Interesting piece on Gormenghast

[hitmouse]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22464374

 

[thaddeus6th]

I was reading that some piece earlier today.

I saw the BBC mini-series (which I think only covers the first book), but haven't actually read any of the books.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

They are extraordinary books indeed. The reader is truly shocked by the sudden change in the third volume; perhaps as much as Titus himself is shocked by the world he finds outside Gormenghast.

 

[j d worthington]

I was reading that some piece earlier today.

I saw the BBC mini-series (which I think only covers the first book), but haven't actually read any of the books.

It covers the first two, which take place within and around Gormenghast. The third takes place, as Victoria noted, in the world outside, and has a vastly different feel to it. Granted this was due to Peake's increasing illness as well, but even without that, the radical shift would have been necessary, which would have made a dramatic adaptation of that virtually impossible -- too much of a disjuncture.

EDIT: I also meant to say, the article itself is quite good, if overly brief. It's an interesting reading of the books, and puts them very much in the movement of so much of the best (and most challenging) fantastic writing of the latter half of the twentieth century, to several writers of whom Peake was most definitely a figure with which to reckon....

 

[nightdreamer]

I had those books as a teen, but never read them. Now, I wish I had. I need to find them again.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Unique and wonderful novels, surely required reading for anyone into fantasy - especially the gothic side...

 

[Extollager]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22464374

I haven't even read this yet but am excited to -- it's by John Gray, whose Immortality Commission I found very interesting in itself and as something to set alongside one of my all-time favorite novels, C. S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength. I doubt that Lewis was aware of much that Gray reports (e.g. about the Soviet "god-builders"), but there is an amazing similarity between that material and Lewis's National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments -- which Lewis conceived in a satirical manner. Little (probably) did he know......

So "Thank you!" for pointing it out.

 

[Toby Frost]

They really are tremendous books, especially the first two. I find them far more likeable than The Lord of the Rings, perhaps because the characters seem so much stronger to me. I also far prefer Peake's writing, but perhaps the comparison isn't very fair.

I should say that I've only ever read one book by John Gray - Black Mass - and thought it was awful, but this is a well-written article. Thank you for finding it!

(As an aside, it's interesting to see That Hideous Strength mentioned here. Did you know that George Orwell reviewed it? I wonder if the Thought Police derived anything from the NICE? The review is here: http://www.lewisiana.nl/orwell/)

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Peake's prose style is a bit of an acquired taste, I think. I found it difficult going to begin with.

 

[j d worthington]

Peake's prose style is a bit of an acquired taste, I think. I found it difficult going to begin with.

Mmmm... yes and no. The thing is, as you can see by reading other works by Peake, that he fashioned the prose to suit what he was doing. Even within the three books (and one short story), the prose is really quite varied, from the extremely dense, almost monolithic structure of the first book (which in itself reflects Gormenghast and its effects on people superbly) to the much more racy, at times almost telegraphic prose of portions of the second novel (particularly various portions involving the Prunesquallors and Titus' instructors), to the often quite terse prose of Titus Alone (particularly the sections involving Muzzlehatch, himself given to terse statements. Peake was a poet and artist as well, and understood to an intense degree the importance of the type of prose to what it is meant to convey, and he built -- or perhaps orchestrated is a better word -- his prose accordingly.

 

[hitmouse]

Peake's prose is terrifically effective. His description of place and event is some of the most vivid I have seen, and his characters are strange and compelling. I tell people to try not to be put off by the first page, with its description of the tower of flints and a couple of words I have not seen anywhere else.