Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books

Mervyn Peake - The Gormenghast Trilogy

Reviews
 

A masterpiece of modern literature alloyed in the tragedy of war as the old medieval world portrayed in its stifling monotonous certainties becames devastated by those oppressed within the prison of its social confines. The result was the post war change Peake allegorises in these seminal, hugely influential columns, towers and pinnacles of the imaginarium palace.

Whilst the elite become talismanic figures of the social strata, Peake revealed the tighly bound ropes of convention, entwining human spirit and strangling creativity. Every day is marked by elegaic anachronistic traditional observance, snarling daily movement and thought patterns.

The dialectic of change arises from the thoughts of Steerpike whose consumate greed and will to power over turns the old order to create a new tyrany. Echoing Animal Farm, Peake aimed his lance not just as the communist windmills but also National Socialist and Labour change artists.

Whilst this appeals to tradition, his real undergournd blast also toppled the old established certainties. This was killing the human spirit and created the carnage. Titus represents Buddha on his wish to experience the real, instead of the manufactured world woven around him.

The three books are allegories of post war life imbibed as wish fulfillment fantasy lands by those encloseted in safe make believe universes. Others who start on the road cannot finish the journey due to the obtuse pedagogic descriptions of characterisation. Peake wrote poetry as prose as the knees fired like rockets. His style harkened back to another time, a poetic period. Peake wanted to bring the real world alive within the imagination. The purpose to create a book of changes beyond the confines of power. It was not just a story to consume ,but a treatise as real as Das Kapital or Road to Serfdom to rethink life.

The trilogy requires an open mind, they nestle next to the Castle, the Trial, Animal Farm, 1984, Catch 22 and the other greats.

There is no connection whatsoever to Lord of the Rings.
Dr. Delvis Memphistopheles

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The history of the Titus Books

Mervyn Peake's series of works was published in the following order: Titus Groan (1946), Gormenghast (1950) and Titus Alone (1959). In 1970, Penguin Classics published a handsome boxed set of the three illustrated paperback volumes - which is where I came in... For the last four decades I have been delighted to walk the stony corridors of Gormenghast.

Penguin published the novels again in 1983 but this time in one volume with some of Mervyn's own illustrations and with over 1,000 pages to savour. In 1984, BBC Radio 4 broadcast two 90-minute plays based on Titus Groan and Gormenghast, adapted by Brian Sibley and starring Sting and Freddie Jones. In early 2000, the BBC produced and broadcast a four-episode serial, entitled Gormenghast which was based on the first two books of the series. The glittering cast included Christopher Lee, Celia Imrie, Ian Richardson, Richard Griffiths, Fiona Shaw, Stephen Fry, Warren Mitchell, John Sessions and Zoë Wanamaker.

The trilogy, which has also been published by Folio, by Mandarin and by Methuen, has been described as a celebrated modernist fantasy and although Mervyn Peake was a talented and visionary artist, the story works better on the printed page. The imagination of the reader is much bolder than the limitations of the screen. The first books are a brilliant sojourn in the suffocating castle, trapped within the stone walls like dust motes, in the established ritual which governs the lives of the Groan family and their retainers. The characters which populate the Castle are unlike anyone else you will ever meet - from the highest Lord to the menial kitchen boys, all beautifully drawn.

In April 2003, the Gormenghast books were voted number 84 in BBC Big Read - not very high on the list but it's placed higher than Frankenstein, Dracula and Moby Dick!

I expect that shortly there will be a resurgence of interest in the works of Mervyn Peake when the long-lost sequel to the trilogy is published. Titus Awakes will be published next year, to mark the centenary of Peake's birth. 2011 will also see the release of a new illustrated edition of the Gormenghast trilogy, complete with 60 never-before-seen drawings by Peake which his son, Sebastian, is placing within the novel. So if you have not yet read the Titus books or need to read them again, get ahead of the crowd and be ready for the sequel. Mervyn Peake deserves to be recognised as the genius which he was.

Rosie Gamgee

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I found that this book was like watching paint dry. Not being one to give up on books, I read it all, and to be fair the first book was beautifully prosaic and colourful. But there is so much that is unnecessary, and meanders, and after a while you just long for there to be a point to it all. The third book is in a totally different style as not having been able to finish it himself, a friend and scholar has drawn together notes etc. and ideas and written his version which is much faster reading; but to be honest, unless you have time on your hands, it's hard work, for a very glum tale.
Mrs. Jennifer M. Morris

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Dark, amusing, labyrinthine, Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy is, quite simply, a work of genius.

Stylistically it is utterly fascinating: Dickensian grotesques, surrealist dream sequences, nonsense poetry, acute social satire, Joycean internal monologues, Gothic and dystopian environments - all of these disparate elements are incorporated effortlessly into Peake's deliciously excessive and entirely unique prose style. Indeed, the remarkable drive for stylistic self signature in each of the three Gormenghast novels shows Peake to be as much at home in the company of modernist writers like Kafka and Joyce as he is with fantasy authors like Tolkien and Pynchon.

Whilst the novels admirably explore some of the key issues facing writers in the early 20th century (like Kafka, Peake's is undoubtedly the art of existential exposure to meaningless and absurdity), the Gormenghast Trilogy is probably at its best when enjoyed as an atmosphere piece. Rarely have I read a book that smothers you in its world so completely. At times I could taste the dust and smell the mouldering walls of the castle itself so vividly that I felt as suffocated as the titular character of Titus Groan himself.

Dense? Yes. Flawed? Certainly. Peake's Gormenghast trilogy, however, is one of the most compelling, fascinating and enjoyable reading experiences I have had.
S. J. Eckstein

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I've never read a book that has changed my life, and I am quite sceptical of people who say they have. The Gormenghast trilogy, like all other books I have read, did not change my life. It has, however, changed my perception as to what a 'fantasy' novel can be. Basically it can be a poetic, literary gothic masterpiece without even the merest hint of a whiff of magic or dragons or wizards or such.
Gormenghast is a fantasy of manners. There are scenes of violence, but the relationships between the characters, and each person's relationship to the castle itself, within the hierarchical society is of most importance to the story.

The author's writing style is fairly wordy (the books are very long) and I won't lie and say I didn't have to look up a fair number of words in the dictionary, but I like to be at least a little challenged by a book, and his use of words is so poetic that you cannot help but be enthralled.

Peake's descriptions of the castle and the various characters are so complete and so vivid that you can't help but feel totally immersed in the experience. You will cringe with loathing and disgust every time the cook Swelter appears, you will be torn between abhorrence of Steerpike's evil and respect for his supreme intellect and poise. (I personally think Steerpike is one of the greatest fictional characters ever created). And the whole time you will be there with them, inside the crumbling walls of Gormenghast Castle.
Ewan Rayner

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