gomrath. Literary criticism’s a funny thing when it’s not criticising, and I have nothing to criticise, for it either has to say: ‘lovely, beautiful, marvellous’ or make poetic similes like I did. So I’m writing a book. Writing helps you to understand writing, and I appreciate more such scenes as Colin on Shining Tor now I have tried to do the same myself.
“Could you please tell me something about spells and magic manuscripts? Oh, how awful it is to live in Australia! You are so out of it as far as information goes. And I love information. I get almost as much pleasure from tracking down your sources as from reading your books. I am copying out the Elder Edda by hand, having done the Prose Edda. Bother Australia and being sixteen!”
That was the end of the correspondence. Three years went by; then I had a postcard from Australia, scrawled on by Miss P., to tell me that she was about to take up a place at the University of Reykjavik to read Icelandic Studies. Nothing before or since has made me feel more elated and justified in what I try to do. To be able to stimulate the imagination of a Frank Brooks, age 14, in the slums of Manchester, and to trigger the motivation of an Australian teenager to find out how to cross the world to achieve what she needs, and for her then to do it, is worth all. There are just as many letters that make less comfortable reading.
“I hope you don’t mind me writing to you, but I am currently undertaking a small piece of research for a postgraduate course at Loughborough University. I am particularly interested in the selection of texts for the English literature ‘O’ levels, ‘A’ levels and even degree. It concerns me that exams might actually discourage creative thinking about literature.
“I wonder if you have any thoughts, or reactions, about your material being used. As far as your novels are concerned, they never actually appeared on the exam syllabus I did, and I had read The Owl Service, Elidor and The Weirdstone of Brisingamen before being officially ‘introduced’ to them at school.
“After this introduction, I dropped any other of your works immediately: it was almost as if my recreational reading had been made ‘respectable’ by appearing on the school curriculum. I don’t think mine was a unique experience, either.
“I have since returned to your novels, but something is missing from that original experience: perhaps the intensity of the reading. I know I seemed to wander across the literature-field indiscriminately, absorbing it like some sort of ever-dry sponge. I read your work now (and I don’t think it’s a fault of yours) and that ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ has gone.
“To be fair, my changed experience of reading your work is not a fault of the exam system. But I think I might have continued reading your novels if they had not emerged in the classroom.
“The conclusion I am coming to in my work is that maybe English literature is unsuitable as an exam subject. It does not ‘test’ reader-response, rather the reader’s memory of teacher-response, the ‘correct’ interpretation of the book.
“I would value any thoughts you have on the subject.”
Here is my reply:
“You have touched on a sore point. It’s a matter I’ve had ambivalent feelings about for years. I didn’t know that The Owl Service was being used for a GCE text; and there was a time when the news would have made me run amok.
“I fear I have to agree with your initial conclusion that English literature is unsuitable as an examination subject.
