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| Saturday, February 23, 2008 06:38 PM |
| Book Report: Gormenghast |
 by Fëanor |
In the first book of Mervyn Peake's Titus series (my impressions of which you can find here and here), we are introduced to the world of Gormenghast and to some of the most important people there. It is an enormous, rotting, haunted place, nearly crushed under the weight of its own history and traditions. It is a place of reverie and inertia, a world of its own - an amazing place. Into this place of changelessness enter three people who will be great agents of change: the newly born heir, Titus Groan, who even in his infancy is the enemy of tradition; the child of Titus' surrogate mother, who has no part in the first book, but will have a very important one in the second; and a young man who works in the kitchens named Steerpike. Titus Groan opens with Steerpike - unhappy with his master, the chef - escaping the kitchens, only to be locked into a room by the Earl's first servant, Flay, who, although also an enemy of the chef, is first and foremost the enemy of anyone who tries to break the rules and traditions of Gormenghast. And Steerpike's attempt to rebel against his lot puts him amongst that latter group of people. Steerpike quickly escapes the room, makes a perilous journey across the rooftops of Gormenghast, and finally sneaks through a window and into an attic room that Fuschia, the daughter of the Earl, thought was her own secret place where she could live out her childhood dreams of fantasy. It's the first time, but not the last, that he will shatter her delicate world of fantasy.
At this point we still sympathize with Steerpike as a man trapped in an unhappy life fighting back against the paralyzing and pointless customs of the castle, in search of escape and a little happiness of his own. But soon enough - as we watch him work his way into the good graces of Dr. Prunesquallor, and from there into the service of the twin sisters of the Earl, whom he soon transforms into his own servants - we discover that he is actually a cold-blooded, heartless creature, seeking only power, with an intensity and a cunning and a machine-like determination that is horrific.
It's his actions that drive most of the events of the first two Titus books. It's his actions that bring death and change to the dusty halls of Gormenghast.
In the second book, we watch Titus grow from a young boy into a young man, and he loses none of his defiant spirit, but instead adds to it a fully-formed desire to be free of the mantle of Gormenghast and its endless rituals, and to become his own man, and not a symbol - not an Earl. He is therefore both the symbol of Gormenghast, and the enemy of all that it is.
Joining both Titus and Steerpike as an agent of change and rebellion is the daughter of Titus' surrogate mother and wet nurse, a creature known only as The Thing. The Thing is the only real element of fantasy in any of the books so far. Born out of the passionate union of the wet nurse and one of the most talented of the Bright Carvers - who died fighting a rival for her love only hours after the conception of the child - she is somehow more and less than human. She's extremely small and frail, and she can fly. In fact, she's essentially a fairy - or an elf, which is the word actually used to describe her in the third book (yeah, I started reading that one already). She's rejected by her people as a cursed thing - less because she's such an odd creature and more because she's a child born out of wedlock - so she becomes a wild, free being, without a home or a language, living as she likes out in the wilds around Gormenghast. When Titus sees her briefly as a child, while running away from his home (not for the first or last time), she immediately fascinates him and becomes the object of his dreams and fantasies. She's the symbol of everything that is not Gormenghast, of everything he wants - freedom, passion, rebellion, the Other. When he sees her again many years later, what he thought was a dream he realizes is reality, and the urge to possess her, and to escape Gormenghast, rises up in him again even stronger than it's ever been. In many ways this second book is a coming of age story. Titus does not really become a man, but he at least leaves his innocence and his boyhood behind.
Whole new aspects of the life at Gormenghast are explored in this book, and the series takes on new subjects and proccupations. We are introduced, first of all, to the professors, and to the school that all the children of Gormenghast, including Titus, must attend. Peake uses these sections to exercise his gifts of parody and satire, and to great effect; most of the passages making fun of the musty, lazy, ineffectual educational system in the castle are truly hilarious, and work quite well as a bitterly sarcastic comment on the world of academics in general.
It's in this part of the book that we get introduced to the arrogant, absent-minded, bombastic, lovable character of Bellgrove - a professor who eventually becomes both the headmaster and one of Titus' closest friends. The love affair between Bellgrove and Dr. Prunesquallor's sister, Irma, is a nearly unbearably uncomfortable comedy of errors which works as a satire of romance and marriage. It was the toughest part of the book for me to get through, but in its own way it's as clever and well done as the rest of the novel, and even ends up being rather sweet.
But again, as in the first book, the most entrancing "character" is Gormenghast itself. The castle, the forest nearby, and Gormenghast mountain are described in vivid, painstaking detail, thanks to Peake's incredible ability to build a complete, real, physical world out of words. The castle is an endlessly fascinating warren of dusty, rotting tunnels, forgotten towers and rooms, inexplicable labyrinths. It and its surroundings are populated by a fascinating collection, not only of people, but also of animals, many of which are the special favorites of Countess Gertrude. Peake speaks of the castle breathing, and describes in breathtaking detail the way the light falls across its towers, or how various occurences of catastrophic weather affect the place - the snowstorm that keeps the castle bound in ice for weeks, as the birds drop dead from the trees; and, most amazingly, the flood that slowly fills the castle, floor by floor, until the trees outside are entirely submerged, the inhabitants drag their possessions up and up, and everyone must resort to travelling through the hallways in boats fashioned by the Bright Carvers.
These first two books - Titus Groan and Gormenghast - have actually been adapted into a BBC TV miniseries. I'm curious to see it, but I've heard mixed things, and I don't see how they could have captured the unique flavor and eerie beauty of the book. It seems to me the perfect director for a film adaptation of the Titus books would be Terrence Malick. His dreamy, introspective style and wandering eye for visual beauty would be ideal. He'd also need a huge budget to recreate Gormenghast in all its glory, and the movie would have to be about 20 hours long. But still. I think it would be great.
Of course, it helps that the source material is so excellent. Gormenghast is an amazing creation. It's an adventure epic, a gothic novel, a horror tale, a satire, a coming of age story, and a fantasy - all at once, and all equally effectively. It's a unique and beautiful work, and it's truly a shame that Peake did not live to complete the series. Still, I look forward to finishing the third book, Titus Alone. Look for the review here! |
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