Mervyn Peake

[REBECCA ANDERSON]

Reply to Oscar Brumwell:

OB> Im thinking of reading the Ghormenghast/Titus trilogy of books by
> Peake. Can someone offer me their opinions as to whether they're
> any good or not?

TITUS GROAN and GORMENGHAST are absolutely brilliant, but be warned:
you don't read them so much as wallow in them. Peake's prose is rich,
thick and intoxicating, like mead. His books are not for the impatient
-- and it also helps to delight in eccentricity.

I would, however, skip TITUS ALONE. You don't need it, IMHO, and it
lacks the quality of the previous two. Peake was dying from a brain
disease when he wrote it, and it shows. The book has its moments, but I
personally wish I had stopped at the end of GORMENGHAST.

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********** Rebecca J. Anderson / London, Ontario, CANADA **********
***************** rebecca....@homebase.com - *****************
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[Cchanson]

rebecca....@homebase.com writes:
>Peake's prose is rich,
>thick and intoxicating, like mead.

Minor quibble: good mead isn't thick, and you have to drink a *lot* for it
to be intoxicating. I think it was Anthony Boucher who quibbled about the
writers who called a highball "amber-colored". And I have a blonde friend
who once showed me what flax really looks like - it ain't the same as
blonde!

Quibbling aside, "rich, thick and intoxicating" is accurate as a
description of Peake's prose in the Titus books.

Caleb ("I re-read T. Groan and Gormenghast frequently, T. Alone never")
Hanson

[Gareth Rees]

REBECCA ANDERSON <rebecca....@homebase.com> wrote:
> I would, however, skip TITUS ALONE. You don't need it, IMHO, and it
> lacks the quality of the previous two. Peake was dying from a brain
> disease when he wrote it, and it shows. The book has its moments, but
> I personally wish I had stopped at the end of GORMENGHAST.

I might be unusual in this, but I think that "Titus Alone" is the best
of the three "Titus" novels. It's an extremely moving book, full of
very startling and disturbing strangeness, and it's like nothing else
I've ever read. Compared with it, "Titus Groan" and "Gormenghast" seem
very safe, very conventional.

--
Gareth Rees

[Sion Arrowsmith]

In article <3kuq8d$o...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>,

Cchanson <ccha...@aol.com> wrote:
>Minor quibble: good mead isn't thick, and you have to drink a *lot* for it
>to be intoxicating.
>

Er, no -- YMMV on how thick mead should be (I agree that it shouldn't
be) but it is typically at least 12%a.b.v (more normally 14%) and unless
your reference is shots it doesn't take a large amount to get you
comfortably lubricated.

--
\S | "And all the superhighways have disappeared
si...@bast.demon.co.uk | "One by one. And all the towns and cities and signs
| "Are underwater now. They're gone." -- Laurie Anderson

[peter huebner]

>--
>Gareth Rees

I think I can cautiously agree with you. The first time I hit "Titus Alone" I sure
did a double take, it was so different. The experience turned out like seeing
something surrealist in an exhibition of old masters; Dali's melting clock-face
next to Duerer's hands. Just as I like surrealism, I very much enjoyed "Titus
Alone", once I got my expectations out of the way. I think it's a great book.

I just wouldn't compare with it's forerunners, though: apples and chestnuts :)

-P.

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