Titus Groan: Volume 2

Gormenghast is a great, meandering, decaying, monolith of a castle and the people in it lead lives of petty struggle that non-the-less fascinate the average person like you and me. Into this stuffy atmosphere of 'old' people is born Titus, who will eventually be the seventh-seventh Earl of Groan. Titus' birth is a monumental change in the affairs of the castle, but this is only the first of a sequence of disturbing events that will take place in the first year of Tutus' life. Much of this change will arise from seventeen-year-old Steerpike, an upstart servant who is also new to the castle. Steerpike has an intelligent and devious mind and an ambition to find a better place for himself in the world. Can the people of Gormenghast survive Steerpike's destructive tendencies or will the time honored traditions of the castle be destroyed long before Titus has a chance to even be aware of them? This is the first of a trilogy of novels written by Mervyn Peake. The other two are Gormenghast and Titus Alone (Gormenghast Trilogy). Peake has created a work of literature which is very difficult to classify. It has the feel of Fantasy, and indeed the events take place in an imaginary world which is not quite our own. The book, however, does not feature magic, or imaginary creatures like dragons, or the supernatural, all of which are the hallmarks of fantasy. The novel could be described as Gothic, and indeed it has a medieval atmosphere and the events described are diabolical, yet Peake writes with a black-humored, tongue-in-cheek style which suggests that his intention is not really to horrify. The medieval background could suggest the Historical genre, yet the very heightened atmosphere casts doubt on the assumption that this is an attempt to describe 'real' events. As the critic Pringle points out in his book Modern Fantasy: The Hundred Best Novels : An English Language Selection, 1946-1987 the story could be Allegorical of the decay of Britain, and this seems implied by the descriptions of truly boring and stupid rituals and descriptions, yet the plot is not didactic and has too much of a life of its own to be of that class of literature. No matter what genre, if any, this book is, it is certainly an enjoyable read. This novel exudes decay. Everything and everyone in it, except perhaps Titus, are in a state of eccentric decline. Even the seasons seem to deny any cycle of renewal, which they so typically describe. This is a truly dark novel, though Peake has lightened it by adding the humor in which we laugh at the absurdities of each character. These characters have many of the aspects of caricature, for example their names - Rootcodd, Mr. Flay, Swelter, Dr. Prunesquallor - and their individual ways of talking - Nanny Slagg's "oh my Poor heart" and Prunesquallor's frivolous laugh. Peake manages, however, to make these characters truly live and we are interested in what will finally befall each one. Fuchsia and Steerpike, as the younge

Titus Groan is impossible to classify. Is it fantasy? Is it gothic? Is it a Dickensian flight of fancy? Well it's been classified as all of these things, but none of these labels is quite adequate. It is perhaps ultimately best described as a black comedy. The book begins with the birth of the 77th Earl of Gormenghast, a gigantic castle were ritual rules all. Gormenghast castle seems to exist in an alternative universe to ours; however, there is no magic or cuddly hobbits, just grim realism. The plot chronicles the ramifications of when the royal family and servants encounter Steerpike, a young kitchen worker who finagles his out of kitchen service (most jobs in the castle are assigned along heriditary lines). A self-possessed rebel and clever 17-year-old, Steerpike turns their world upside down. Steerpike is like many people you may know, manipulative, self-serving, and solicitous. However, the royal family and servants are so exceedingly self-occupied, that they are easily tricked by this young upstart. Steerpike may just be the most likeable villian ever; it's hard to blame him for the things he does considering the easy targets he selects.The book is packed with other extremely memorable characters, including the sullen royal daughter (Fuschia), the Countess who seems to care only about her "pets," innumerable wild birds and and white cats, and her sisters-in-law, the identical twins (Cora and Clarice) who are the primary pawns of Steerpike. The book also provides splendid details about the castles and its world, not surprising considering that Peake is perhaps best known as an illustrator (a few of his illustrations are included here). The writing is dense and ponderous at times, but provides so many laughs and pleasures, that it is well worth the time investment. Of course, Titus Groan is just the first part of an epic. I have not read the remaining two books yet, but am tremendously excited to do. A most highly recommended read.

Well do I remember the momentous day in 1975 when a good friend loaned me a copy of Titus Groan and suggested I might enjoy it. Enjoy it? I was hooked from that first glimpse of the Hall of Bright Carvings; utterly transfixed by strange but compelling stories of the denizens of Gormenghast: a weird place and weird people, to be sure, but not so weird as to be beyond recognition. Peake's prose is masterful throughout; his characters are so profoundly realised that you really do feel you know them: Fuschia, Prunesquallor, Steerpike, Titus himself, my personal hero Mr Flay...wonderful. The narrative has been critized for being ponderous, but bear in mind this is a "big read" and it is best absorbed at a steady pace. The action, when it comes, is all the more startling: consider the cobweb-strewn battle to the death between Flay and the loathsome Swelter, and in Gormenghast, Titus's deadly encounter with Steerpike (now evil personified) amid the stifling ivy. "Titus Groan" and "Gormenghast" are famously more satisfying than "Titus Alone", written when Peake was seriously ill and fading fast, but even "Titus Alone" has some strangely affecting characters and situations. Its strangeness is more disturbing than the first two books however, which are totally enthralling. Since that first encounter over 25 years ago I have re-read this trilogy many, many times, always with more enjoyment than the time before. I made a chess-set with characters from the book (grey scrubbers make great pawns) and have enlivened many a dull day at work by likening some of my colleagues (in my minds eye, of course) to some of Peake's so-called grotesques...the Civil Service is not without its Barquentines and Sourdusts, not to mention the Deadyawns and Cutflowers! This is one book (along with the Bible) I would just not want to be without.

This is one of those excellent books that I have been fortunate enough to find. I actually picked it up while in the waning stage of my annual Tolkien revival, hoping to find some similar fantasy. I was pleasantly surprised to find a story that was nothing like our present day conception of celtic/teutonic based fantasy. In fact, this book is so completely different that it reminds me more of Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shoppe than anything. Yet I believe, yes, I believe that I prefer this book to anything Dickens. Peake is a beautiful artisan of prose, but he also has a humerous bite to his language that plays strongly off the parody stereotypes introduced in this epic. I'm not British, but I cannot help but wonder if the English see this book as a parody of their monarchy. This may answer the reason for Titus's popularity in England, whereas we Americans don't seem to pay Gormenghast the attention it deserves.So if you are into GOOD fantasy, read this book; and when I say GOOD fantasy, I'm refering to Tolkien, not the novel-a-minute writers whom we see so often at present. This book also takes a bit of work, so if you don't like Dickens, you probably won't like Peake.

I read the Gormenghast Trilogy for the first time when I was in high school, some eighteen years ago, and while many of the scenes and the overall mood remained in my memory, I completely missed most of the humor and beauty in the writing itself, as I discovered when recently rereading Titus Groan. The sonorous, skewed beauty of the language demands to be read slowly and savored as prose poetry -- I read only a few pages a day over several months. Take a passage like the following:"Suns and the changing of the seasonal moons; the leaves from trees that cannot keep their leaves, and the fish from olive waters have their voices! ... Stones have their voices and the quills of birds; the anger of the thorns, the wounded spirits, the antlers, ribs that curve, bread, tears and needles. Blunt boulders and the silence of cold marshes -- these have their voices -- the insurgent clouds, the cockerel and the worm. ... Voices that grind at night from lungs of granite. Lungs of blue air and the white lungs of rivers. All voices haunt all moments of all days; all voices fill the crannies of all regions."If you find this sort of thing boring, by all means skip this book. This has almost nothing to do with either Tolkien or his less skilled successors who churn out a 500-page volume every six months. I think it has more in common with a book like Moby Dick (which I have been advised not to read until I reach forty years of age), in that it demands that the reader relate the text to his own experience of life and literature.Many of the characters are grotesque parodies, but as with other masters of satire, Peake's exaggeration rings truer to life than a more "realistic" depiction would. The characters are neither good nor evil -- even Steerpike, though ambitious and unscrupulous, is not the evil villain of so many fantasy epics, but is in many ways a sympathetic character. Perhaps the main character is the castle Gormenghast itself, the concrete embodiment of the venerable yet often dysfunctional traditions under which the human characters labor.Mervyn Peake has here created a true fantasy -- a unique vision with its own consistency and texture, sometimes stifling and febrile, morbidly comic, but with glimpses of pathos and tranquility, sustained by an amazing elasticity of language and poetry.