Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage (New York Review Books Classics) | 
 enlarge | Author: Tim Robinson
Creator: Robert Macfarlane
Publisher: NYRB Classics
Category: Book
List Price: $18.95
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Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 442230
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 316
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5 x 0.7
ISBN: 1590172779
Dewey Decimal Number: 941.748
EAN: 9781590172773
ASIN: 1590172779
Publication Date: August 5, 2008
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Product Description
The Aran Islands, in Galway Bay off the west coast of Ireland, are a unique geological and cultural landscape, and for centuries their stark beauty and their inhabitants’ traditional way of life have attracted pilgrims from abroad. The Aran Islands, in Galway Bay off the west coast of Ireland, are a unique geological and cultural landscape, and for centuries their stark beauty and their inhabitants’ traditional way of life have attracted pilgrims from abroad. After a visit with his wife in 1972, Tim Robinson moved to the islands, where he started making maps and gathering stories, eventually developing the idea for a cosmic history of Arainn, the largest of the three islands. Pilgrimage is the first of two volumes that make up Stones of Aran, in which Robinson maps the length and breadth of Arainn. Here he circles the entire island, following a clockwise, sunwise path in quest of the “good step,” in which walking itself becomes a form of attention and contemplation.
Like Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia, Stones of Aran is not only a meticulous and mesmerizing study of place but an entrancing and altogether unclassifiable work of literature. Robinson explores Aran in both its elemental and mythical dimensions, taking us deep into the island’s folklore, wildlife, names, habitations, and natural and human histories. Bringing to life the ongoing, forever unpredictable encounter between one man and a given landscape, Stones of Aran discovers worlds.
Robinson’s voyage continues in Stones of Aran: Labyrinth
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| Customer Reviews:
An extradinarily intimate "outsider's" view of west Ireland December 19, 1997
17 out of 17 found this review helpful
This collection of 14 shorter pieces by Tim Robinson, mathematician, teacher, artist and cartographer, gives a portrait of the west of Ireland which is unrivalled in recent writing from that country. Its' integrating device, and central metaphor, is the map. A map, stripped bare, is a distillation of topographical knowledege about an area. Onto this rudimentary two-dimensional scaffolding layer after layer of detail can be added. These are the details of culture, of history, personal memory. Robinson navigates the process of regarding a landscape with the notion of the fractal -- the notion of self-similar structures at multiple levels of observation (in "A Connemara Fractal"). He enjoyably talks us through the technical details of making maps, and has some wonderful stories of his mathematical training. I will not attempt to summarize the various chapters but would urge all those interested in landscape, biography, Irish history, coastal walks, fractal theory, natural history archaeology, literary fiction, and "home" (and that, I suppose, includes just about everyone) to read this. In a time when many find themselves living at some distance from their homeplace this book shows how a fresh intimacy with new landscapes can enrich and invigorate. As an Irish emigrant I am both compelled to return to Ireland after reading this and yet am encouraged to persevere in understanding of my new homeplace in the United States. I have loaned this book to friends in Costa Rica, in the American Northwest, and here in Georgia. All have felt its power. It should stimulate the reader to get his larger works on the Aran Islands. Be warned however these books, the present one included, eccentric masterpieces, will make you want to crumble soil between your fingers, circum-navigate your local terrain, and fumble into the interstices of your jaded soul. Liam Heneghan (heneghan@sparc.ecology.uga.edu; Athens, GA)
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