Treacle Walker by Alan Garner

[HareBrain]

I've been thinking how I missed that Joe is dead, and the "how" is just that I'm stupid. Flicking back through the book, I see Thin Amren even calls Treacle Walker a psychopomp at one point, but though in theory I knew the meaning of that word, it seems to have escaped me at that moment (or I assumed Thin Amren was using it non-literally).

I see also that TW says that his home is the "country of the summer stars". I've googled that phrase and the only references seem to be to Garner, either TW or to The Owl Service (where Huw Halfbacon uses it of his own true home). When I read that name, it brought to mind the Celtic otherworld. I can't find a mythological source for that, but a couple of books titles (such as Stephen Lawhead's In the Region of the Summer Stars) suggest it exists.

 

[The Judge]

I've been thinking how I missed that Joe is dead, and the "how" is just that I'm stupid.

Well...

Actually, no, I don't think it's because you're stupid. First time round it's so easy to get wholly confused and just throw your hands up, declare you're lost and not try and make sense of it, and since you left it several months before re-reading, all you had was the memory of confusion, and second time around you weren't trying to make sense of it, you were just reading for the pleasure of the writing. Me: (a) I hate not understanding something, so I dig and dig, (b) I'm used to cryptic crosswords and having to tease meaning out of strange sentences, (c) I read murder mysteries so I'm always looking for clues anyway, and reading behind what is actually said, (d) I was acutely aware no one was looking after Joe so I was trying to find reasons he was all alone, with no mother or female relation caring for him and (e) my second read was immediately after the first so I was picking up things I remembered from the first read and putting them together. (Even then, though, I missed things. Glancing through that first scene again last night I noticed that Treacle Walker said of the pot of Poor Mans Friend "It is small." and "Of little price." -- ie it was (was also?) the Philosopher's Stone.)

If anyone's interested and didn't look it up, here's a similar pot:

Flicking back through the book, I see Thin Amren even calls Treacle Walker a psychopomp at one point, but though in theory I knew the meaning of that word, it seems to have escaped me at that moment (or I assumed Thin Amren was using it non-literally).

He calls him "that pickthank psychopomp" and I was so taken up with "pickthank" -- a word I'd never heard before (it means a toady, or obsequious flatterer) -- that I almost missed the "psychopomp" and then with the rest of the para (especially "I'd not trust that one's arse with a fart.") I thought it was being used as some kind of insult first time round, and wasn't to be taken literally.

I see also that TW says that his home is the "country of the summer stars". I've googled that phrase and the only references seem to be to Garner, either TW or to The Owl Service (where Huw Halfbacon uses it of his own true home). When I read that name, it brought to mind the Celtic otherworld. I can't find a mythological source for that, but a couple of books titles (such as Stephen Lawhead's In the Region of the Summer Stars) suggest it exists.

I read somewhere that Garner referenced some of his other books, which enriched the reading for those who knew his work. Good catch with the idea of the Celtic overtones!

What we need is someone to produce an annotated copy, with definitions of all the unusual words and pointing out all the allusions to other works and myth!

 

[Danny McG]

I see also that TW says that his home is the "country of the summer stars". I've googled that phrase and the only references seem to be to Garner, either TW or to The Owl Service

I've a really faint memory from at least 40 (maybe even 50 years) ago, some friends and me listening to a prog rock LP, I think it was titled country of the summer stars.
possibly influenced by The Owl Service?

 

[HareBrain]

I've a really faint memory from at least 40 (maybe even 50 years) ago, some friends and me listening to a prog rock LP, I think it was titled country of the summer stars.
possibly influenced by The Owl Service?

A quick google suggests that was In the Region of the Summer Stars by The Enid (1976)? Wiki says they based some of it on the Tarot and the writings of Charles Williams, but I don't know if that includes the title. I shall dig further. (ETA: It's the title of a collection of Williams's poems, based on the Arthurian legends, but I can't get further. Maybe it's a name for Avalon.)

Interesting that's the same title as Lawhead's 2018 book. Maybe he's a fan?

 

[Stephen Palmer]

I feel I should read this book...

 

[Danny McG]

Ah!
Like the old joke about the fly wearing clogs.

What?
All of you know it?

 

[HareBrain]

What?
All of you know it?

A fly heard about a rotting lamb chop on a pavement, and, having a bad wing, put on his clogs to walk to it.

"No point," said the clogs. "By the time you get there, it'll already be gone."

The fly didn't believe that. "There'll be plenty left." And kept going.

At every corner, his clogs said, "Trust us, you'll be disappointed."

"Shut up," said the fly. "I've heard there's enough meat there for a thousand bluebottles. You're not such clever clogs after all."

But when he got there, he saw the whole chop being carried away by a fox.

"Wooden shoes just know it," he groaned.

 

[Danny McG]

How long does it take a fly wearing clogs to walk across the open top of a tin of treacle?
Two week.

(Too weak)

 

[HareBrain]

Oh yeah, that does have more to do with treacle!

Something that occurred to me last week: what's the relevance of the White Horse of Uffington? This is the image on the book's cover, and (if I remember right) marked on the "donkey stone" Joe uses to whiten the doorstep. But I can't see any connection with the themes of the story, as TJ has outlined them, and the chalk carving. No one really knows what the White Horse was for, but in my reading about it, I haven't come across any connection with death. Or is it just another ancient thing Garner threw into the mix?

 

[The Judge]

Yep, a depiction of the Uffington White Horse is on the donkey stone, and also when Joe goes out and under the railway tunnel, he's following its silver hoofprints. I thought it was there not only as a giving a link to the past and its mysteries, carrying an atmosphere of shamanic ritual/magic just as with the bog man, but it is actually the horse that pulls Treacle Walker's cart.

If we're wondering relevance, though, it's the train that passes at noon every day that puzzles me. I can see it's a metaphor for human life, rushing onwards on a fixed track and unable to return, but why does Walker refer to it as the bonacon, the mythical monster, which doesn't seem in any way related either to that metaphor, nor to the idea of death and continuation?

 

[HareBrain]

why does Walker refer to it as the bonacon, the mythical monster, which doesn't seem in any way related either to that metaphor, nor to the idea of death and continuation?

There's a major character in The Owl Service whose surname is "Halfbacon", and bonacon is an easy anagram of "no bacon".

I think we just have to assume that as Garner ages, he is becoming increasingly pessimistic about the amount of bacon.