Gormenghast
June 26th 2006 06:21
The Gormenghast trilogy
The 'Gormenghast' trilogy... what can I say? I love these books, the writing style alone is enough to reccomend it to anyone who is interested in reading and/or writing in general. The author, Mervyn Peake, was a British poet, artist, illustrator and writer... a real renaissance man. The 'Gormenghast' trilogy is what he will remain most famous for though. Conceived as a chronicle of the life of the fictitious character Titus Groan, the three books that make up this trilogy follow Titus from birth to young adulthood. It was Peake's intention to follow his hero from birth to death but unfortunately his own death from Parkinson's Disease prevented this and so we are instead left with these books... 'Titus Groan' (1946), 'Gormenghast' (1950) and 'Titus Alone' (1959).
It's probably somewhat false to refer to it as The Gormenghast Trilogy, as it's neither precisely about Gormenghast castle (where the first two books take place), nor was the overall story intended to end with the third book. In fact, whilst 'Titus Groan' and 'Titus Alone' link directly with the second book, 'Gormenghast', there is little in common between the first and third books themselves. And whilst this trilogy will most likely be found in the fantasy section of your local bookstore, it doesn't really involve any of the usual elements of the fantasy genre... there is no magic, no monsters, etc, etc.
'Titus Groan' introduces us to the Groan family... a family of ruling nobles who reside in the sprawling and near-endless castle of Gormenghast. The story starts with the birth of Titus Groan, heir to the Earlship, and ends with his first birthday. He is not really a major character in this book. The main character is Steerpike, a runaway Cook's apprentice who appears to be the protagonist of the novel. Steerpike is hungry for power and begins to pick up strands of it wherever he might find it, slowly ingratiating himself with the Groans no matter the cost.
'Gormenghast' picks up the story a few years down the track and follows Titus Groan (now we know who the 'hero' is!) through his adolescence, tracking his growth both physically and mentally as he faces off against Steerpike, who has eventually turned out to be the villain. This book is on par with the previous one.
'Titus Alone', the most different of the three books, doesn't even take place in Gormenghast castle... it's about half the length of the other novels and is about Titus's travels throughout the world outside of Gormenghast - a world that is strangely futuristic and seems to have very little in common with the world Titus has come from. This book is pretty much only about Titus (hence the title) and is, in my opinion, of inferior quality.
Christopher Lee as Flay, from the BBC miniseries based on the first two books of the trilogy.
Those are very brief synopses of the books... it would be unfair to judge these books of any synopsis you find on them as they are about much, much more than just plot. Plot seems to be very secondary as far as Peake is concerned, he concentrates a lot on atmosphere, mood-setting and characterisation. He draws on the surreal, gothic and an almost Dickensian-tradition of the macabre, bizarre and grotesque. Each character is a ruffling delight of descriptive language and eccentricity - each is written as if they are the protagonist of the story, and it makes for surprising reading as you're never sure where Peake is taking them (indeed - it is said that Peake had no real concerns for the plot when he wrote these books, his only rule was to write whatever he felt like writing, and not to get bogged down in silly things like story outlines!)
Mervyn Peake's 'Gormenghast' trilogy would have to go down as one of the old school classics of the 'fantasy' genre. I would reccomend the first two novels but maybe not the third... it's all too apparent that Peake was losing his faculties when he wrote it if you compare the level of description, characterisation and length of the book to the previous two. The tone of 'Titus Alone' felt all wrong to me too... everything from the first two books disappears and it all moves in a different direction. I'm not saying it's not interesting or unwarranted, but it's unfinished - Peake wanted to continue the story of Titus with books called 'Titus Awake' and 'Gormenghast Revisted' but he never got there, so it leave 'Titus Alone' as just an oddity. Some people like to call it the first 'steampunk' novel but I think that's just wishful thinking. Read 'Titus Groan' and 'Gormenghast' though, they're awesome, they form two halves of a great story regarding Steerpike's journey to villainy under the reign of the Groans and there's an amazing host of interesting supporing characters. Get it and get lost in the prose!
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