Inspiring Older Readers
Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
Writing in an article carried by The Guardian newspaper in 2014, novelist Marcus Sedgwick waxed lyrical about his love for Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy and lamented the fact that it never seemed to enjoy the sort of popular acclaim afforded to that other, equally huge and ambitious fantasy, Lord of the Rings by Tolkien.
Why is it that the three books usually (and according to experts incorrectly) named the Gormenghast trilogy never achieved the level of success of that notable fantasy behemoth, The Lord of the Rings? I am not suggesting that the two works should be viewed as counterparts, and yet in very different ways they are two cornerstones of fantasy writing in the second half of the 20th century. One is universally known by anyone who's ever become a reader; I'm lucky if I find one person who has even heard of the other in any given audience of two hundred or more.
Sedgwick makes a passionate case for Peake and claims him as the superior writer and postulates the somewhat counter-intuitive notion that he was just too good to appeal to popular taste.
The first book in the trilogy was published well before Tolkien’s and Peake certainly has a claim to being one of the founders of what has gone on to be a major genre – Gothic fantasy – but I was curious about the notion that he was a writer of major status and substance. My previous attempts to read the Gormenghast trilogy had been years ago and, if I’m being truthful, I remember very little about them and I can’t swear that I even finished. In a way that is immaterial I guess – having no memory of them is no real improvement on not having read them in the first place.
What I am aware of though is the sort of cult reputation the books had when I was in my late teens. To be cool then it was necessary to claim some kind of allegiance with the Peake oeuvre – and to be able to spot the references made to them in the ‘underground’ music scene. So, prompted by the Sedgwick piece and mildly guilty that I didn’t really know much about the storyline of Peake’s creation, I decided that I should dive in and take another look.
Titus Groan is the first of the trilogy and is concerned with the birth of the title character, heir to title of Earl of Groan and the lord of Gormanghast castle. Titus himself, other than being born and by the end of the book, still as a small child, inheriting the title, has little part to play in the first instalment. Instead the focus is on introducing us to the extraordinary galaxy of characters that inhabit the Gothic castle of Gormenghast – all the action takes place here and in the immediate surroundings. Peake creates an intricate environment in which the castle is itself a character and by almost adopting science fiction conventions, presents it as a micro-world self-sufficient in itself. So although the castle is enormous and seems to be constantly morphing around the individuals who inhabit it, there is an odd sense of Gothic gloom and decay that comes tangibly off the pages.
There are far too many characters to introduce here but all of them are idiosyncratic and powerfully realised - the current Earl, Lord Sepulchrave and his cat obsessed wife, Gertrude, their daughter Fuschia, the adviser Flay, the crazy chef Swelter, the doctor Prunesqualor and Titus’ nanny, Nannie Slagg. The first half of the book has very little plot but what we do start to see are the politics and personal animosities that bind this band together – how favours, jealousy and the craving for power and status circle around the characters constantly changing their relationships to each other.
The substantial action of the book takes place in the second half of the novel when a manipulative kitchen boy, Steerpike, decides to claw his way up the greasy pole of preferment. Central to his diabolical plotting is the burning of Lord Sepulchrave’s library, sacrificed so that Steerpike can emerge from the event as a hero. The consequences of Steerpikes Machiavellian behaviour results in the trail of events that will see the current Earl die and Titus inherit at the end of the book.
There is no doubt that this is a remarkable feat of imagination and I can easily see how fans of fantasy fiction might be enchanted and drawn into the perverse world that Peake has conjured-up. However, for me, Peake has a tendency to over-write his material and the prose can become as gothic as the surroundings he’s describing. Tolkien’s masterpiece has the advantage of being based around a classic device, the journey or quest, and so the action moves from landscape to landscape and a sense of space is created to off-set the moments of peril and suspense when a more claustrophobic atmosphere is required. But in Peake’s case there is very little chance to escape into the light and no real sense of movement - maybe that will come later in trilogy. I don’t know and I’m not really sure I’m going to go on and find out – I certainly wont be going straight on to volume two, Gormenghast.
All in all the experience of reading this book was an interesting one but just like drinking too much whisky, what starts off seeming like a good idea ends up with you feeling a bit nauseous.
Terry Potter
January 2017