FOR THOSE OF my generation, the increasing number of adolecescent doctors has become a commonplace; policemen have been our juniors for almost as long; it is not the law or medicine by which we plot the years, but a more startling hallucination that marks our tally. Hitler is getting younger.1
Those newsreels, familiar for a lifetime, no longer show senescent mania, but a madman in the prime of life. It is a salutory lesson in coming to terms with age; and, having made one such adjustment, it is with relative equanimity that I can face the implications of having been a published writer for a quarter of a century.
Twenty-five years; and over and throughout that time, certain elements have been a sustained part of experience. One of them is a dialogue with the teaching profession, which has shown me that there can be differences between our respective attitudes to books; I admit to a bedevilment by the concept of children’s literature and writing for children. It may be that an examination of a particular view of the relationship between writing and reading will resolve the matter.
The puzzle is created for me through the letters I have received and which fill four filing cabinets. Each letter annotates a one-to-one engagement between the reader and the author. It is not a balanced engagement; for the reader knows the author intimately, through the book, whereas the author knows the reader fragmentarily, through the letter. But what the reader does not know, and what the author comes to realise with time, is that the reader is a part of a consistent pattern of reaction. What is revealed by the pattern could raise questions for you both general and particular, about your purpose and mine. To begin with, it may be helpful for me to outline something of the background, of the letters and of the writing that has prompted them.
When I realised that I had to commit myself to the task of making intelligible marks on blank paper, I was forced to ask what it was that I could write and to whom it would be of use or even of interest. I felt that, at the age of twenty-one, I was scarcely in a position to tell anybody twice my age how the world should be run; nor, I considered, had I seen anything, so far, of startling originality and worthy of record. What, then, had I to say? And who would listen? Twenty-one years, it began to appear with painful clarity, was not time enough to equip a novelist. The more I pondered this, the more unavoidable the implication grew: I was making a big mistake.
Then I had a thought. If I were to write flat out, to the limits of my ability and experience, perhaps the result would be of use, and say something new, to people not twice, but half, my age. It was plausible. I should write for children.
Some weeks later, I took a sheet of paper, and, thinking that the moment would be either of import or it would not, wrote: “4.03 p.m., Tuesday, 4 September, 1956. Page One Chapter One.
“Colin and Susan Whisterfield, ten-year-old twins, sat in the attic window and looked gloomily out over the dismal London roof-tops, watching the rain slide steadily and stickily past the window, as it had done for over a week. It was the most boring rain imaginable; there was no wind to fling it against the windows and make you feel extra safe and cosy by the fire as the drops rattle angrily against the glass; there were no huge, black cloud mountains to eat up the daylight and make you feel just a little uneasy, even though you are safely tucked away in the middle of the largest city in the world. The rain just fell slowly out of a dull, grey sky into dull, grey streets.”
And so on, until, mercifully quickly, I felt ill, and gagged on the mess I was perpetrating and stopped. I had learnt the first lesson: the duty of the writer is to the text. To think of writing for an unidentified audience is to forgo the prime commitment to literature. Conscious writing “for children”, or “for” any other limiting group, is ghetto writing and not at all related to what I was setting out to do. It was not until the first of several visits to Moscow that I saw what can happen under the full flowering of such a prose. The only difference was that, there, it was not called a ghetto but a Union of Writers.
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.
“In my experience, you are right, it does not test the response of the reader so much as the reader’s memory of the teacher’s response. Also, with schoolchildren, as opposed to undergraduates, I think that analysis limits, rather than illumines, comprehension of a text.
“I go to considerable lengths in my writing to convey aspects of being that are, by their nature, not open to reductive, analytical rationalisation; and to see, as I do, their being made the less, by teachers, in order for them to ‘make sense’ plunges me into pessimism.
“When, as also happens, teachers instruct me to be more didactic, to tell rather than to show, so that my books may be the more easily taught, and, I suspect, the more easily marked, I find it hard to remain constructive in my reply.
“And yet. And yet. The evidence can’t be ignored that some children have their minds and souls opened by teachers who have shared with them a passion for literature. What it comes to is that there are never enough teachers who are good enough. Those with fire in their belly ignite fire in the bellies of the children; and those without, quench any spark.”
I stand by that reply. It is a fact that, of all the letters I get from children, the only depressing ones arrive from a school address.
“We are writing on behalf of form 1P. We think your book Elidor is a bit far fetched and should be for a younger generation. We thought the last bit with Findhorn was the best. This was because of the descriptions, which made a vivid picture in our minds. But the first couple of chapters weren’t all that good. This was because it hadn’t got into much of an adventure. Questions: 1) Where did you get the characters from? 2) Where did the idea of another world come from? 3) Do you enjoy writing books?”
This kind of letter makes me ask questions. What teaching has produced such a lacklustre and sloppy approach? What is the point of the letter? What am I expected to do about it?
I have yet to find answers; perhaps because there is no one to ask. It would be unfair if I were to press the children. Writing to me was patently not their idea. And the teacher is hiding behind them, and cannot be reached.
It would not matter if such letters were a rarity, but they are common. Either there are two or three representative signatories to a single letter, as in the one above, or every child is made to write separately. Repeated phrases, blackboard mantras, tell me what has been taken from the teacher’s instruction, and interlocking patterns of shared statements show who is sitting next to whom. Often there are corrections and ticks in red ink to demonstrate the spontaneity.
Year after year this goes on, with every book; and it is coldly interesting that, without the dates on the letters, it would be hard to put them in their right order. Nothing appears to be changing. One has to close the mind against the implications of what some, and I know that it is only some, teachers are contributing to our culture.
Here is the latest, and it is the worst. It withstands multiple reading, and with each reading any explanation of its being recedes from me. Now it is my turn to ask for help. It is different in that the children’s contributions are accompanied by a signed letter from their teacher: immaculate, apart from its punctuation, in Business English, limned with educational jargon.
“Dear Mr Garner,
I am writing this letter on behalf of forms [X] and [Y] who have recently been studying your book ELIDOR in their English lessons.
“They completed many speaking and listening, reading and writing activities based on the text and found your book very educational and enjoyable to read. The enjoyment experienced when reading the book meant that the pupils were well-motivated which resulted in a positive outcome in terms of the work they produced.
“Please find enclosed some of their letters which outline what the pupils thought of your book and how useful they found it in terms of their learning.
“Many thanks.”
I have quoted that letter exactly, because I do not begin to understand what is going on here. The children wrote, and here are merely enough examples to show my bewilderment at the apparent conflict between the teacher’s letter, and the response of the class. What is going on? Are they on the same planet as each other? I am accustomed to being criticised, but this was a cesspit dumped on my head, and I cannot see the point of the exercise for the teacher or the lesson for me.
I shall run them on, after each other, to try to give some of the effect. The children would be between thirteen and fourteen years old.
“I think that your story was very boring. There was not enough action in it and the plot had been used before. I didn’t really have a favourite part except when the story had finally finished. You could have improved the book by not writing it at all. The Book did not make me want to read it from the start and certainly not from the finish.”
“I think this book is boring but I don’t like reading books anyway but I have read this book and I don’t think it is any good. For starters when I looked at the book I thought it was called Alan Garner. As I was reading this book it started to bore there is nothing funny or interesting. It was a big mistake was reading this book. You should of read this book your self and see what you have gone wrong you should of put something funny in it.”
“Your book is boring and there was not much action and when there was it was no good so you could put more action in it. You could not get in to the story at all because the plot had been used to meany times. In fact it was a mistake writeing the story.”
“I am writing to tell you what I think of your book. Nobody wanted to know. The book didn’t hold my interest at all and I can’t say I have a least favourite part because I didn’t like any of it. It would have been better to have jazzed it up a bit.”
“Your book wasn’t any good and the ending was Rubbish.”
“I thought your book was very borring and there was no action and I would recomend it to people that don’t like action. I would give it 3/10.”
“The best part of your book was the End because I was glad the Story was finished because I didn’t understand it. The worst part was the beginning, because I knew it would go on and on and there was no fun.”
That’s enough. I find the whole thing mesmeric; but you may be by now professionally distressed. The school is an ordinary Comprehensive. I have checked. But something is agley. Failure to connect does not have to be aggressive. I admire this next school, writing of The Owl Service.
“Hi, Alan! This letter is supposed to be 300 words, but I bet you get letters from my other classmates that are only 200. This is 27.”
“I enjoyed reading your novel. I didn’t quite understand the book that much, but it was a great read and I would like to have read it some other time.”
“I liked the book. All the parts were interesting to listen to it when other people were reading it to you because I can’t understand it when I am reading it myself.”
“Hi. My name is Paul. Our English teacher made us read your novel The Owl Service. I think that if your book had been written in English more of my fellow students would have understood it.”
The main drift, is towards a drear comprehension. A teacher, who is typical, alas, wrote:
“For the past three years I have taken The Owl Service with our CSE candidates, and I think, especially with the abler girls, it has been the most popular book on their English literature course. Here are the lines we are working on at present:
1) Try to read Alan Garner’s other books, and write a few sentences about each.
6) In what ways does the poem ‘The Stone Trees’, by John Freeman, remind you of The Owl Service?
8) Answer the questions on the blackboard about The Mabinogion.”
How am I to reply to such as these? I do not understand how I can contribute to what I see as an abuse of story, at which, by replying, I may be thought to connive.
Teachers are no doubt as varied as the rest of our species. What concerns me, is that they are, briefly, in a special position of power at a time when their pupils can be influenced for life. What can I do to protect the future from this young man? It would be easy to diagnose nervousness alone; but I get too many for that to be a transitory lapse of nerve and grammar.
I am a student teacher, beginning my second teaching practice next term.
“So what?
“Well, my scheme of work for class 2 who I am taking for English is an investigation of you and your work. Using you as a springboard, I hope to motivate them sufficiently to write their own interesting and immaginative stories of the inexplicable.
“So what?
“I would like your help. If you can write the boys a letter of encouragement, we would be ‘cock-a-hoop’ and you will have won thirty-one more fans. If you would like to offer suggesstions I would be grateful. If you would like to write a book about me, I would be flattered.
“Hoping to hear from you.”
It is easier for me to cope with Bill the Caveman than with letters such as these. The difficulties, however, seem to work both ways.
“To the Publisher.
Dear Sirs,
As Deputy Headmaster of the above School, I was greatly disturbed when a member of my Staff of this school, brought the book The Owl Service by Alan Garner to me, which had recently been bought on this current requisition. Please refer to Page 64 of this book. I strongly object to the phraseology of this page, and I quote, ‘Welsh git’. We are members of an organized Society, and we are expected to set an example, but if this is supposed to be the Example we set, how can we hope for the future? I find it disturbing that you have published this book. How many more Primary books of this nature have been published? Are other schools, who suffer from the current inflation, having to put up with this kind of rubbish? Isn’t it the job of your Editor to edit these books before publication? Why do you advertise these, amongst worthwhile books, in the Primary Sector?
“I hope that your attention will be drawn to this matter and something could be done about it, at the earliest opportunity. I wonder what the Press would do with this kind of satire. Looking forward to hearing from you in the immediate future.”
What I find most disconcerting here is that someone who writes such prose, with all it suggests, should be qualified to hold a deputy-headship.
“Dear Sir,
I am headteacher of the above school and I would appreciate it if you would forward my letter to Alan Garner.
“It was with his earlier books in mind that I purchased Red Shift. However, having now read it for myself I feel I must protest at some of the words used, such as those on pages 18, 20, 46, 101 and 109. I feel the use of these words add nothing to the story, indeed, they can only cause distress to people such as myself.
“I am very disappointed that Alan Garner has found it necessary to be fashionable in his phraseology at the expense of young and impressionable minds.
“This book was obtained from the Yorkshire Purchasing Organisation, Wakefield, because I took, on past experience, the suitability of the story. Other heads or teachers may not have time to read the book and would naturally include it in their school library with, I feel, irreversible and damaging results.
“I would be very interested in your comments on the matter and hope in future that I may once again recommend Alan Garner books with complete confidence.”
“Alan Garner books”. I spoke earlier about ghetto writing. I wonder, here, whether ghetto reading may not be another danger.
“Dear Mr Garner,
As an English graduate teaching in a grammar school, I have often recommended your books to my pupils. I am therefore disappointed to find that Red Shift does not possess the literary excellence of your earlier work.
“I thought The Owl Service was a very interesting book, with passages of great beauty, but even in that I noticed that slang and bad language were creeping in. If our pupils read this kind of English, they will begin to write it, and this we cannot risk.
“Also, I am sure that some of our intelligent and literary third-formers will not be impressed by the emphasis on violence and a rather distasteful aspect of teenage sexuality found in Red Shift.
“I can see, of course, that both Jan and Tom are victims of an inadequate home background, but I cannot see the necessity for the foul language or the sexual immorality. We know that some teenagers are like them, but we also know that others are strongly idealistic in spite of the so-called permissive society. Why not write for them and help keep them so? Also, why not use your exceptional ability as a writer to perpetuate beautiful English, which seems in grave danger of disappearing?
“I shall look forward to your future books, and hope you will return to your previous high standard.”
The sad aspect of that letter is that the teacher and I care with an equal passion for the same qualities in language. There is so little dividing us, but it is fundamental in its effect on our perceptions.
The problem is not just local. Here is a letter from the librarian of the Horace Ensign Intermediate School, California, to the library supplier in New York.
“A brother librarian finds himself confronted with an irate parent who insists your selection Red Shift should not be on the shelves of any library. He threatens to go to the school board and if necessary hire a lawyer to protest the book.
“What help, if any, can you give us? If we continue to subscribe to your service must we read every book in order to prevent another incident?”
The library supplier’s response was impressive. He sent the librarian a welter of supportive literature to show that the forces represented by the irate parent should, and could, be resisted. It included a booklet entitled What to Do when the Censor Comes. Red Shift was not prosecuted.
It would be dispiriting if all adult, and adult-directed, response were as I have shown. It is a significant element of my daily experience, but, happily, the greater motivator of letters is enthusiasm, not stricture: an excitement of sharing; and it must be said that some of the most supportive and encouraging reactions come from teachers, to whom I have been, without apology, giving what I see to be some necessary stick.
So I shall end on a few of the high notes, the celebrations of the creative act of reading to which teachers offer their lives, for which writers and pupils are grateful. What follows is not about me, but about what we all share in and hope for. It does exist.
“Red Shift is a wonder full book, Tough and smoothly styled as a steel vault. Contents very valuable to all: me too: who want greater freedom of subject matter for Young Adults’ Literature. Awesome applause.”
“I hope you don’t mind me writing to you. I know it’s probably silly, but I just feel I want to say thank you. A 12-year-old and a 20-year-old thank you.
“I have just finished re-reading The Owl Service for about the tenth time since I first read it as a pre-Agatha Christie 12-year-old. And I’m still emotionally churned up by it as I was the first time.
“I think I understand it better now. I mean, I really didn’t have a clue what was going on during my initial reading, other than the barest story outline. But it hit me so hard and so deeply that I have never classed it merely as a book.
“It is, to me, an absorbing emotional experience. I think of it as my book. In the same way that, while you don’t know me, you understand me. You have written for me. Maybe that’s why I’ve got the courage to write to you. I certainly don’t make a habit of this.
“I am a third year student at Frankston’s Teachers’ College and am majoring in Children’s Literature. We have selected one author to ‘study in depth’ this year. I selected you upon the basis of my Owl Service obsession, but have since read most of your other works.
“Do you know, I think my self-indulgent motives for choosing you to study are beginning to backfire on me. I’m having a great deal of trouble writing about your works, especially The Owl Service. It’s too close to me. It has dragged an almost primitive response from me, which I can’t put into words, and, what’s more, don’t want to. And, apart from that, I can’t bear looking at it in terms of literary structure: plot, theme, symbolism, yuk. It’s above that. It is a creation and I can’t destroy it like that.
“I think I’m going to fail this assignment! I’m at the stage now of tearing up articles by respected critics that insist on looking at your work in these terms.
“Anyway, I’ve raved on enough, even though I still haven’t managed to say what I really wanted to. Mainly because I don’t now exactly what it is. I hope you know what it is. Thank you again . . .”
I hope she did not fail her assignment, because there is one teacher in the making who “knows” what books are.
“Your work is becoming known here in Australia, much to the delight of my friend and me. Last year your books were on the reading list for trainee teachers, and it was through discussing the symbolism in Elidor with my friend, who is doing teacher training as a mature age student, that we realized the amazingly hard work you put into the structure of your books. It is giving us the greatest pleasure imaginable to plumb the depths.
“Red Shift had us in raptures. At last here is a writer who seems to know what goes on in our minds as we change babies’ nappies and wash the endless dishes. You say it all for us, and awaken our grey matter once more, so that we can actually put into use all the accumulated data from our reading on myths and legends, Plato, the Eleusinian Mysteries, Jung. Everything is called upon.
“You must go on writing for yourself. It is the only true self we can all share.
“Joan and I discussed whether or not to write to you, because we know you must get a lot of cranky letters, and we didn’t want you to think we were taking your time over nothing. Over nothing?!! It seems to me that, no matter how a writer insulates himself from his critics, he must, somewhere deep down, get some pleasure from knowing that he has touched the heart and mind of a reader, that the message got through. This is the point of this letter. Thank you from us both.”
It is letters such as this that break down the necessary isolation of the writer and create a sense of community: not community of flattery, but a community of caring, emotion and of vision shared. Always the letters are accompanied by a shyness that, one feels, came close to preventing the connection, but the need to speak won through, just as the book did, against all the doubts and fears that attended its creation.
They are letters that humble, give strength and generate a pride and gladness in one’s craft. They are not the reason or justification for writing; they are not essential, but it does matter to know, from time to time, that the night spent by lamplight, after the day of searching for wood to make enough heat for a fire to write by, so long ago now, also fuelled the will to give a sixteen-year-old girl from Melbourne the endurance to find her way to Reykjavik, and forced diffident intelligences to say that the message did get through.
“I’m a teacher, and, over the past six years or so I’ve introduced many of my pupils to your work and watched them being entertained, stimulated and puzzled by it, particularly Red Shift. It has provoked more awkward questions than your other books and has consequently taxed my powers as a literary critic.
“I just want to say thank you for the pleasure your writing has given me; thank you for the imaginative challenges it has set me; thank you for the long evenings you know nothing about talking with friends about your work; thank you for the friends you have helped me to make.
“Oh dear, this has turned into a fan letter. But there. It’s odd: when you read a writer you feel you know him, and there’s an odd illusion of intimacy. I’m writing to the writer. I apologise if this letter intrudes upon the man.”
I hope that, in trying to give you a view from the other side of the experience of writing, I have been as tactful. I hope I have not unwarrantedly invaded privacies. And I hope I have not been destructive in anything I have said.
There are differences between us. It may be that the purely academic mind will always be wary of the eclectic, deeply ordered chaos of the maker, and that artists will always and instinctively resist the scholar’s quest for the finite answer; so our attitudes to literature will not be the same. Yet through literature we share the same purpose.
Whether alone in the classroom, or alone in the study, we work, through books and language, towards the one end: to bring about the future. Though Hitler may be getting younger, the future is our common cause.
1 This lecture was delivered at a meeting of The National Association for the Teaching of English, Birmingham, on 13 June 1985.