Each day I live in a glass room unless I break it with the thrusting of my senses and pass through the splintered walls to the great landscape.
-Mervyn Lawrence Peake (1911 - 1968)
i hadn't known Mr Peake was born in July. July 9, 1911, to be exact. in fact, i know little about the man outside some of his works, not even the bits you can easily find on the internet.
but if a man were to be defined by his deeds, then Mr Peake is a god among men. his Titus Groan books (a.k.a. The Gormenghast Trilogy, consisting of Titus Groan, Gormenghast, and Titus Alone) are the most magnificent works of literature i've ever had the privilege and the pleasure of reading.
nothing i say here can do the man or his books justice. do yourself a favor, get yourself copies of his works and read them.
then come back and tell me how much you love or hate them.
7 comments:
Hey, have you seen this interview with Mervyn Peake's son, Sebastian Peake? Interesting stuff here:
http://www.wotmania.com/fantasymessageboardshowmessage.asp?MessageID=161823
...while he also has a blog here:
http://sebastianpeake.blogspot.com/
Enjoy!
cool. hmmm. can't something wrong with the wotmania page. any other links to that interview?
Yep, Sebastian Peake's blog is linked from the official Mervyn Peake website.
i'd love to see the various productions based on Mr Peake's works, although i find it odd that people insist on calling Gormenghast goth. it has the dark elements, but it just isn't somehow. it's something else entirely.
the BBC production of Gormenghast, while it has its good bits, and while their interpretation of the material is interesting and opens your eyes to some things you may have missed in reading the books, is, unfortunately, with all due respect to the Peake estate and his daughters (granddaughters?) who were in the show, all-in-all, while i'm glad to have seen it (yes i'm hedging because i'm really quite reluctant to offer an opinion on it for some reason), is actually quite missable.
but not for a completist fan.
incidentally, wot left me cold. i read the first book and hated it. thoroughly.
i hate these post-tolkien, tolkienesque epic fantasies.
Hmmm... nothing wrong on my end. I just copy-pasted the url to another browser. Maybe a firewall on your side?
And goth? Maybe these people meant gothic? Geez, kids these days. ;-) (Or did I mishear you also?)
As for WOT, heh, I'm still keeping track of that. I have to know the ending, dammit. Likewise, epic fantasies maybe a dime a dozen nowadays but there are still some that are pretty damn good and nowhere near Tolkienesque.
oh, yeah, sorry, the link i copied from your post was abbreviated on the page for some reason. copied the link from the e-mail alert instead and i've read the interview. thanks!
as for goth/gothic... well,i suppose you could call it gothic, though probably not goth...
and as far as epic fantasies go, Scott Bakker's got something promising going with his Prince of Nothing Trilogy, though i can't seem to get into it.
Hmmm... have you ever tried Steven Erikson's Malazan series?
i have copies of some of his books, but no, never quite got around to them.
when i start feeling the weight of all the books i want to get through, i skim the first few lines, see if the book grabs me, then go with the first book that does.
unfortunately, Mr Erickson hasn't grabbed me just yet. could be a mood thing.
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