In this collection of essays and lectures. Alan Garner shows how his thinking and writing have developed over the years and demonstrates the wide range or his concerns and scholarship, encompassing such diverse topics as language, literature, education, mental health, anthropology, archaeology, myth, the spiritual quest, philosophy, music, and film.Running throughout is Garner"s relentless emphasis on excellence, innovation, and humor, priorities derived from his childhood in a rural, working-class family of craftsmen. He has combined their standards with his own education as a classicist and his involvement with the academic world. The whole volume is a poetic autobiography, from the story of when he heard himself declared dead at the age of six to his description of the inevitability of Strandloper, his most recent novel. In the final essay, from which the book takes its title, he describes how Strandloper came to be written and shows the ways in which his many skills were demanded in bringing that work about.