Episode 17 - Coronation Special! Titus Groan with Toby Frost

[Extollager]

Does anyone want to discuss another possibility, that the Gormenghast books may be on the periphery of the Dying Earth genre?

1.As in Wells's far future vision, humanity seems to have bifurcated (not to so extreme a degree as in The Time Machine). There are the dwellers in the Castle, who seem to be even physically different from the dwellers outside. The dwellers in the castle are often very old but keep on living. Outside the castle, the dwellers in the huts, we are told, grow quickly into a beauty (like Keda's) that fades rapidly. Peake doesn't say that they die earlier than the Castle dwellers, but that is probably suggested by what he does say.

2.Obviously, Peake tries constantly to evoke the sense that the Castle is of great age. If Titus is the 77th Earl, and we figure 25 years on average for succession, then the Groan line is nearly 2,000 years old. Of course we are free to imagine the Castle as having been built at almost any time during the tenure of the Groans. For that matter, the Groan dynasty might have been founded long after the Castle was built. In any event the Castle is very old. There don't appear to be any legends or monuments about its builders.

3.As in Vance's stories and others in the genre, the people are odd and the cunning rogue may be a relatively lively figure (cf. The Eyes of the Overworld, etc.; I wonder if it would be profitable to compare and contrast Steerpike and Cugel).

4.I get the sense that nature itself seems old in the first two books.* Steerpike, I believe, refers somewhere to the sun as being "'the old treacle bun.'" So, first, he says the sun is "old." Second, he likens it to a "treacle bun." Perhaps someone can help us with what Peake would have imagined when he wrote that. I looked at images online and about all they had in common was that the baked goods were dark. Granted that Steerpike's remark might have been more a revelation of something about his imagination (he likens the sun to a cheap confection), but I'm wondering if this could legitimately be considered to be a clue suggesting the sun from Gormenghast doesn't appear as a blazing disc.

Next time I read the books I'll have to look for descriptions of the sun and sunlight.

Is there something towards the end of Gormenghast that suggests someone can look directly at the sun? If that's not something I'm imagining, it would suggest a change in the sun.

Likewise, the impression I have of the oak forest outside the Castle is that it is old (Gormenghast Ch. 19). Of course a forest millions of years ago could have deep moss, lichens, etc. However, outside paleontological contexts, deep moss etc. would suggest antiquity, and that is what, I suppose, would appeal to Peake.

And --this is farfetched but I'll mention it anyway -- the albinism of Gertrude's numerous cats, and of her crow, might have seemed to Peake to fit into his vision of a decaying realm or world. At any rate with the cats there is the suggestion of a long-inbred population.

Are the Eloi described as having albinism? If so, that might suggest a notion associating albinism with racial decline -- an idea repellent to us -- but so are other ideas entertained by H. G. Wells and other writers of the time.

*I'm rereading Titus Alone now.

 

[The Judge]

Steerpike, I believe, refers somewhere to the sun as being "'the old treacle bun.'" So, first, he says the sun is "old." Second, he likens it to a "treacle bun." Perhaps someone can help us with what Peake would have imagined when he wrote that.

I can't recall how Steerpike talks, but I rather suspect you're overthinking this and it's simply a variation of the cockney rhyming slang "currant bun" for the sun. Also, among native British-English speakers, using "old" in a phrase like this wasn't necessarily an implication of age, but almost a term of affection eg as in "Hello, old chap" or as in the nursery rhyme "The grand old Duke of York".

 

[Toby Frost]

I've wondered in the past if Gormenghast is set massively far into the future - ie a dying Earth - in some sort of post-apocalypse, perhaps like the Kamarg in Moorcock's Count Brass (Moorcock was a huge fan of Peake and did a lot for his legacy, although I didn't much like his homage, Gloriana). I think that's one of the best ways to get it to fit into a conventional real-world timeline.

Random thought: I know that, wherever I happened to go in Middle Earth, I would never find a helicopter. There just wouldn't be one, even though there are bits of Middle Earth that remain pretty vague to me. I don't feel the same internal consistency in Peake's writing (John Brunner's fantasy book The Traveller in Black has the same deliberate lack of consistency). I wonder if we expect this kind of consistency now, partly because it's enjoyable and partly because Tolkien does it so well?

I've not read Maeve Gilmore's Titus Awakes, but I gather that it ends with Titus emerging into our reality. Maybe the Gormenghast world is parallel to ours, and at points there's a small element of overlap!

Good luck with Titus Alone! With the best will in the world, it's pretty flawed.

 

[Extollager]

Toby, I'd love to know more about Moorcock's efforts on behalf of Peake. A few years ago I posted Moorcock's letter in Fantastic about Peake --

Early Magazines in Your Collection (Astounding, Galaxy, etc.)

I'm no collector, but I've acquired a couple of oddments, here and there. This one came while helping a friend's widow clear out their house. All Shadowboxed and stuff. (One of my few real life S&SF buddies. She insisted.) I've never dared open it up. January 1942.

www.sffchronicles.com

-- but that's about all I know.

 

[Toby Frost]

Moorcock seems to have been a friend of the Peake family. Moorcock visited Peake in 1959. According to his introduction to the biography Mervyn Peake's Vast Alchemies by G Peter Winnington (well worth a look) he published some short stories of Peake's in New Worlds (he doesn't say what they were, unfortunately) and seemed to work with Langdon Jones in re-editing Titus Alone (the original edit sounds pretty ropey). In 1966, he recommended that Penguin should publish a new edition of the Titus books. Moorcock ended up dedicating Gloriana to Peake. Beyond that, I'm not sure, but he's always been cited as a big fan, along with Neil Gaiman.

 

[HareBrain]

I've wondered in the past if Gormenghast is set massively far into the future - ie a dying Earth - in some sort of post-apocalypse

I think this is borne out by Peake's novella Boy in Darkness, which is near-universally taken to feature Titus Groan as the titular child (though this is not made explicit in the text). The machinery and structures in the defunct mines where most of the action takes place are very, very old and, being made of metal, would seem to be of a higher technological level than the castle. The half-human creatures inhabiting the mine complex would seem to be the result of some kind of futuristic Moreau-type experimentation. (Incidentally, two of them, Hyena and Goat, would seem to be degraded echoes of the Lion and Unicorn from the British royal coat of arms, but I can't remember if it's suggested that this is meant to be their literal origin: i.e. the setting is far-future Britain. I'm sure it's not as neat as that.)

 

[Dan Jones]

I can't recall how Steerpike talks, but I rather suspect you're overthinking this and it's simply a variation of the cockney rhyming slang "currant bun" for the sun. Also, among native British-English speakers, using "old" in a phrase like this wasn't necessarily an implication of age, but almost a term of affection eg as in "Hello, old chap" or as in the nursery rhyme "The grand old Duke of York".

Most likely correct. Also see the WW1 poem "Hanging on the Old Barbed Wire." (copied below) As an old East End chap meself, I can attest that "old" is used as a general synonym for "familiar".

If you want the old battalion,
I know where they are, I know where they are, I know where they are
If you want to find the old battalion, I know where they are,
They're hanging on the old barbed wire,
I've seen 'em, I've seen 'em, hanging on the old barbed wire.
I've seen 'em, I've seen 'em, hanging on the old barbed wire.

 

[Extollager]

By the way, thanks everyone concerned for this discussion of Titus Groan this month. It was 49 years ago today that I began to read my first book by Peake — this very one.

 

[Phyrebrat]

By the way, thanks everyone concerned for this discussion of Titus Groan this month. It was 49 years ago today that I began to read my first book by Peake — this very one.

Very glad we were able to do a podcast on it for a fan

 

[Extollager]

It was likewise 49 years ago that I first read your next Chronscast book, Watership Down (in July and August of 1974 -- so almost exactly 49 years before this anticipated June discussion).

Other notable firtst-time fantasy reads for me that year were T. H. White's Mistress Masham's Repose and George MacDonald's Phantastes, as well as the other two Titus books. It was actually a glorious year for reading, both first-time reads and some rereadings as well. That was the year I began to keep a list of books read.

 

[hitmouse]

Catching up with this thread a bit late so some belated observations. DOI i was a teenage Peake obsessive and must have read this trilogy a dozen times, though probably not in the last 20 years.
One thing that always struck me was the rich but fossilised opportunities of Gormenghast and the fact that no-one apart from Steerpike and Titus ever really question their place in it. Even Fuschia is fundamentally part of the tragedy. So I dont think this is totalitarian: beyond unthinking conformity to tradition nothing is enforced. It is debateable how far this is allegory or just an affectation of Peake. Certainly one can see parallels with English establishment traditions which are often arcane and accepted.

The question of whether this is a gnomic post-apocalyptic story had not ocurred to me. I think Peake was more straightforward than that, so I doubt it. Gormenghast is a romance which does not require that sort of anchor.

 

[Extollager]

"...no-one apart from Steerpike and Titus ever really question their place in it. Even Fuschia is fundamentally part of the tragedy. So I don't think this is totalitarian: beyond unthinking conformity to tradition nothing is enforced."

That's what I was driving at when I wrote about Gormenghast as an achieved totalitarian society. What "enforcement" would there be, when no enforcement is needed? A cadre of enforcers is a sign that nonconformist thought is still possible. The enforcers -- we'll call them the police -- have to know that an alternative arrangement is, at least, imaginable, in order that they can watch for signs of it and eradicate it. But if there are no signs of anyone conceiving of an alternative arrangement, what would such police do? They would then actually be a potential source of disruption because of their knowledge (that someone might conceive of something different). So the absence of police in the Castle is a sign that this state has been achieved. It's totalitarian because everything is under the sway of Gormenghastism.

The decay everywhere, the empty apartments, the absence of families, etc. are all signs that this totalitarian society is in decline. But no one is concerned about it.

 

[PadreTX]

Listened to the whole podcast. Again, the best part was the Judge.

It got me wondering. What would have happened if Andrew was the oldest brother? Would he have automatically become the king, even with the stuff of Creepy Island with Jeff Epstein? Or does the queen (or now the king) have the authority to decide on a successor with whoever prefers? Or should be oldest but queen picks a different child and result in a 21st century War of the Roses?

 

[The Judge]

Nope, it's primogeniture all the way in the royal family, though now women aren't pushed to the back behind younger brothers as Anne was (so Charlotte is ahead of Louis in the inheritance stakes), and therefore if Andrew had been the eldest brother he would have been king. But, of course, as heir apparent he would have had a very different upbringing from the one he received as heir presumptive -- for a start as an adult he'd have had courtiers keeping a much closer eye on him and what he was doing and keeping him as far as possible away from undesirables. (Though, to be fair, it's easy to recognise such undesirables with the benefit of hindsight, and much harder to do when one is being glad-handed by them -- people like that take advantage of whomever they find, especially those with any glamour or power, and groom them assidiously.)

So no, the Queen couldn't have stepped in to give the crown to a more acceptable child. That said, however, if an heir did something regarded as beyond the pale then I have no doubt that matters would be arranged for a withdrawal from public life and effective renunciation of his/her claim to the throne, either formally through a written declaration followed by an Act of Parliament along the lines of His Majesty's Declaration of Abdication Act 1936 for Edward VIII, or more sneakily through the heir announcing conversion and acceptance into eg the Roman Catholic church, which would automatically exclude him/her from the succession. (As I mentioned in my talk, the monarch has to be Protestant and in communion with the C of E, and that was unaffected by the Perth Agreement of 2011 which allowed the monarch to be married to a Catholic, up until then also not possible.)

 

[Toby Frost]

What "enforcement" would there be, when no enforcement is needed?

But without the apparatus of tyranny and enforcement, what you end up with is a community where the lives of everyone are driven by one influence that dominates them. Surely by that logic a monastery or a religious retreat is totalitarian, because everyone's life is driven by the same force? At the end of the day, I don't think our definitions of "totalitarian" fully overlap.

 

[Extollager]

But without the apparatus of tyranny and enforcement, what you end up with is a community where the lives of everyone are driven by one influence that dominates them. Surely by that logic a monastery or a religious retreat is totalitarian, because everyone's life is driven by the same force? At the end of the day, I don't think our definitions of "totalitarian" fully overlap.

Toby, wouldn't an important difference be that one entered a monastery as a result of a sense of vocation and a choice (to become a postulant, etc.), coming from a community outside the monastery, and took vows to remain in the monastery and live according to its hours of prayer, work, rest, etc.? And while some monasteries are/were stricter and more enclosed, monks from some monasteries might travel outside with permission (e.g. Thomas Merton). So I think I can keep my notion of "achieved totalitarianism" without overlap with monasticism.

Gormenghast has been self-perpetuating.* One was born into it and grew up wholly under its norms (unless one's "blood" prompted rebellion). A monastery lasts only so long as new "recruits" enter, led presumably by the sense that this is where God wants them to be or at least to give it a try; the final decision about becoming a monk will come from the abbot, I suppose, who accepts the vocation of the aspiring monk as genuine and believes he is capable of living accordingly. In all I've said I've been thinking of Christian monasticism, which I've studied a little.

*But it seems to be deep into demographic decline.

 

[Toby Frost]

I don't think either of us is going to persuade the other here.

I have a broader question: is it a mistake to try to make sense of Gormenghast, as we've been trying to? I wonder if part of the huge influence of The Lord of the Rings on fantasy is to make readers expect a high level of interior logic (often achieved just by imitating Tolkien), which might not have been there before? Stories like Alice in Wonderland, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and some of the trippier King Arthur stories feel like daydreams as much as coherent worlds that abide by strict rules. I've read literary novels where a group of people are just gathered in a country house because of some vague catastrophe. Gormenghast seems to function like that: it's not so much bad world-building as Peake not requiring that kind of world-building, because it hadn't become normal in fantasy by then.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

one entered a monastery as a result of a sense of vocation and a choice

With the exception of those promised (sometimes at birth) by their parents to a monastery and sent there to be raised at a very early age. There would be no choice for the child in such circumstances, and in many cases little or no natural vocation.

 

[Extollager]

I don't think either of us is going to persuade the other here.

I have a broader question: is it a mistake to try to make sense of Gormenghast, as we've been trying to? I wonder if part of the huge influence of The Lord of the Rings on fantasy is to make readers expect a high level of interior logic (often achieved just by imitating Tolkien), which might not have been there before? Stories like Alice in Wonderland, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and some of the trippier King Arthur stories feel like daydreams as much as coherent worlds that abide by strict rules. I've read literary novels where a group of people are just gathered in a country house because of some vague catastrophe. Gormenghast seems to function like that: it's not so much bad world-building as Peake not requiring that kind of world-building, because it hadn't become normal in fantasy by then.

Yes, I agree pretty strongly with you here. I wanted to test a notion -- that Gormenghast could be understood as an "achieved totalitarian state," without endorsing the idea that that was what Peake was up to all the time, or consciously up to at any time. I t's a way of thinking about Gormenghast that helped me to see much of the reason why it hangs together so well despite Peake's free inventiveness. By no means does the "achieved totalitarian state" account for everything that's going on there or for the interest the two books generate.

 

[Extollager]

With the exception of those promised (sometimes at birth) by their parents to a monastery and sent there to be raised at a very early age. There would be no choice for the child in such circumstances, and in many cases little or no natural vocation.

I had the impression that something like that might be the case in traditional Buddhist monasteries. Was that a feature of medieval Christian monasticism? I suppose that most of my studies of Christian monasticism dealt with the early centuries (e.g. St. Athanasius's fascinating Life of St. Anthony) or with pretty recent monasticism, e.g. the revival of Anglican monasticism in the 19th century, and 20th-century monasticism (Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, &c.).