Hi, Simon here. This is Friday Fireside, a warm and welcoming weekly newsletter for curious and creative readers. To read more and join our slow book groups, visit Footnotes and Tangents. You can manage your subscription to choose which newsletters you would like to receive.
News about the read-alongs follows a short tangent. Enjoy.
I’ve been ill this week, and I’m still feeling pretty wiped out. So, while I get some rest, I thought I’d share one of my treacle tangents from 2022. These are short pieces inspired by Alan Garner’s Treacle Walker.1
Garner’s book walked onto the Booker Prize shortlist last year, causing consternation and delight in different corners of the literary world. I was ecstatic and spent several weeks exploring its layers of meaning and references to folklore, science and history.
Treacle Walker tells the story of Joe Coppock, a boy with a lazy eye, and Treacle Walker, a rag-and-bone man with a cure for everything, save jealousy.
Listen to this section:
Whirligig has the wisdom
I met myself coming back, walking up the mountain.
He was younger and brighter and wilder. And his boots were wet from the bog on the moor in the night.
He clambered down, through weaseling stones and sun-tipped heather. Down to the brook and the tangled oak. Down to the alders and the cuckoo call. He cupped his hands and drank. Water out from darkness and the ancient rock.
He is me at sunrise. When dreams are caught on the wing, and memories swirl in the mist. He is me at dusk. When colours run and corners come, creeping and crawling, back to life.
Time is ignorance, he said. And you've been here before. The loop, the rope, the ring. There's no escape. What's in is out. What sees is seen.
You tell yourself: life's a story. With a beginning and an end. A quest with a purpose. A hero with a gift. But if that's so, we've got to get back to our dreaming. We've got to stone the sky and bury our dead. Keep the rhythm and the rites, the tick and the tock. To make time tell a story, we can understand.
But it ain't so.
I meet myself coming back, walking down the mountain.
He's older and weary and worrisome. His back is bent and his hair is grey. And behind his eyes, his thoughts all spin. A whirligig of memories, tumbled jumbled up in there.
Inside, he's five years old. He's at the house where we grew up. Being chased by geese in the yard. At night, he invents worlds on the ceiling. He dreams of stories and many nameless things.
He's ten and feet deep in snow. He's fifteen and up late, thumbing pages to the hum of a thunderstorm. He's in India. And Skellig Michael. He's in and out of love. He's twenty, forty, eighty.
I am going to meet myself. He's up on the mountain where the wind is singing.
He's tired of the walking, so he's up there watching. The clouds in the sky, coming and going. He'll be carrying a bag, of ancient things. Born in stars and held in hands. All loved and learned. Stones and bone.
We'll sit together and watch the wind. The whirligig whirl and the time all sing.
Then I'll take the bag, the stones and bone. And leave myself, up there, alone.
Read-along news
If you’re a recent subscriber and plan to take part in either of the 2024 book groups, I recommend reading last week’s post:
There is now a full character list on the website for the Cromwell trilogy. Next year, this will be interactive with profile pages and plot summaries:
A list for War and Peace will be up soon.
There are reading schedules up for both War and Peace and the Cromwell trilogy. And Amy Cowen has very kindly put together a tracker in Notion for the War and Peace read-along. Thanks Amy!
If you use StoryGraph, Mia has set up the War and Peace read-along there, where you can track your progress and join the discussion. Thanks Mia!
I’m very excited to announce that Footnotes and Tangents will be collaborating with the Wolf Hall Weekend, a celebration of Mantel’s work at Cadhay House, East Devon, 22-23 June 2024. Much more about this in the new year!
For paying subscribers, I have provisionally decided on the bonus content for the read-alongs. For our dedicated Wolf Crawlers, there will be a segment called The Haunting of Wolf Hall, giving a spectral spotlight to the occult and paranormal in Mantel’s trilogy. For fully paid-up War and Peacers, I’m reviewing every party in the book to find the best banquets and the worst soirées of War and Peace. I’m probably going to call this segment All Tolstoy’s Parties. If you don’t want to miss out on these extras, make sure you upgrade before the end of the year.
That’s all for me this week. Take care, and I’ll catch up with everyone soon.
Simon
So lovely to revisit Treacle Walker. A little like Dead Pappa Toothwort (Lannny) he seems to inhabit this season of diminishing light best of all...
Wow. Just wow.