Labyrinth

by Tim Robinson

Overview

Like J.M. Synge almost a century before him, Tim Robinson portrays the inner and outer life of a landscape and its inhabitants. Encyclopedia of myth and reality, herbal, love-letter, missal, jest-book, anthology of cultural responses - Stones of Aran juggles modes from page to page. Its apparent inexhaustibility is borrowed from just one scrap of the Earth's surface: Arainn, the largest of the three Aran islands, off Ireland's west coast. The first volume, Pilgrimage, led the reader around the coastline, dazzled and enchanted by the complex interplay of rock and ocean. Labyrinth concludes this microscopic mission, opening up the interior and merging cosmic themes with the utterly personal. By the end, the island is mysteriously returned to itself, untrodden and unread.

Stones of Aran: Labyrinth is a companion volume to Stones of Aran:
Pilgrimage (1986), the acclaimed first step of a magisterial survey. Nine years on Robinson completes his quest.

'One of the most original, revelatory and exhilarating works of literature ever produced in Ireland.'
- Michael Viney, The Irish Times

'Robinson's Aran will, inevitably, become part of the general myth. It is a wonderful achievement.'
- Seamus Deane, London Review of Books

'Wholly delightful... the natural world has seldom been better described. In an age of rigid specialisms and arcane jargon, he is a polymathic autodidact who restores the honourable original meanings of amateur and dilettante.'
- Patrick Curry, Times Literary Supplement

'Stones of Aran warms cold geology into fervent life. Robinson's chosen form is wholly irresistible.'
- Jonathan Keates, The Observer

'Taken together, Tim Robinson's two volumes on Aran constitute one of the major Irish prose texts of this century in any genre ... Within the lofty architecture of this writing, many of our cherished conceptions of place and identity find their apotheosis and are accordingly transcended.'
- Sean Lysaght, The Irish Review

'A triumph of literary and topographical excavation. His comments on every facet of Aran life are authoritative and absorbing and his individual approach to the subject has turned the whole thing into an idiosyncratic masterpiece.'
- Patricia Craig, New Statesman

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781843512844
Publisher:	Lilliput Press, Limited, The
Publication date:	02/15/2012
Series:	Stones of Aran
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	683
Sales rank:	327,434
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Tim Robinson, map-maker and writer, was born in England in 1935. He studied mathematics at Cambridge and worked as a teacher and artist in Istanbul, Vienna and London. In 1972 he moved to the West of Ireland and began writing and making maps. He now lives in Roundstone, Connemara, where he runs the Folding Landscapes studio with his wife Máiréad.
Tim Robinson, map-maker and writer, was born in England in 1935. He studied mathematics at Cambridge and worked as a teacher and artist in Istanbul, Vienna and London. In 1972 he moved to the West of Ireland and began writing and making maps. He now lives in Roundstone, Connemara.

Editorial Reviews

I do not believe there is another book in the world like it. . . . Robinson has achieved the impossible: by taking a geographical reality, describing it so meticulously, and embedding it in a past of folktales, legends, and history he has thwarted the transience of at least one small part of the globe.”
—Cees Nooteboom

“One of the most sustained, intensive, and imaginative studies of a landscape that has ever been carried out. . . . As with all great landscape works, it is at once territorially specific and utterly mythic.”
—Robert Macfarlane

"A loving anatomy of the largest of the Aran Islands off the West Coast of Ireland, in which the point where nature and culture meet in the island is observed with great beauty and precision." –Colm Toibin

"Tim Robinson's maps and books honor the landscapes they describe. As invitations, they irresistibly beckon the archeologist, botanist, geologist, bird-watcher, folklorist, student of the Irish language, or just plain tourist." –Chet Raymo.

"Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage and Labyrinth...is a necessity for all visitors and walkers." —Guardian

"Tim Robinson is an artist and mapmaker and has spent years charting the coasts of Connemara and the Burren. I came across his books in a Galway shop. In typical Irish fashion, somebody told me where he lived and that I should call by. So I did, met Robinson, bought one of his black-and-white maps and went off walking. His remarkable book is a fascinating meditation on the geology, spatial and mythical life of the islands and makes you feel that Robinson has personally met and considered every boulder in the plane." –Gwyneth Lewis, The Independent

“The Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland have captured the imagination of many artists and writers, from Robert Flaherty's film Man of Aran to two dazzling books by historian, geographer and map-maker Tim Robinson–Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage and Stones of Aran: Labyrinth. With their attention to everything from underlying geology to botanical minutiae and the long-forgotten genesis of place names, these books are profound investigations of the inhabited landscape.” –Architects’ Journal

"An exquisitely detailed portrait of a special landscape, this is a gem-like addition to the travel genre." –Publishers Weekly

"Robinson takes the reader on a meditative walking tour of Aran...[he] seeks the essence of an increasingly distant Celtic past...like a visitor peering through the warped and colored glass of an ancient church window." –Los Angeles Times

"A kind of travel writing The New Yorker sometimes sponsors: a virtuosity of gratuitous fact-gathering, a penitential recording of minutiae, a recitation of information as if it were prayer." –New York Times

"Looked upon with a tactful, eager, strategic care that is as tender in its address as an admission of love...Robinson’s Aran will, inevitably, become part of the general myth. It is a wonderful achievement." –Seamus Deane, London Review of Books

"The best book ever written by an Englishman about Ireland." –Independent

"One of the most original, revelatory and exhilarating works of literature ever produced in Ireland." –Irish Times

"Rapt, encyclopedic volumes...Robinson has done for the west of Ireland what Ruskin did for Venice, Proust for the voids and vasts of time." –Telegraph

“Stones of Aran seems to me one of the most significant pieces of prose, from a literary point of view, written in Ireland in the past quarter-century.” –J.C.C. Mays, Poetry Ireland

“A rich and a great book. Robinson has evoked the spirit of the place in its starkness, beauty, and endurance.” –George Mackay Brown, The Tablet

"Climate and location, flora and fauna, culture, myth and legend, people, and over it all, the veneer of language and place name...Tim Robinson achieves this ultimate map in Stones of Aran" –New Scientist

"Stones of Aran warms cold geology into fervent life. Robinson’s chosen form is wholly irresistible." –Observer

"One of the most interesting and important books produced in Ireland in the twentieth century. In prose as layered and rich as the area he explores, Robinson deals with space in the way Proust deals with time." –Sean Dunne

“Robinson set out to record in diary form the geology and history, the language and placenames and folklore of the island.” –The Washington Post

“Robinson’s language is fastidiously and finely wrought. It draws the reader on, hypnotically, not merely into Aran’s fantastic interface of rock and sea, but into a revelation of total environment.” –Michel Viney, The Irish Times

From the Publisher