The Gormenghast Trilogy, by Mervyn Peake

Cafe Society
1

Any of you classic high-fantasy fans read this?

I’ve had Titus Groan sitting around forever, and am just now getting to it. I had just re-read all of Tolkien’s stuff, followed by Eddison’s The Worm Ouroboros (1922, and a load to get through, because of the high style), so I thought I’d keep it up with Peake’s 1946 trilogy.

So far, yikes. I’m about 150 pages into it, and while I’m not dissatisfied (Peake writes with a humorous flair that’s wonderful), I’m starting to wonder if this long sumbitch is just a setting piece, or if anything is going to, y’know, happen.

[spoiler]So far, we’ve visited the hall of statues. Dusty, torpid, miserable. We’ve met Flay. Arrogant, angry, miserable. We’ve met the head chef. Angry, drunk, miserable. We’ve met Steerpike. Resentful, angry, miserable. We’ve met the doctor. Annoying nervous tic. We’ve met the queen and her cats. Lazy, detached, miserable. We’ve met Lord Groan. Circumscribed, impotent, miserable. We’ve met Fuchsia. Ignored, spoiled, miserable.

Oh yeah, and then there’s the newborn Titus with the violet eyes. I can only hope he doesn’t turn out miserable. :)[/spoiler]Sheesh. Peake is in no hurry to take the reader anywhere, that’s for sure. He’s taking his sweet, sweet, protracted time setting up Gormenghast and its environs. Anyone who thinks Tolkien was too windy and descriptive should stay as far as humanly possible away from this series.

All that aside, I have to say that I’m enjoying it. It’s not a book that should be read in 15-minute snippets. You really need to be able to pick it up for an hour or two at a time, in order to get into the rhythm of it. Peake’s writing, as I said before, is wonderful. His descriptions are multicolored, and he effectively conveys the obvious as well as the humorous (and dark and nasty) undercurrents of his settings in the same passage.

2

I liked the trilogy, weird though it is. The first book esp. Be aware that the 3rd book has a distinctly different style.

I’ve read that the BBC did an adaptation wherein Jonathan Rhys-Meyers played Steerpike. I’ve never seen it, but I’d like to, as that would be perfect casting.

3

I read it in high school, some 35 years or so ago, and I don’t really remember anything happening, except preparations for some ceremony. I have gorgeously forlorn and dusty pictures in my head of the world though.

It wasn’t an assignment, my mom gave it to me for one of my birthdays.

4

I don’t normally read high fantasy at all, but I love the Gormenghast Trilogy. Don’t read it expecting much to happen. Read it for the gorgeous descriptive writing, fabulous characters, and hints of dark humor. Book three is only faster paced because Peake’s health was failing fast, and they had to wrap things up. I think he had hoped to write quite a bit more.

The BBC didn’t do too badly with their adaptation. It’s lighter in tone than the book, though.

5

Hum. I’m pleasantly surprised that this thread has gotten a few responses. Gormenghast is not a work you see referenced very much, so I thought this might die a quick (and dusty, and forlorn, and ennui-filled :slight_smile: ) death.

6

I love Peake, but there’s not a lot of action. You read him for style and atmosphere, but not for plot. I didn’t really care for the third book, though.

7

I’ve read Titus Groan three or four times and Gormenghast a couple of times, but have not yet read Titus Alone – mostly because I’ve read (mostly on this board) that it is inferior to the first two, and I don’t want to spoil my absolute adoration of those books. Peake was most definitely suffering from a serious illness that was most likely Parkinson’s while writing the final book; where Peake may have taken Titus as the series grew is one of the greater “What Ifs” of my literary world.

At any rate, the first two books, and the first one especially, are some of the most evocative things I’ve ever read. Peake’s mastery of description – whether it’s a person or a place – is unrivalled, in my view. There’s not much action in the books, to be sure, but there is much reward if one continues to read them.

8

I tried. Really, I tried, very hard, to read the first book.

Just too hard to slog through. I gave up after 50-60 pages, bored silly. I took to referring to it as “Gormen-Ghastly”. Sorry!

9

The Gormenghast books are definitely a love or hate affair. I happen to love them (well the first two anyway). They are simply and gloriously different from anything else.

One of my favourite parts is Fushia reading her book of nursery rhymes in her secret attic. The rhyme that she read - the Frivolous Cake - was both a masterpiece of absurdity and truly frightening Freudian imagery - as the frivolous cake gets penetrated by a knife in the “throes of love”. :eek:

And - minor spoiler ahead - who could not love the duel between Flay the butler and Swelter the cook? Each night, the cook leaves a tiny cupcake just a bit closer to his enemies’ sleping head …

10

I loved the cake poem as well, and Fuchsia’s reaction to it is a masterpiece of character revelation. It’s a poem blatantly about sex and passion, but she hurries through the last stanza in an offhand, uncomprehending way. Poor girl has no experience, nor any hope of gaining the experience, necessary to understand the poem’s eroticism. She, like everyone else in the castle, lives a life of ennui and passionless tradition.

The poem is so funny and alarming, and yet everything else about the setting is so sad and stilted. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

11

I dunno how far in you are, and I don’t want to spoil stuff for you - lets just say that things do get shaken up a bit by Steerpike (who has I think one of the best character arcs in fantasy) and by Titus as he comes of age.

In fact, rebellion against the tradition is a major theme; but nothing is ever simple. Both Steerpike and Titus are, in their ways, both rebels and at the same time exemplars of the Traditions.

12

Things definitely really start happening after a while. As you might guess, since Titus is an infant, he’s not exactly the prime mover. He’s a child in the second book so more happens there that actually involves him directly.

13

Yeah, OK. I JUST got to the poem last night (it’s about 100 pages in, IIRC). I can only comment on the state of things as I know them now, and so far, Fuchsia is such a sad, hopeless character.

14

I, too, like Mama Zappa, tried really, really hard. I just could not get into the first book. This was many years ago, and,I tossed them all. The very first book (and I LOVE to read), was the first/only book I never finished. I didn’t care, either.

I don’t know that I’d try again. I’d have to see if I can even get it/them.

15

This trilogy was read by everyone in my family (except the third book was hardly worth it) and we watched the PBS adaptation which was very good. I’d never heard of it until running across a reference in a non-fiction book by Stephen King who included it in a long list of fantasy literature worth checking out.

16

Again, in my experience it is either love or hate. I’ve never heard anyone say it was “okay” - either people love the books, or can’t read through them enjoyably.

17

I loved Titus Groan but lost the book ten pages or so into Gormenghast, so I can’t tell you about it. It’s more of an experience than a plot, I think. I believe I also picked it up (and Thomas Covenant) from Stephen King!

18

The fact that nothing happens is, of course, part of what will ultimately drive Titus to action. Peake creates an amazing world, IMHO, that’s rotting from nothing happening, and nothing being allowed to happen, and mired in ritual. I love it. I mean, who else has a character die by being eaten by owls. I mean, is that wonderful or is that wonderful?I thought the TV show was very good, for what it’s worth.

19

This thread is spurring me to find that TV adaptation.

We all carry our Gormenghasts with us in our hearts.

20

Fun fact about the TV adaptation: the makers were prepared to use an anamatronic albino crow puppet, when totally fortuitously they found someone who was raising a real albino crow chick as a pet - and so they used that.