Conference noted::sf

If your screen garbles the first couple of lines in my note I'm sorry.
What you missed was this: The title of the three books are
Gormenghast, Titus Groan, and Titus Alone - written by Melvin Peake.
					j.e.c.

That should be *Mervin* Peake, not Melvin Peake.

I've heard of the books (what self-respecting bibliographer wouldn't :-))
but have not bothered to read them. I'm generally not fond of fantasy
(obviously, there are exceptions, but the high fantasy of Peake is not
among them).

--- jerry

I agree that it's difficult to read through the trilogy
my problem when I did it years ago was that the first volume
(gormenghast) was eery enough to make me go out and buy the 
other two and when I tried those I could not go beyond the first
pages: it was almost as boring as reading russian literature

re .0 

Sting is suitable mostly as the north end of a southbound horse... 

What kind of villian is this Steerpike that the man who loused up Feyd-Rautha
can play him?  (Not that all the problems Sting had as FR were Sting's fault.) 

- Chris 

re .4

Steerpike is memorable because he is devious, cunning, ugly (extremely),
psychotic, and just an overall bad guy.  However, Peake (or *Mervin* as
Jerry would say) presents the character with such detail of description
that you can't help but like him.  The novel is so ponderous and prosaic
that Steerpike as the anti-hero is really the life of the story (and death
for a few of the characters).  His relationship with Titus Groan and
hatred for the royal family takes up most of the first two books.  The 
way Steerpike gets revenge on mostly all the main characters (including
the castle itself) is so meticulous and powerful - I was in awe.
I can Sting in this role.

I read and enjoyed the Gormenghast trilogy, and in fact have been looking
for them in hardback (any info?).  It's a fantasy like no other I've ever
read.  It's about the castle Gormenghast, a castle of near infinite age and
size, and seemingly closed off from the outside world (reminds one of MIT).
Its inhabitants' lives are completely governed by rituals whose purpose no
one now understands or cares about.  The prose is dense, but very vivid (Peake
was actually more a painter than an author).  Certain scenes stick with me even
though it has  been ten years since I read it:
the river of white cats descending on Titus's mother, Steerpike's escape
over the castle roofs (the Fields of Stone),  the curator asleep in the hall
of forgotten sculptures, the great flood that turns the castle halls into
canals.  Worth finding.

/jlr

PS  I think this came out as part of Ballantine's Adult Fantasy series. 
Does anyone have a list of the titles in the series?  There were some great
reprints in it.

re:.6

It seems to me that there's *someone* who has recent or current editions
of the Gormenghast Trilogy in hardcover. I keep thinking Overlook Press,
but I'm not sure. Your best bet would be to go to a local library and ask
to see a current BOOKS IN PRINT, which has listings by Author, Title, and
Subject. If there's a listing for hardcover editions of the G.T., most
bookstores are willing to special-order them for you (few, if any, will
special-order paperbacks, but hardcovers are generally no problem).

I might be able to find a list of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series
somewhere. I'd whip up a list myself, from my collection, but it's all in
boxes now, waiting to be moved.

--- jerry

FYI, the Spitbrook library contains copies of the "Books in Print" volumes,
and it would be worth checking the libraries at other plants; might save
you a trip downtown.

-b

	Finally someone else who read and finished the series.  Response .6
(the name is John I believe) jogged my memory of some scenes I had forgotten.
One more memorable sequence was the library fire and rescue (sort of), and
Swelter in the green fluorescent light in the kitchen - haunting.  I agree,
the G.T. is a massive work of art and Peake a prodigious painter of images.

	Let me know if you succeed in finding the hardcover, I gave my
copies away as a present a few years ago to my favorite sci-fi/fantasy read-
ing friend.  He is still trying to finish book and this is two years later.
I'd like to have them for permanent residence in my library.
						John )(-

         Did Mervin Peake write anything else besides the Gormenghast
         Trilogy?  What other kind of books did he write?  Does anyone know
         anything about him? 
         
         Jane McGreal
          

  Alright, I confess, I'm another one who read (= finished) the trilogy.
Was anybody else as jarred by the third volume as I was?  It seemed to
be a completely different world from that of the the first volume.

I actually had to try twice to get started on the first volume, but
once into it I was hooked by Peake's baroque style.  It prompted me to
go ferret out a copy of Horace Walpole's (I think he wrote it)
_Castle of Otranto_, which I had read in high school and was vaguely
simialr in its fantastic imagery.

len.

	Yes Len, I was shocked when I began reading book three.  I kept
waiting for Peakes old rambling style and familiar depictions to arrive
but they never did.  I've often wondered why he changed the material so
dramatically for "Titus Alone".   The pieces of the story I remember
concern a modern powered vehicle, a domed city, a relationship with a
strange woman, all within a chase/quest context.  The most memorable
scene I recall is the one that ends the book(s), with Titus at the
big boulder.  It must have been difficult for Peake to end the story
that way, but maybe that's the way he felt about his work in the end.

						John )(-

re:.10

Looking him up in THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY (Donald
H. Tuck) and THE SCIENCE FICTION ENCYCLOPEDIA (Peter Nicholls, et alia),
I gleaned these facts (the entires had much more data, but these are the
highlights):

Born 9 July 1911 in Kauling, China. Went to England when he was 12. He was
very well known outside the sf field as an artist. He died 17 Nov 1968.
During his last ten years, he suffered from encephalitus.

Other works of fantasy:

	"Boy in Darkness" in SOMETIME, NEVER (anthology, ed. by Michael
	   Moorcock [though he isn't listed as such], Ballantine Books,
	   1956) --- "another story about Titus" (Nicholls).

	"Danse Macabre" & "Same Time, Same Place" in WEIRD SHADOWS FROM
	   BEYOND (anthology, ed. by John Carnell, Avon Books, 1969).

	MR. PYE (1953), "A little man grows horns or wings depending upon
	   whether he is being good or evil" (Tuck).

Non-fantasy works:

	CAPTAIN SLAUGHTERBOARD DROPS ANCHOR  (1939)  [children's]
	LETTERS FROM A LOST UNCLE	     (1948)  [children's]
	MERVYN PEAKE: WRITINGS AND DRAWINGS  (1974)  [collection]
	   edited by Maeve Gilmore [Mrs. Peake] and Shelagh Johnson

About the author:

	A WORLD AWAY; A MEMOIR  (1970)  by Maeve Gilmore
	MERVYN PEAKE  (1974)  by John Batchelor
	MERVYN PEAKE  (1976)  by John Watney

--- jerry

"Mr. Pye" can be found as a Penguin paperbck.  It's quite interesting, but
has little of the evocative nature of the Gormenghast books.
  So Peake died of encephalitis in 1968?  That's tragic, because a treatment
for the disease appeared in '69.  Many of its affects were traced to a shortage
of the dopamine in the brain, thus leading to the drug L-DOPA.  A fascinating
account of the early uses of the drug is in "Awakenings" by Dr. Oliver Sacks.
During the twenties there was a world-wide epidemic of encephalitis, also
known as sleeping sickness.  Five million people were estimated to have died.
The survivors would be trapped in catatonic states, still conscious but with
barely any control over their bodies.  Talk of Purgatory!  By the sixties
some victims had been hospitalized like this for over thirty years.
    L-DOPA brought them out of catatonia, thus the title "Awakenings".  For
a brief period they would be restored to normalcy.  Then the gruesome side
effects set in.  They would oscillate between wild activity and complete
immobilization.  Their emotions would swing between ecstasy and despair in
a matter of moments. Their sense of time swung from far faster than normal
to far slower.  One woman was sped up so much that if you threw a softball
at her, her return throw would come back so quickly that it would hit your
outstretched hand.  One man spent an entire afternoon lifting his hand to
his face.  These sort of effects have been discussed in science fiction,
but they really can occur.These poor people's stories make tragic reading,
but I recommend the book.
/jlr

    Greetings from the UK,
    
    Yes Titus Alone is very different; I seem to remember hearing that
    Peake didn't finish it, and that his son glued the bits of it
    together to make a novel.
    
    There was a radio version of Titus Groan over here recently. I don't
    suppose anyone following these replies will be surprised to here
    that Sting played Steerpike. The whole production was, in my opinion,
    excellent. (Sorry, no tape!)
    
     I think that radio is a far better medium for fantasy than film
    or television. Another work that UK radio did very well recently
    was "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen" by Alan Garner. I don't know
    if his work is published in the USA; it's mostly kid's books, but
    like many such books in this line, is at least as good as its "adult"
    competition! Try to dig out that one, and anything else by Garner.
    
    The BBC did a television version of Mr Pye recently. I didn't see
    it, though.
    
    	Andrew.

    
    If Peake's style appeals to you, and you have a slighly cycnical
    sense of humour, try his childrens' book, "Captain Slaughterboard
    Drops Anchor."  Very witty.  I was attracted by the illustrations,
    anybody know who did them ?  I seem to recall something like a set
    of cartoons from a manic Dr Seuss book !
    
    
    Ian
    

Article: 398
From: [email protected] (Dani Zweig)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews
Subject: Belated Reviews PS#11: The "Gormenghast" Trilogy
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: 12 Oct 93 11:55:51 GMT
 
	Belated Reviews PS#11:  The "Gormenghast" Trilogy
 
Mervyn Peake's output was varied; he was a poet, a novelist, a playwright,
and an illustrator.  All of these skills come into play in his fantasy
trilogy "Gormenghast", published in 1946 ("Titus Groan"), 1950 ("Gormenghast")
and 1959 ("Titus Alone").  
 
The Gormenghast trilogy (***+) is unique -- a triumph of skill over what
looks at first sight to be an impossibly unpromising premise.  We start
with an enormous castle, Gormenghast, which seems to have been borrowed
from a Gothic novel on steroids.  We people it with refugees from a
Dickens novel.  They have names like Prunesquallor and Swelter and Flay
and Sourdust -- not to forget Lord Sepulchrave, the seventy-sixth Earl of
Groan -- and their characters often match.  Finally -- this is important -- 
we don't play it for laughs.  We take these people at their self-estimation
and enter a world where Gormenghast is as much of the universe as matters.
It takes remarkable control to pull that off, and Peake possessed it.  The
reader soon ceases to notice how mad a world s/he's entered.
 
"Titus Groan" (****-) is the first book of the trilogy.  Titus himself is
the son and heir of Lord Sepulchrave and, in principle, the trilogy is his
story.  It is significant that the trilogy takes its name from the castle,
rather than from the boy -- and that the book that is named for him ends 
when he is two years old.  Gormenghast overshadows Titus.  The castle is
by far the most important 'character'.  It's impossibly large, and
impossibly old -- a self-contained universe.  (We learn at the start of
this book that outside of the castle grounds are a cluster of primitive
dwellings.  It isn't until book three that we find out that there's a
larger outside world.)  
 
Gormenghast is also impossibly stagnant.  There are rituals, centuries or
millenia old, governing every hour of the day.  There are armies of
servants doing exactly what their ancestors did.  People who live in the
castle become as grey as its walls.  (It's hard to imagine Gormenghast as a
place for song, or for love.)  Oh, there's plenty of room for eccentricity,
but someone eccentric enough to actually combat the castle's inertia would
probably be steam-rollered without anyone noticing.  There are important
positions within the castle, but there are always replacements for the
self-important people who hold them.  (We know the replacements were once
children, with fathers and mothers, but it's hard to avoid the feeling
that the castle just generated them, already old, when they were needed.)
 
The worm gnawing away at Gormenghast is a youth named Steerpike, who
thinks he wants power, but really wants destruction.  We first encounter
him in the Great Kitchen, the newest apprentice to the vile chef.  It
shouldn't be imagined, despite his rhetoric, that this beginning instills
any moral indignation.  He is opportunistic and self-centered, and once
he has bettered his circumstances, he sets out to do so again.  He exploits
those he can, and destroys those he cannot.  At the end of "Titus Groan",
Lord Sepulchrave is dead and his heir is two years old.  Steerpike has
wormed himself closer to the center of power, but is still unnoticed by
most.  The routine of the castle continues as always, and if some of its
supports have been eroded or destroyed, it's possible not to notice.
 
"Gormenghast" (***+), the second book of the trilogy, begins five years
later, and covers the period of Titus's youth.  Steerpike rises in position
and power, continuing to leave a trail of death and destruction behind him,
coming nearer to taking control of the Gormenghast juggernaut.  
 
In one respect, he fails.  His personal ambition is not realized.  His
destructive impulse, however, succeeds in an unanticipated way:  By the
end of the second book, his actions have left Titus with the awareness
that there is a world beyond Gormenghast, and with the desire to see it:
Titus leaves.
 
"Titus Alone" (**), which follows Titus into the outside world, is 
disappointing.  Different people will give you different explanations, the 
most commonly heard being that Peake was dying when he wrote it, and left 
it unpolished.  (For what it's worth, Peake died in 1968.  The 1970 edition
of "Titus Alone" contains extensive posthumous corrections to the 1959 
edition.)  I'd offer a much simpler explanation:  "Titus Alone", as the 
title implies, is just about Titus.  The book lacks Gormenghast -- by far 
the most interesting 'character' in the trilogy -- and it lacks all the 
other characters who inhabited it.  Except insofar as Gormenghast has shaped 
Titus, this book is almost unconnected to the other two.
 
No, that's not quite true.  It's thematically connected -- the outside
world is as strange and as rigid in its Dickensian way as Gormenghast is
in its Gothic self-involvement.  But it's a far less interesting world.
What it comes to is that reading "Titus Alone" is a let-down. 
 
Reading "Titus Groan", however, is worth the effort.  At least, I thought
so; it's not going to be to all tastes:  The book is demanding, dark,
sometimes ugly.  It's also brilliantly written and, once you enter its
world, captivating.  I expect that most readers who finish "Titus Groan"
will also finish the rest of the trilogy.
 
%A  Peake, Mervyn
%T  Titus Groan
%T  Gormenghast
%T  Titus Alone
%O  My copies are published by the "Penguin Modern Library" imprint,
%O  so some bookstore might not file them under sf/f.
 
=============================================================================
 
The postscripts to Belated Reviews cover authors of earlier decades who
didn't fit into the original format -- whether because the author seemed
an inappropriate subject, or because I was unfamiliar with too much of the
author's work, or whatever -- or sometimes just isolated works of such
authors.  The emphasis will continue to be on guiding newer readers
towards books or authors worth trying out, rather than on discussing them
comprehensively or in depth.  I'll retain the rating scheme of ****
(recommended), *** (an old favorite that hasn't aged well), ** (a solid
lesser work), and * (nothing special). 
 
-----
Dani Zweig
[email protected]
 
   'T is with our judgements as our watches, none
   Go alike, yet each believes his own.
		--Alexander Pope