Gormenghast

[Ishmael]

Who here has read through the Gormenghast novels, namely Titus Groan, Gormenghast, and Titus Alone? They are likely the most deep, beautifully written series of books that I have ever read. I mean, it's passed Tolkien on my list of monumental fantasy authors, in many ways. The novel is damn hard to immerse one's self in, but after a few hundred pages, it is obsessive.

I mean, it makes other great fantasy authors like George R.R. Martin and Steven Erikson seem like pulp. Ugh. I can't ramble about it enough. The novel isn't so much fantasy as it is literature.

Actually, I must confess--I really liked Steerpike during the beginning of the novel. Until, well, all the Library issues arose.

[Nerzi]

I love you for starting this thread.

I liked Steerpike all the way through the first two books. I was rooting for him to take over Gormenghast, steal Fuscias virginity and for Titus to escape and Titus alone be about him trying to regain Gormenghast.

I fricking love Steerpike. If he was real I'd marry him and take over the world. :smallbiggrin:

I never read Titus Alone. Asked my big sister who gave me the novels about it and she told me not to bother cause it was no more than a first draft really and the plot wasn't as good as the other two.

Also
Steerpike was the best character and Titus one of, if not the, weakest, a book with pretty much only Titus and none of the other characters just wouldn't have been so good. And they killed off most of the cool ones. *mourns*

[Rob Knotts]

I've tried to track down copies of the books locally, with no luck. My only experience with the story is from the BBC miniseries, which I believe is limited to the first two books. Just form the BBC version though, I suspect Gormenghast is one of the most underrated fantasy stories among modern fans (possibly due to lacking overt fantasy elements like magic or mythological/folktale races).

[Nerzi]

It's just brilliant in every way. Might be hard for most to get into because it is so descriptive. Personaly I loved it from the first page.

I'm gunna have to admit to not seeing the BBC series though :smallfrown:
I really want to!

[Ishmael]

Well, it's pretty hard to slog through, at first. But once the ball gets rolling, it's impossible to stop.

As much as I liked Steerpike, my love for him diminished when his character so suddenly took on an evil aspect. When he was climbing the walls of the castle, he was the best character.

I love Titus, though. I mean, he's pretty annoying, and aloof, and sullen. But, he just wants to be himself. It's a damn good bildungsroman, especially in the third book (which takes on an ethereal aspect, really...it's weird.) Plus, he finally gets to embrace and kiss the Thing, then she gets hit by lightning. And why did Fuscia have to drown? It really depressed me. I mean, kill off Irma, or Bellgrove, or something. Not Fuscia!

[Nerzi]

Steerpike was an awesome villain though, I just loved him all the way through. And Fuscia, a purely brilliant character.

[bosssmiley]

The "Gormenghast" trilogy: "Brideshead Revisited" mugged in an alleyway by Poe and Lovecraft. :smallwink:

The first two are good books with fantastic imagery and a great cast of grotesques. No heroes, no real villains. Just a bunch of people twisted by the all-encompassing rules and rote traditions of the solipsistic world they live in. Steerpike? As much a total product of his environment as Flay, the Earl, Nanny Slagg, Barquentine, or Titus himself.

The third is just..."wtf?" A BIG disappointment for me. There's an obvious reason the BBC only used the first two books as the basis of their teleplay: the tale of Gormenghast was resolved at the end of the eponymous book. You can *tell* Peake was under publisher pressure and not quite in full control of his faculties when he wrote it. "Titus Alone" - arguably the ur-threequel. :smallannoyed:

Oh Ish', it's _traditional_ for romantic heroines (as Fuchsia delusively saw herself) to die by drowning. Google "pre-Raphaelite" and "Ophelia". I'd venture that a substantial part of Fuchsia's character was Peake sending up the whole 'sighing and repining in her bower' thing the pre-Raph's went gooey for...

[Ishmael]

No, I get the conventions used for Fuscia's death. I mean, it's pretty obvious, the play upon of the standard pre-Raphaelite tragic romance. It was the final, and almost ironic, end for the character, an acceptance of the Romantic, yet by the most innocuous of means (drowning by slipping is hardly as meaningful as suicide or murder). I just liked the character....I was similarly depressed when Queequeg died in Moby ****, when Jim died in Lord Jim, when Newman didn't get Claire in the American, etc. Though I am happy the character dies (and establishes an actual meaning to the text), I am also childishly sad too.

I mean, this search for the Ideal seems to be pervasive throughout the book (well, it's not like that's a major theme throughout literature in general, no...) Titus's obsession over the Thing, and more importantly his desire to be himself, away from the castle, seems to fall directly into that--though, of course, one can interchange Imagination and the Romantic easily, or even meld the two into the same thing. Ah...metaphysics, so open to interpretation. Gormenghast itself (obviously) is the most evident of these Absolutes, though it's meaning is a little more fluid--the Countess and Barquentine create one reality for the castle, and almost in an existential twist, Titus and Steerpike devalue the meaning, turning the Absolute into a mundane object (Hmm...that almost reminds me of Starbuck, worrying about the profit of hunting the white whale...)

I wish more fantasy was meaningful, or at least written well (Unlike R. Scott Bakker, and his hyper-convoluted prose and childish naming conventions...I mean, Anasûrimbor Kellhus?)

[Jorkens]

Actually, I must confess--I really liked Steerpike during the beginning of the novel. Until, well, all the Library issues arose.
It's been a while since I read it, but isn't that part of the point? You get the setup of the dank medieval castle governed by pointless ritual and tradition full of weird and generally not particularly nice people who at best tolerate each other and when Steerpike turns up he seems like he's going to be a rational democratic (at least insofar as he's stepping outside the class structure) modernizer, until he gradually turns out to be even more horrible than what went before.

And then Titus, the last hope of the old order, finishes Steerpike off but then abandons the castle and everything in it.

[Ishmael]

Yup. That's what makes the book so great.

Actually, Steerpike was pretty cool, even in the end. That entire scene with the Twins, and Flay, the Doctor, and Titus's trailing of him was perhaps the most suspense-filled part of the book.

[factotum]

I actually didn't like the second book much, because it seemed to shrink Gormenghast. In the first book you got the impression that Gormenghast was hundreds of feet high and miles in extent, whereas a flood that got up to the 12th floor pretty much made the castle uninhabitable in the second one. Which is odd, considering the castle was much more the focus of that book than it was in the first!