Gormenghast (Titus Groan) - Ramble Review
Aug. 8th, 2023 06:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labingiBack in what Wikipedia informs me was the year 2000 (sounds about right), I watched the PBS adaptation of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast, having never before heard of the books. The commercials had me really excited: it looked atmospheric, weird, and otherworldly, and I'm always hungry for a story that can transport me like that. So I eagerly sat down to watch it and was very quickly bored and disillusioned by an unbroken host of unlikable, one-dimensional caricatures who seemed a sad waste of the visually enthralling world they'd been set down in.
From that day on, I dismissed the books as "not my thing," until a few weeks ago, I came across a tattered copy of book 1, Titus Groan, in a little free library and thought, "Why not. I'm curious what it's like." tl;dr: The book is better. I may even have turned into a mild fan. Spoilers for Titus Groan follow
Brief summary: In the dreary stagnant castle of Gormenghast, Machiavellian upstart Steerpike sets about rising to power while the abstracted Earl and pretty much everyone else has low-to-no idea what's going on. Sad events (slowly) ensue.
This book will never make my favorites list for the same reason the TV series turned me off: the characters are fundamentally either pathetic or unlikable. That said, some of them have a remarkable depth, a sort of psychologically insightful weight I found (a) completely lacking in the adaptation and (b) really surprising when combined with the dark fantasy grotesque: I've never seen another book pull the same thing off. I think the winners, in terms of psychological depth, are Fuschia, Dr. Prunesquallor, and oddly Fuschia's mother, Countess Gertrude, though she has a fairly small role. Honorable mention to Keda, the ill-fated peasant woman, who may be more mythic than realistic but conveys a tangible sense of connection to the transcendent.
Steerpike is a little hard to place for me. Wikipedia quotes a source that cited him as one of the greatest villains in literature or some such thing. I think that may be a stretch. But he's a well-drawn character, a true sociopath smart enough to bide his time and behave respectably in most circumstances. He's unusual for this type in the attention that's given to his human limitations. I don't mean personality/emotional limitations--he's pure consistent sociopath there. I mean that he's not omniscient. He sometimes miscalculates, is sometimes surprised, sometimes stumbles on an opportunity by sheer coincidence, etc. That seems to me surprisingly rare for the "smart villain" type.
I guess as a type, I'd put him in the same box as Servalan from Blake's 7 or Prince from Lexx: a character who is engaging due to their intelligence and a certain kind of charisma, while being an absolute one-note moral simpleton.* It's the latter part that will keep all those characters off my favorites list, though I basically enjoy them all.
In some ways, Peake's writing reminds me of Tolstoy in War and Peace (and his spirit can take that as a compliment if he wants to--but I have never warmed to Tolstoy). For me, War and Peace delivered certain scenes as fascinatingly incisive as anything I have ever read about the human condition. And then, just when my interest was thoroughly peaked, the chapter ended and the book rambled on for a hundred pages about military maneuvers and social engagements, before finally winding back to the character who had fascinated me, two years later doing something completely different. I found it really quite frustrating.
Titus Groan is not that long, and it's a whole novel devoted to just one year, so instead of skipping much, it covers nearly everything in excruciating physical detail. But like W&P, it has moments of sheer genius insight into being human, followed by significant stretches of thick description and one-dimensional conversations. All this is to say, I found it hit and miss.
I'm not in love, but I'm in like enough to have bought another couple books in the series, and I've certainly found reading it worth my time.
* Prince is arguably not so much a simpleton as an archetype of evil who is evilly doing his evil duty due to his evil nature--but the end result is somewhat similar.
From that day on, I dismissed the books as "not my thing," until a few weeks ago, I came across a tattered copy of book 1, Titus Groan, in a little free library and thought, "Why not. I'm curious what it's like." tl;dr: The book is better. I may even have turned into a mild fan. Spoilers for Titus Groan follow
Brief summary: In the dreary stagnant castle of Gormenghast, Machiavellian upstart Steerpike sets about rising to power while the abstracted Earl and pretty much everyone else has low-to-no idea what's going on. Sad events (slowly) ensue.
This book will never make my favorites list for the same reason the TV series turned me off: the characters are fundamentally either pathetic or unlikable. That said, some of them have a remarkable depth, a sort of psychologically insightful weight I found (a) completely lacking in the adaptation and (b) really surprising when combined with the dark fantasy grotesque: I've never seen another book pull the same thing off. I think the winners, in terms of psychological depth, are Fuschia, Dr. Prunesquallor, and oddly Fuschia's mother, Countess Gertrude, though she has a fairly small role. Honorable mention to Keda, the ill-fated peasant woman, who may be more mythic than realistic but conveys a tangible sense of connection to the transcendent.
Steerpike is a little hard to place for me. Wikipedia quotes a source that cited him as one of the greatest villains in literature or some such thing. I think that may be a stretch. But he's a well-drawn character, a true sociopath smart enough to bide his time and behave respectably in most circumstances. He's unusual for this type in the attention that's given to his human limitations. I don't mean personality/emotional limitations--he's pure consistent sociopath there. I mean that he's not omniscient. He sometimes miscalculates, is sometimes surprised, sometimes stumbles on an opportunity by sheer coincidence, etc. That seems to me surprisingly rare for the "smart villain" type.
I guess as a type, I'd put him in the same box as Servalan from Blake's 7 or Prince from Lexx: a character who is engaging due to their intelligence and a certain kind of charisma, while being an absolute one-note moral simpleton.* It's the latter part that will keep all those characters off my favorites list, though I basically enjoy them all.
In some ways, Peake's writing reminds me of Tolstoy in War and Peace (and his spirit can take that as a compliment if he wants to--but I have never warmed to Tolstoy). For me, War and Peace delivered certain scenes as fascinatingly incisive as anything I have ever read about the human condition. And then, just when my interest was thoroughly peaked, the chapter ended and the book rambled on for a hundred pages about military maneuvers and social engagements, before finally winding back to the character who had fascinated me, two years later doing something completely different. I found it really quite frustrating.
Titus Groan is not that long, and it's a whole novel devoted to just one year, so instead of skipping much, it covers nearly everything in excruciating physical detail. But like W&P, it has moments of sheer genius insight into being human, followed by significant stretches of thick description and one-dimensional conversations. All this is to say, I found it hit and miss.
I'm not in love, but I'm in like enough to have bought another couple books in the series, and I've certainly found reading it worth my time.
* Prince is arguably not so much a simpleton as an archetype of evil who is evilly doing his evil duty due to his evil nature--but the end result is somewhat similar.
