The Silent Weaver by Roger Hutchinson
| The Silent Weaver by Roger Hutchinson | |
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| Category: Biography | |
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Reviewer: Andy Lancaster
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| Summary: A crofter on the island of South Uist, Angus MacPhee was sent home from The Faroes during the Second World War, hardly ever to speak again. But he spent much of his remaining 50 years of life creating objects from woven grass and leaves. He never explained his purpose in all this, and Roger Hutchison's book attempts to trace the various influence upon this strange and intriguing life. | |
| Buy? Maybe | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 208 | Date: September 2011 |
| Publisher: Birlinn Ltd | |
| ISBN: 978-1841589718 | |
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There is no question but that the story of Angus has all the right ingredients for a fascinating study. Taken from his Scottish Lowlands agricultural early childhood to the isolation of a Hebridean island of South Uist, joining the last ever horse platoon in the British Army at the outbreak of the Second World War, then mental breakdown and effective incarceration for almost all the rest of his life, he created some of the most unusual works of folk art that have existed this century. And Hutchison tackles every angle of this rich narrative, exploring the military thinking behind how horse regiments were to combat Hitler, through to the operations of mental health care in later twentieth century Scotland, and all points in between.
Each part of this brief account is in itself a piece of fascinating history, none more so that the account of raw art, or Art Extraordinary which he gives, the art which is a part of both the therapy and creative vitality of mental illness. Each section reveals a neat glimpse of the factors involved in Angus's life, and thus as a whole it teases out different themes - for instance the island life of the pre-war period unfolds as completely timeless, almost mythological, a fragment of a universal pattern which has been revealed by other writers such as Edwin Muir.
Hutchinson combines both a polished writer's professional craft with some serious scholarship. The depth of referencing here testifies to thorough research, as do the transcripts from the interviews which he has with Angus's family and acquaintances. But Hutchison also is able to see and recreate a scene, especially from the wild islands, and to reveal the complex web of meetings and events which eventually lead to the staging of the exhibition at which Angus' work is revealed to the world. But the task of making the life of someone who for 50 years of his life hardly uttered a word, whose life was outwardly completely repetitive routine except for his artistic creations, is a more than difficult task.
And ultimately it is one that I don’t find as rewarding as I had expected. Perhaps it was the constraints of merely 130 pages of narrative that stop each of these aspects becoming truly engrossing, for each leaves me wanting more. But perhaps too it is that there is really no solution to the mystery that was Angus. We know really no more about why he sunk into 'simple schizophrenia' than we knew at the start of the account. Neither do we have any real sense of how that felt. Angus is as closed to us as he was to the nurses, medics and relations whose lives he touched, and while there is a sense of gentle and creative purpose in the work he created, a similar sense of purpose does not really emerge from this book.
I would certainly recommend reading it, for it sparked my interests in a number of aspects and ideas, but ultimately I was left dissatisfied by the impenetrable wall of Angus' silence.
There are few biographies that deal with such a difficult almost Trappist subject. However, the theme of artistic creation (in this case carving) as personal redemption is the core of Paki Harrison: Tohunga Whakairo : the Story of a Master Carver by Ranginui Walker. What makes this book different is that the central character is certainly not keeping his thoughts to himself, but using his art as a means of bringing about social change for disaffected Maori youths.
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You can read more book reviews or buy The Silent Weaver by Roger Hutchinson at Amazon.com.
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