From: hyde@ac.dal.ca
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Gormenghast (Minor spoilers(?))
Date: 6 Sep 92 02:28:04 -0300
Distribution: na
Organization: Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

In article <1992Sep2.211032.4487@pony.Ingres.COM>, bobm@Ingres.COM (Bob McQueer) writes:
> In <71911@apple.Apple.COM>,
> 	dated 2 Sep 92 04:30:23 GMT,
> 	stef@Apple.COM (Stef Jones) writes:
> 
>> Yes, I felt the same way about Gormenghast. I thought I was the only person
>> who had ever read it, though. :-)
>  
>> However, I was not able to finish the third book. Did anyone finish it, and
>> did it finish well? I heard (OK, so I did meet one other person who read
>> it) that the third book sort of trailed off into proto-schizoid musings
>> (this person said Peake went bonkers by the end, dunno if it is true but I
>> wouldn't be surprised).
> 
> Fairly good description.  When I hand out reccomendations for Gormenghast
> I always say to read it as a two book series and not bother with the third
> volume.  The second book has a very satisfactory climax and ending for the
> series.  

	I am reminded of the first time I heard Elgar's second
	symphony.  It was at a live performance, and since the
	third movement ends with a lot of noise, most of the
	audience (myself included, alas) assumed that it had
	ended, and began to applaud.  The conductor just shook
	his head, the applause cut off, and we proceeded.

	A lot happens at the end of book two, but, as in the Elgar
	symphony, too many themes are not resolved for it to be
	an ending.  Peake was not about to invest a thousand pages
	for so paltry a return as a flood and a few deaths, no matter
	how well depicted.



Of course, most of us who liked the first two will be curious
> enough to go on to the third - but don't say you weren't warned.
> 
> Peake manages some of the richest descriptive language I've ever read.  By
> modern standards, the story may be a bit slow moving and a trifle "gothic",
> but Peake's incredible descriptions and internal dialogues make it worth it
> for me.  I'm not sure whether Peake's setting is so bizarre and original,
> or whether his richly textured language makes it seem so.


	The series is, among other things, about growing up, maturation,
	coming alive.  This is the process Titus finishes in the third
	book.  Gormenghast itself represents the infantile, irresponsible
	world (notice how so few of the defined characters have any
	real responsibility?)  Some of the people in the castle have
	immense potential (recall how Gertrude comes alive in the flood)
	but do not wish to use it - that would require effort, mistakes
	would be made, guilt would have to be born - in short life would
	have to be lived. Gormenghast is a womb, from which its
	inhabitants do not wish to be born.  Things are, after all,
	nice and secure in the womb.

	Peake would certainly have written the third book somewhat
	differently had he not been so ill, (there are rumors, in
	fact, that there is a more complete manuscript extant, but
	I do not have this from a reliable source) but the points which so
	annoy people about the third volume would not have been
	changed.

	While Peake might have agreed that the writing of the third
	volume was not up to that of the first two, he would have
	been most amused at hearing critics treating it as something
	separate from the first two volumes.  That is just the
	mistake the inhabitants of the castle would have been made.

	Gormenghast as a whole  is by no means escape literature - but if
	you read only the first two volumes and ignore the whole point,
	you can make it into such.  Of course, nothing is really
	resolved at the end of volume two, but then, who needs endings?
	We are so used to books, especially fantasy, being written
	so as to leave room for sequels, that a book with a reasonable
	ending would probably not be liked.


						Bill Hyde
Department of Oceanography
Dalhousie University,
Halifax, Nova Scotia
hyde@ac.dal.ca or hyde@dalac