Mervyn Peake

[Vertigo]

I thought they were just brilliant books, although I did have the same sort of problem with the third book as others have mentioned. Though I think this was only because I was expecting more of the same, having no forums like this around at the time to warn me otherwise!

Once you have read Peake you will start seeing and understanding a number of dedications to him by other authors inspired by his work. For example China Mieville's Perdido Street Station or Moorcocks's Glorianna.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

M. John Harrison too

 

[TheTomG]

So I am left wondering if, having asked for feedback and input on the works of the most marvelous Mervyn Peake and having received many useful replies, Clovis did indeed go on to read Titus Groan and Gormenghast, and if having done so, what he made of them?

Got to say I love those two books. He is like a painter with words, trying to capture every detail of a scene so that you can see it in your minds eye as if looking at a canvas. And what a huge canvas it would be to capture all the tiny details of the sprawling and unruly world of Gormenghast!

"Mr Pye" seems like an interesting read too (it too was televised, but I never did see it, as well as never having read the book,) has anyone ever read that and can they recommend it?

If anyone has no idea about Peake and his writing, here is a quote that shows the kind of style and tone he has - very dense, complex, and yet delightfully witty and almost silly too, steering clear of the realm of the pretentious thanks to its humor:

"When he at least reached the door the handle had cease to vibrate. Lowering himself suddenly to his knees he placed his head and the vagaries of his left eye (which was for ever trying to dash up and down the vertical surface of the door), he was able by dint of concentration to observe, within three inches of his keyholed eye, an eye which was not his, being not only of a different colour to his own iron marble, but being, which is more convincing, on the other side of the door."
Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan

 

[GOLLUM]

"Mr Pye" seems like an interesting read too (it too was televised, but I never did see it, as well as never having read the book,) has anyone ever read that and can they recommend it?

I have the book Mr Pye as well as the radio play transcript as part of the excellent Peake's Progress. Having said that my memories are a little vague on the story except that I recall it containing plenty of Peake's richly evocative prose mixed in with a underlying wry humour. Not quite in the same league as his magnum opus but still a very worthwhile read.

Peake's Progress pound for pound and value for money has to be one of the best author collections to have been produced, containing many of the author's stories, poems and illustrations; published by Penguin. It contains ALL of the stories from Boy In Darkness and Other Stories and Book Of Nonsense Poems, Mr. Pye (radio play format), over 60 illustrations and plenty more besides.

As previously noted I also have some of his lesser known works but have necessarily read these yet; including Letters from a Lost Uncle, Captain Slaughterboard as well as the BBC Drama production of Gormenghast already mentioned in this thread that I am yet to watch.

Recently I also purchased a copy of Titus Awakes penned by Maeve Gilmore, Peake's wife. Based on a fragment left by her husband Gilmore had written this book some decades ago in the form of notebooks, discovered by relatives last year in an attic. I'm a bit ambivalent about this because this is not Mervyn Peake writing but I'm interested to see what direction his late wife took the series in. I probably won't read this until next year after I've performed a reread of Gormenghast. Blurb: Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy is widely acknowledged to be, as Robertson Davies pronounced, “a classic of our age.” In these extraordinary novels, Peake created a world where all is like a dream--lush, fantastical, and vivid. Yet it was incomplete. Parkinson’s disease took Peake’s life in 1968, depriving his fans of the fourth and final volume of the series, Titus Awakes except for a few tantalizing pages, after which his writing became indecipherable. Maeve Gilmore, Peake’s wife, finished the novel, and now at last the fabled Titus Awakes is published in its entirety. Fans of Peake will delight in this new, wonderful tale, published one hundred years after Peake’s birth, every bit as thrilling and masterfully written as his famed trilogy.

 

[j d worthington]

i must admit that I'm both ambivalent and highly sceptical about this one, Mr. G. Not to take away from Maeve Gilmore's abilities (which were, as I recall, rather good), but I don't think anyone could capture the flavor of Peake's writing; that that was as much the point of those books as were the actual incidents. Those were the skeleton; the meat (and the beauty) was in the actual prose....

I think this is one of the main reasons I am glad Eddison's The Mezentian Gate was published as he left it -- with a detailed outline, and sporadic complete chapters -- without anyone attempting to muck about with it. As it stands, it at least allows one to capture fragments of his vision, with a good idea of the rest, in such a way as to genuinely feel like another work by Eddison himself, rather than someone else. I'd much rather have Peake's notes for Titus Awakes, along with any prose he may have completed (of which, I realize there may be none), but -- especially if it was penned at the time, when contact with her husband was still fresh, and she likely had a closer understanding of what he intended -- it might nonetheless be of interest. I would hate, however, to find it to be another Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, which I found to be practically unreadable as a whole ....

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I, too, am ambivalent about this. I want it, but do I want it enough to spend my meager funds on it? Is my library at all likely to buy it? (I am guessing not.)

 

[GOLLUM]

i must admit that I'm both ambivalent and highly sceptical about this one, Mr. G. Not to take away from Maeve Gilmore's abilities (which were, as I recall, rather good), but I don't think anyone could capture the flavor of Peake's writing; that that was as much the point of those books as were the actual incidents. Those were the skeleton; the meat (and the beauty) was in the actual prose....

I think this is one of the main reasons I am glad Eddison's The Mezentian Gate was published as he left it -- with a detailed outline, and sporadic complete chapters -- without anyone attempting to muck about with it. As it stands, it at least allows one to capture fragments of his vision, with a good idea of the rest, in such a way as to genuinely feel like another work by Eddison himself, rather than someone else. I'd much rather have Peake's notes for Titus Awakes, along with any prose he may have completed (of which, I realize there may be none), but -- especially if it was penned at the time, when contact with her husband was still fresh, and she likely had a closer understanding of what he intended -- it might nonetheless be of interest. I would hate, however, to find it to be another Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, which I found to be practically unreadable as a whole ....

Titus Awakes is based upon a few fragments Peake left behind, that's the sum total Gilmore was working with along with presumably a fairly close connection with her husband's work and private discussions? As I said I'm a bit ambivalent as well but I view this as being historically significant if nothing else being a student of the Genre and thus my decision to purchase this book with the caveat that I reread Gormenghast before attempting this in order to provide a more rounded viewpoint, notwithstanding the inescapable bottom line that this is not Peake writing...well OK 'a Peake' but not "The Peake"...

As you may be aware I picked up Eddison's Zimianivia trilogy in a massive single volume Del edition a couple of year's ago for a couple of dollars in a pile of similarly neglected books in a second hand dealer's bookshop..nothing new there. Anyway, I haven't read the final installment and therefore am unclear if this is an 'edited' version of Eddison's original manuscript? It has a very substantial appendix including heavily annotated notes and other background information supplied by Paul Edmund Thomas, with an introduction by Douglas E. Winter if those names mean anything to you? Any elucidation on this issue would be appreciated.

A Canticle For Liebowitz was wonderful but I never suffered the apparent ignominy of reading Saint Liebowitz and the Wild Horse Woman if this is what you are alluding back to?

EDIT: Save your pennies Teresa. Once I read it I'll post my thoughts and this may prove a guide of sorts (or not) for you as to whether it's really worth getting.

 

[j d worthington]

Thomas rings a faint bell (at the moment; I'm off for bed shortly, so when awake, it may mean more) but Winter is definitely someone to pay attention to, as I recall. About it being an "edited" version of his manuscript... I'm not aware of such, but it could be. More likely, given the critical matter surrounding it, it attempts to present the work "as is", to stay true to the writer. In any event, unfinished (though not, curiously, incomplete in one sense, as Eddison wrote the final chapter in full) as it is, The Mezentian Gate is a wonderful conclusion to the set; as full of thought as the others, and having some superb prose, and magical moments; a fitting farewell from a master of archaic English prose.

EDIT: Oh, and yes, that was the one to which I referred. It has its moments, but as a whole, it is an atrociously bad novel; a terribly malproportioned offspring of A Canticle for Leibowitz....

 

[GOLLUM]

Thanks JD. I'm feeling quite animated now about reading Eddison's 3 novels consecutively in order to extract the maximum from them.

 

[j d worthington]

De nada. I hope you'll enjoy them (I am rather certain you will), and look forward to your comments when you get around to them....

 

[GOLLUM]

'when you get around to them" being the operative words here I think...

When you discover a way of reversing the aging process or an inexpensive time travel device please be sure to let me know...

Mind you, I am going to make an effort to read this in its entirety within the next 12 - 18 months. I have a wall chart in progress that will help me track my reading goals for the next 12 months as part of my upcoming literary blog site.

Cheers.

 

[hitmouse]

I love the trilogy. I bought Titus Groan from Andromeda books in Birmingham as a teenager in the early 1980s and read the trilogy so often I could practically recite tracts of the prose.
I think the first two paragraphs put some people off, but the first book is brilliant from the beginning, with Rottcod in the Hall of Bright Carvings, Swelter, Flay, and little lost Steerpike escaping over the roofs to Fuschia's secret attic. The latter part of the second book is a brilliant thriller. Titus Alone is just different, but quite haunting.
The BBC production was very disappointing. In part this was probably due to my very personal image of Gormenghast and its inhabitants.

I have Titus Alone, ready to read. Not sure what to expect. Hopefully not just a Peake pastiche. I enjoyed Maeve Gilmour's Peake memoir, and hopefully this will have some of the same spirit.

Captain Slaughterboard is one my kids' favourite books.

 

[TheTomG]

Ah Andromeda in Birmingham! I got 'Only Apparently Real' and 'Cosmology and Cosmogony' from there when I went up for a visit when I lived in Derby. That was the highlight of that particular excursion.

 

[Peter Winnington]

Funny that this discussion of Peake began on the centenary of his birth, but no one has mentioned it.
Centenary events and publications are listed on the Peake Studies site.
Also some information on Titus Awakes, [site] / TitusAwakes.htm

 

[vickrams]

i have a crush on neve mcintosh shes beautiful that i could ever imagine

 

[TheTomG]

Ah humanity, how I love thee!

 

[hitmouse]

Posted this on another Gormenghast thread a little while ago:

I recently read Titus Awakes and thoroughly enjoyed it. If you are looking for a Peake pastiche then you will be disappointed. It is clearly not intended to channel the original books, but is rather a very sad but beautiful story by Maeve Gilmore. Titus has aspects of Peake about him, but he continually meets a disturbed and disabled man who is obviously Peake in his later tragic years.

 

[TheTomG]

It is clearly not intended to channel the original books, but is rather a very sad but beautiful story by Maeve Gilmore.

Now that makes me interested to read it. I hadn't even considered it before, given that I thought it might try to be what the Gormenghast books were, sounds instead though that it is nothing but its own thing and so may well be worth a read.

Thanks for sharing!

 

[hitmouse]

Review of Titus Awakes by Michael Moorcock:

There is only one Mervyn Peake. An outstanding painter, illustrator, poet, novelist and playwright, Peake is now solidly part of the British literary canon. He was voted one of the 50 best British writers since 1945 in a recent London Times critics' poll. His centenary is being celebrated this year with events and an exhibition at the British Library, an academic conference and the publication of new material or republication of several of his best works, including "The Illustrated Gormenghast."

In the U.S., he tends to be mentioned in the same breath as J.R.R. Tolkien simply because he wrote three books set in a world "parallel" to our own. But his "Gormenghast" sequence — "Titus Groan," "Gormenghast" and "Titus Alone" — was never intended to be a trilogy. It has little or no supernatural content and lacks the sentimentality of Tolkien. Before his descent into the debilitating illness that eventually killed him in 1968, he was planning further novels that would bring his protagonist Titus Groan into worlds more specifically relevant to our own.

Planning the next book in the series, Peake sketched out where he planned to take Titus with a series of scenes headed "Titus in the mountains," "Titus among the snows," and so on. From what he said at the time, he planned to take his protagonist into the contemporary world as a naif, returning him to Gormenghast as it suited his story, blending fantasy and reality in the same narrative. He always discussed his ideas with his wife, the painter Maeve Gilmore, who was not only one of his favorite sitters for portraits and characters (for instance, the Countess of Groan is modeled after her, as was her penchant for white cats) but was also his close collaborator in the preparation of his novels. She was the subject of many poems and many others were dedicated to her. She was, in the view of many who met her, one of the most beautiful women of her day. She also loved him passionately and selflessly. When he contracted the Parkinson's disease that would slowly kill him, she found herself having to take over many of his day-to-day routines, including, of course, the need to find work to support the family.

Money, however, was not what Maeve had in mind when, as Mervyn grew weaker, she began to write a series of stories and sketches that helped ground her grief and keep alive her husband and his work. Her impulse was not so different from what many of us feel when a talented friend dies. Her decision, after much consultation with close friends, to carry on the Titus sequence was seen as a means of helping her to come to terms with a grief she described visually in many of her best paintings. During her lifetime she showed no strong wish to publish the book and, for many years, the manuscript remained largely forgotten and unread until her children rediscovered it and offered it to Peake's publisher as part of their father's centenary celebration.

Although inspired by Mervyn Peake, this book is not another "Titus Alone." A fascinating, intensely personal homage, "Titus Awakes," with its themes of baffled love and loss, takes the scraps of notes and list of chapter titles, turning them into a testament of Maeve's devotion as she sends Titus off into a world even more dream-like than the original.

Accompanied only by his faithful Dog, Titus finds himself on a quest for place and identity, first in the mountains and then in a variety of generally harsh landscapes, a passive participant in the plans of others, reflecting the increasing bewilderment of Peake as his hold on reality weakened. The protagonist is really more Peake than he is Titus. Gilmore found a way to echo rather than imitate him, knowing that Peake could not be imitated. She successfully echoes the music of the originals, if not the eloquent precision of Peake's baroque style as she sends Titus on his adventures, ultimately to find friends in a painter's colony whose backgrounds and characters have the authority of observed reality.

There are chilling scenes in a hospital reminiscent of Peake's own experience of institutions as his condition worsened. One character — the artist — might even be Peake. Death is present everywhere, even in the lyrical passages. Close to the end, Titus is captured by the Destructionists, a nihilistic political gang. He begins to grow into a substantial character. Maeve's talent, as in her paintings, was for reality, and gradually she reveals herself as the perfect person to take Titus into the world Mervyn intended him to find: "He knew he was at last determining his own life." Ultimately, Titus crosses the ocean and arrives at an island very much like Sark in the Channel Islands, where the Peake family was so happy. Before he disembarks he sees a tall man watching the ship. It is evidently Mervyn, surrounded by his children, who joins Titus as he walks from the ferry. "Titus no longer felt alone but a part of someone who would shape his life to come. There's not a road, not a track, but it will lead him home."

Thus Maeve as well as Titus finds resolution, affirming the deep love of life, the optimism she continued to share with her beloved husband.

Moorcock is the award-winning author of many books, including "Mother London" and the Elric saga.
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

 

[j d worthington]

Several of you may know that Moorcock and Peake were friends; and I've always been particularly fond of the dedication of the former's collection The Time Dweller:

For Maeve, Claire, Sebastian and Fabian Peake and in love and admiration for Mervyn Peake, who died 17th November 1968, a generous man in an ungenerous world.

Despite some of their oddnesses and occasional crudities, several of the tales in that collection show the marked influence of Peake on Moorcock, and in some ways I think it may remain one of the best tributes of all....