The rarity of Peake’s greatness lies not only in the breadth of his invention but in the lushness of his language. It is against the gorgeous textural complexities and contradictions of Gormenghast that even minute changes become highly-charged, dramatic events. In contrast, nonagenarian Sourdust’s vocation isn’t maintaining a single tradition, but the entire Groan lore of rituals, as perverse and poignant as they are inviolable. Within the castle’s walls, the annually accretive Hall of the Bright Carvings is ignored by everyone but Rottcodd, who tends the figures though not the dust-blanketed floors, and dozes away his hermetic life. Every year, the Dwellers’ three finest works are selected by the Earl, and the rest are incinerated.
The brutal lives of the Dwellers beyond the castle ravage their youth by twenty, but their uncommon if short-lived radiance is echoed by their artists’ fantastic and colorful wooden sculptures. It is a place of implacable traditions such as June’s judging of the carvings. Titus Groan is born to become the seventy-seventh Earl of Gormenghast, a strange geography where mountain simultaneously intersects desert and pine forest, where mud huts and cacti sprawl at the feet of a massive Gothic castle. It may be because Peake was also an illustrator and poet as well as an author for children that Titus Groan reflects some of those sensibilities, yet it is a brilliant thing unlike any other.
Possibly you’ve always been a fan of the dark humor of cautionary tales, the absurd and macabre imaginings of Poe, Gorey, Dickens, Heinrich Hoffman, or even Tim Burton. Maybe you’re an admirer of dense, imaginative details that lend reality and solidity to worlds that never existed.
Also, if a story’s ability to grab you doesn’t require a chain of popcorn-crunching fight scenes or a crow-straight narrative. However, I can say with confidence that you’re primed for this adventure if you found yourself delighted by Susanna Clarke’s recent bestseller Jonathan Strange & Mr. Some of the difficulty in evaluating or even describing a title like Titus Groan is that it twists away from expectation and defies comparison in almost every category. For a willing reader, it retains the transformative power that defines a classic. Still, the good news is that Peake’s world has exquisite staying power. For whatever reason, it has since faded into twilight, and is today even less mentioned than read.
0 kommentar(er)
