Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage

Author: Tim Robinson
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1590172779
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 417

Book 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 Árainn, 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 Árainn. 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

Stones of Aran: Labyrinth

Author: Tim Robinson
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1590173147
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 683

Book Description
Tim Robinson’s Stones of Aran is one of the most striking and original literary undertakings of our time. Robinson’s ambition is to find out both what it is to know a landscape, know it as extensively and intimately as possible, and what it takes to make that knowledge, the sense of the landscape itself, come alive in writing. It is a project that draws on the legacies of Thoreau and Joyce, to which Robinson brings his own polymathic gifts as cartographer, mathematician, historian, and, above all, shaper of words. In Pilgrimage Robinson walked the entire coast of Airann, largest of the Aran islands. In Labyrinth he turns in to the island’s interior. These two books—parts of an inseparable whole that can, for all that, be read quite separately from each other—constitute a vast polyphonic composition, at once encyclopedic and lyrical, scientific and surprisingly personal. Exploring the illimitable complexity and bounty contained in the seemingly limited confines of a single island, Robinson invites us to look without and within and to see the wonder of the world.

Connemara

Author: Tim Robinson
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141962313
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Book Description
The triumphant conclusion to Tim Robinson's extraordinary Connemara trilogy, which Robert Macfarlane has called 'one of the most remarkable non-fiction projects undertaken in English'. Robinson writes about the people, places and history of south Connemara - one of Ireland's last Gaelic-speaking enclaves - with the encyclopaedic knowledge of a cartographer and the grace of a born writer. From the man who has been praised in the highest terms by Joseph O'Connor ('One of contemporary Ireland's finest literary stylists''), John Burnside ('one of the finest of contemporary prose stylists'), Fintan O'Toole ('Simply one of the best non-fiction prose writers currently at work') and Giles Foden ('an indubitable classic'), among many others, this is one of the publishing events of 2011 and the conclusion of one of the great literary projects of our time. 'He is that rarest of phenomena, a scientist and an artist, and his method is to combine scientific rigour with artistic reverie in a seamless blend that both informs and delights.' John Banville, Guardian 'A masterpiece of travel and topographical writing, and an incomparable and enthralling meditation on times past ... This perfectly pitched work opens readers up to the world around them' Sunday Times 'Anyone willing to get lost in this book will be left with indelible mental images of places they may never have visited but will now never forget' Dermot Bolger, Irish Mail on Sunday 'Will endure into the far future ... He knows this world as no one else does, and writes about it with awe and love, but also with measured grace, an artist's eye and a scientist's sensibility' Colm Toibin, Sunday Business Post Books of the Year 'Robinson is a marvel ... the supreme practitioner of geo-graphy, the writing of places' Fintan O'Toole, Observer Books of the Year

Connemara

Author: Tim Robinson
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141900717
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 345

Book Description
The first volume in Tim Robinson's phenomenal Connemara Trilogy - which Robert Macfarlane has called 'One of the most remarkable non-fiction projects undertaken in English'. In its landscape, history and folklore, Connemara is a singular region: ill-defined geographically, and yet unmistakably a place apart from the rest of Ireland. Tim Robinson, who established himself as Ireland's most brilliant living non-fiction writer with the two-volume Stones of Aran, moved from Aran to Connemara nearly twenty years ago. This book is the result of his extraordinary engagement with the mountains, bogs and shorelines of the region, and with its folklore and its often terrible history: a work as beautiful and surprising as the place it attempts to describe. Chosen as a book of the year by Iain Sinclair, Robert Macfarlane and Colm Tóibín 'One of the greatest writers of lands ... No one has disentangled the tales the stones of Ireland have to tell so deftly and retold them so beautifully' Fintan O'Toole 'Dazzling ... an indubitable classic' Giles Foden, Condé Nast Traveller 'He is that rarest of phenomena, a scientist and an artist, and his method is to combine scientific rigour with artistic reverie in a seamless blend that both informs and delights' John Banville 'One of contemporary Ireland's finest literary stylists' Joseph O'Connor, Guardian

Connemara

Author: Tim Robinson
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141889721
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Book Description
The second volume in Tim Robinson's phenomenal Connemara Trilogy - which Robert Macfarlane has called 'One of the most remarkable non-fiction projects undertaken in English'. The first volume of Tim Robinson's Connemara trilogy, Listening to the Wind, covered Robinson's home territory of Roundstone and environs. The Last Pool of Darkness moves into wilder territory: the fjords, cliffs, hills and islands of north-west Connemara, a place that Wittgenstein, who lived on his own in a cottage there for a time, called 'the last pool of darkness in Europe'. Again combining his polymathic knowledge of Connemara's natural history, human history, folklore and topography with his own unsurpassable artistry as a writer, Tim Robinson has produced another classic. A native of Yorkshire, Tim Robinson moved to the Aran Islands in 1972. His books include the celebrated two-volume Stones of Aran. Since 1984 he has lived in Roundstone, Connemara. 'A masterpiece of travel and topographical writing and a miraculous, vivid and engrossing meditation on landscape and history and the sacred mood of places' Colm Tóibín, Irish Times

Sean Scully

Author: Colm Toibin
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0500545138
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
A new, compact edition of Sean Scully’s photographs, featuring horizontal and vertical shards of limestone that echo his painted work and reveal a creative process best expressed through abstract shapes. Sean Scully, one of today’s most esteemed painters and an accomplished photographer, spent time on the remote Aran Islands, off the west coast of Ireland, photographing the ancient drystone walls that crisscross the stark and barren landscape. Sean Scully brings together his sensitive images, revealing the unexpected yet monumental beauty of these centuries-old structures that meander across the windswept and rocky islands. In their form and spirit, the photographs shed light on Scully’s own sensibilities as an artist. They also capture the stillness and serenity of this rugged, timeless place on the edge of Europe. This new edition features an evocative text by the award-winning Irish writer Colm To´ibi´n, which conveys the mysterious beauty of the three Aran Islands. This volume is a must-have for Sean Scully fans, as well as anyone with an interest in Ireland or photography.

The Aran Islands

Author: Various
Publisher: The O'Brien Press Ltd
ISBN: 1847179398
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 144

Book Description
Inishmore, Inishmaan, Inisheer: wild, isolated, starkly beautiful and of great historical importance. Lying in the Atlantic Ocean off Galway Bay, the Aran Islands are a place apart. Here island life has preserved many aspects of Irish culture - its language, customs and traditions. These islands bear witness to events from earliest times and have experienced Celtic occupation, the arrival of Christianity, invasions, sieges, famine and evictions. This history is evident in the massive Iron Age forts, the Early Christian ruins, and in the literature, songs and images from these 'three stepping stones out of Europe'. A comprehensive, beautifully illustrated introduction to and lasting memento of these unique islands.

Experiments on Reality

Author: Tim Robinson
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 024198730X
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Book Description
Long recognized as perhaps the greatest non-fiction writer at work in Ireland, for his vast, polymathic accounts of nature and culture in the Aran Islands and Connemara, Tim Robinson is also an essayist of genius whose fascinations range across the globe. In Experiments on Reality, he shines the light of his intelligence on his own life, and on some of the most fascinating questions in science and culture. Robinson brings us to his boyhood in Yorkshire, National Service in Malaya in the 1950s, and his years as a visual artist in Istanbul, Vienna and London. He revisits some of the scenes of his researches for the maps he made of Aran and Connemara, places that continue to throw up remarkable stories and puzzles. And he performs astonishing literary thought-experiments, playing with the boundaries of the essay form, scientific inquiry, and storytelling. Experiments on Reality is a masterpiece from one of the great minds of our time. 'One of the greatest of all landscape writers ... When the material world is brought forth for us so beautifully, with such rapt attention and illuminating insight, we are reminded of how lucky we are to be part of it' Fintan O'Toole, Irish Times PRAISE FOR THE CONNEMARA TRILOGY: 'One of the most remarkable non-fiction projects undertaken in English' Robert MacFarlane, Spectator 'Robinson is a marvel ... the supreme practitioner of geo-graphy, the writing of places' Fintan O'Toole, Observer Books of the Year 'One of contemporary Ireland's finest literary stylists ... This is a book that does justice, in every sense of that phrase, to the frequently betrayed people whose stories it incarnates, and to their strange and beautiful corner of the world' Joseph O'Connor, Guardian 'A masterpiece of travel and topographical writing and a miraculous, vivid and engrossing meditation on landscape and history and the sacred mood of places' Colm Tóibín, Irish Times Books of the Year 'One of the finest of contemporary prose stylists' John Burnside, Irish Times 'He is that rarest of phenomena, a scientist and an artist, and his method is to combine scientific rigour with artistic reverie in a seamless blend that both informs and delights.' John Banville, Guardian 'Breathtaking ... the West of Ireland has found its ultimate laureate' Patricia Craig, TLS 'Dazzling ... an indubitable classic' Giles Foden, Condé Nast Traveller

The Burren and the Aran Islands

Author: Carleton Jones
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781903464496
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

Book Description
The Burren and the Aran Islands form a region renowned for its geology, flora and archaeology. Possibly the greatest interest is in its archaeology but the ancient monuments are often perceived as shrouded in mystery and beyond explanation. This work presents these archaeological interpretations.

Stone by Stone

Author: Robert Thorson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0802719201
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 307

Book Description
There once may have been 250,000 miles of stone walls in America's Northeast, stretching farther than the distance to the moon. They took three billion man-hours to build. And even though most are crumbling today, they contain a magnificent scientific and cultural story-about the geothermal forces that formed their stones, the tectonic movements that brought them to the surface, the glacial tide that broke them apart, the earth that held them for so long, and about the humans who built them. Stone walls layer time like Russian dolls, their smallest elements reflecting the longest spans, and Thorson urges us to study them, for each stone has its own story. Linking geological history to the early American experience, Stone by Stone presents a fascinating picture of the land the Pilgrims settled, allowing us to see and understand it with new eyes.