The Gormenghast Trilogy

[Zahir]

I've begun Titus Groan but mostly I know the trilogy from the miniseries (which I own) and from reading about the series. The impression I get is of LOTR if written by Charles Dickens on morphine. Which IMO sounds really cool!

[Variol Farseer]

That's pretty close, Zahir, though it's much smaller-scaled and more intimate than LOTR. Dickens had a large and obvious influence on Peake, there's no denying that. (The Prunesquallors and Mrs. Slagg, for instance, could have walked straight out of a Dickens novel without modification — names and all.) But there really isn't much resemblance to Tolkien at all.

Of the two, I personally prefer Tolkien; I like stories with epic scope and dash and oomph. Besides, Tolkien's characters generally have some sort of plausible motivation; but who could possibly understand Barquentine's slavish devotion to blue eggs for breakfast on the ninth day of the month? And do Cora and Clarice have anything resembling normal emotions at all? (They remind me of a pair of unusually vicious caged birds I know, more than anything human.)

On the other hand, Tolkien can't touch Peake's sustained emotional intensity, or the vividness with which he drew his characters. (It's always easier to draw grotesques; and Peake had a much better eye for the human form than Tolkien had. You have only to compare each man's illustrations of his own work.) Peake set out to do just one thing, and did it brilliantly; Tolkien tried to do a great many things, all woven together into one gigantic tapestry, and was not equally brilliant at them all.

Does that mean that I recommend Tolkien to people instead of Peake? Not at all. I think of them rather the way George Orwell thought of Dickens and Tolstoy:

If I were forced to compare Tolstoy with Dickens, I should say that Tolstoy's appeal will probably be wider in the long run, because Dickens is scarcely intelligible outside the English-speaking culture. . . . Tolstoy's characters can cross a frontier, Dickens's can be portrayed on a cigarette-card. But one is no more obliged to choose between them than between a sausage and a rose. Their purposes barely intersect.

Read 'Tolkien' for 'Tolstoy', and 'Peake' for 'Dickens', and you have my feelings exactly.

[CovenantJr]

A fair assessment. What I like about Gormenghast is its edge-of-nightmare quality. The characters have some comprehensible motivations, but in other ways they're just bizarre. It's that combination of real humanity and otherworldly strangeness that makes these books so appealing to me.

[Marlowe]

First off, Fuchsia would waste Ophelia. C'mon- Fuchisa is earthy passion who despairs when her emotions are betrayed, while Ophelia is a little girl who gets confused and likes to pick flowers.

The Gormenghast novels are amazing, and one of the few series of books I can think that I would feel comfortable describing as "unique." There's nothing else out there quite like them. The experience of reading them the first time was like my experience with any of my favorite books- it was like having a live wire jammed into my skull.

Steerpike is fascinating, but what I admired about the books is that Peake manages to create a villain who is at once enthralling and repulsive; I always looked forward to chapeters which focused on him, but I never really liked him, and by the end of the second book, I actively despised him. Most authors, when putting such a dynamic character into such a rigid, structured world would succumb to making that character somehow sympathetic, but Peake never does; he's a villain through and through, and while he's consistently intriguing, he never rises above the world he inhabits, so to speak.

Dondaldson fans owe it to themselves to check these books out. I can see a definite Peake influence in SRD's work, at least in the first chronicles.

[Edinburghemma]

I loved the Gormenghast books, but haven't read them since I was in my early teens. The BBC serial was very sumptuous visually and all in all well done. I actually thought the man who played Steerpike did a good job, although he was loathsome in the books (I loved that character). I was a tad disappointed in it overall though as it did not have the scope of the books, which is no surprise really.Peake was an interesting man himself and very sad.

check out:

www.mervynpeake.org/home.html

[I'm Murrin]

I've finished Titus Groan and am a few chapters into Gormenghast - very, very good.
The edition I have doesn't seem particularly brilliant, however - there are a number of suspiciously familiar typos that lead me to conclude that the text has passed through a scanner at some point...
And for some reason, all the way through Titus Groan Irma calls her brother 'Bernard' - but Sepulchrave calls him Alfred, and in Gormenghast so does Irma.

[CovenantJr]

And for some reason, all the way through Titus Groan Irma calls her brother 'Bernard' - but Sepulchrave calls him Alfred, and in Gormenghast so does Irma.

My copy has that too. I took it to be authorial derangement, and resolved to ignore it.

[CovenantJr]

Ok, though I've been reading this for a while, I'm now making a conscious effort to push on and get it finished. I've decided my problem in this regard is mainly the focus of book two. The first book focused on Steerpike and Fuschia, but the second focuses on Titus, who is the least interesting character by a considerable margin.

[I'm Murrin]

I'm having trouble with Gormenghast as well. Titus and the Professors just aren't interesting enough, and Peake's prose seems to have become more florid.

[CovenantJr]

Also, though I'm loath to say it, a large chunk of the atmosphere has gone. The combination of the surreal and the oppressive in Titus Groan made me feel like I was wandering in someone else's nightmare. That menacing gloom has lifted somewhat now.

[I'm Murrin]

Well, after more than twenty chapters I finally got a good Steerpike bit - but unfortunately it was cut far too short, and it looks like the next chapter is Titus again. Do you get the feeling the titles of these two books should've been switched?

[CovenantJr]

I was thinking that too And according to my girlfriend, the third book is told entirely from Titus' point of view, and is totally different in every conceivable way to the previous two. In fact, she tells me it's more like science fiction...

[Ainulindale]

And according to my girlfriend, the third book is told entirely from Titus' point of view, and is totally different in every conceivable way to the previous two. In fact, she tells me it's more like science fiction...

As mentioned a dozen times recently here , the the tone, and yes the quality of the third novel in Gormenghast is poorer due largely to being written from Peake's notes as he was suffering gravely both physically and mentally at this time in his life he suffered from Parkinson's disease and a until later in life the dormant Encephalitis Lethargica (sleeping sickness).

[CovenantJr]

I remember you saying that, but that doesn't invalidate the point that it's very different and probably less good. I'm not having a dig at Peake, I'm describing the book.

[Ainulindale]

remember you saying that, but that doesn't invalidate the point that it's very different and probably less good.

Apparently, a misunderstanding - My comment wasn't in reference on the quality, or perceived quality of the books, but the comment you made here:

third book is told entirely from Titus' point of view, and is totally different in every conceivable way to the previous two. In fact, she tells me it's more like science fiction

I was commenting on why it is different, not on the quality., merely adding to why it was different (as your girlfriend states)

In regards to digging in to an author I can assure you, I consider only a handful of authors with any personal fondness, thus any personal attacks on authors in general (particularly ones that have long been deceased) would mean absolutely nothing to me, nor predicate a response from me.

[CovenantJr]

remember you saying that, but that doesn't invalidate the point that it's very different and probably less good.

Apparently, a misunderstanding - My comment wasn't in reference on the quality, or perceived quality of the books, but the comment you made here:

third book is told entirely from Titus' point of view, and is totally different in every conceivable way to the previous two. In fact, she tells me it's more like science fiction

I was commenting on why it is different, not on the quality., merely adding to why it was different (as your girlfriend states)

Ah, I see. Comprehension dawns Thanks for the explanation(s).

[I'm Murrin]

Well, it finally picked up - I found Irma's party interesting enough, and that of course was followed by Steerpike's biggest part so far. I think I'm about halfway through the eighty chapters of Gormenghast.
At the very least I'll be able to say that Titus Groan and Gormenghast were brilliant. And of course I'll have to try and get a chance to see the TV adaptation again once I'm done.

[CovenantJr]

I picked up a reasonably-priced DVD of the BBC adaptation, so I can watch it as soon as I'm done with the books.

[CovenantJr]

I finished Gomenghast late last night and zoomed through the double DVD last night and this morning. Since it's been seven years or so since I saw it, I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. Having refreshed my memory, and with my new knowledge of the source material, what I have to say about the BBC adaptation is this: You'll enjoy it as long as you accept it for what it is and don't expect any great degree of accuracy. The major plot points remain, but much has changed.

There's also something that occurred to me towards the end of reading the books. Parallels can be drawn (don't read further until you've finished Gormenghast):

Spoiler

Steerpike, at the height of his ingenious capabilities, began to remind me of...Lord Foul. Steerpike came first, of course.

Both are meticulous planners, with complex, Machiavellian manipulations (if the word Machiavellian was designed for one person, other than Machiavelli, it was Steerpike) and various contingency plans; and they both have an almost obsessive love of perfection (this is specifically mentioned in both texts).

This leads me to speculate on something that has been mentioned in Runes Discussion. I can't do spoiler tags within spoiler tags, so just use your common sense. Runes spoilers follow:

It has been suggested that Lord Foul is mad - that he has lost his grip on his already questionable sanity during the millenia of his confinement. Steerpike, during his dance around the bodies of the Twins, is quite clearly deranged. But it's a strange kind of madness that would also fit Foul well. He's still rational, still cold, still calculating - but his rationality has become slightly skewed. His logic is as impeccable as ever, but it begins to head in a slightly different direction. Witness Steerpike crowing like a cockrel to prove to himself that he can stop and start such behaviour whenever he wants and remain in complete control. Add to this the fact that his perfectionism seems to be getting out of hand - it's the niggling thought of a loose thread that leads him to visit the corpses and ultimately fail - and we end up with a kind of sane madness, or manic sanity. A perfectly functional mind steered slightly off course. This could be true of Foul too. In fact, I'll post that in TC Discussion...

[I'm Murrin]

Spoiler

This change that overcame Steerpike also gave him his fear of flame - a response which could be said to have been what led to his ultimate demise. At the very least, it effectively destroyed years of work with Fuchsia. He also feared flaws, loose ends, and risks, and yet he began to take such risks just to prove to himself that he could handle them - he became irrational. I somehow cannot picture Foul as an irrational person.
And I'd note another difference also - Foul is prone to bouts of rage when his plans are ruined, while Steerpike doesn't seem to respond in any such way - he simply formulates other plans, new schemes, and in the end, even reconciles himself to being caught and killed. Steerpike doesn't know hope or despair, only ambition.

I'm about thirty chapters into Titus Alone, and have to say I'm enjoying it - more than I expected to.