Mervyn Peake

Autists make the best authors.

'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. Voices that he shall hear when he has listened, and when his ear is tuned to Gormenghast; whose voice is endlessness of endlessness. This is the ancient sound that he must follow. The voice of stones heaped up into grey towers, until he dies across the Groan’s death-turret. And banners are ripped down from wall and buttress and he is carried to the Tower of Towers and laid among the moulderings of his fathers.’

>>9722444
Hahaha Peake an autist, that's hilarious.

Checked, nevertheless.

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>>9722436
'Equality,' said Steerpike, 'is the thing. It is the only true and central premise from which constructive ideas can radiate freely and be operated without prejudice. Absolute equality of status. Equality of wealth. Equality of power.'

Oh come on, no Peake fans here? I thought you people had taste.

>>9722503

He spoke, plucking the wings from a fly he'd snared between his spindly fingers.

>>9722629

I'm reading Titus Groan right now. The library has just been burned. I don't really have any coherent thoughts about the thing yet.

post favorite gormenghast sections, make us love peake

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>>9722686
"No eye may see dispassionately. There is no comprehension at a glance. Only the recognition of damsel, horse or fly and the assumption of damsel, horse or fly; and so with dreams and beyond, for what haunts the heart will, when it is found, leap foremost, blinding the eye and leaving the main of Life in darkness.

"For what is more lovable than failure?"

"Before it had awoke to die on the instant of its waking, a score of bells and clocks had shouted midday and for a minute after its death, from near and far the clappers in their tents of rusted iron clanged across Gormenghast."

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“As I see it, life is an effort to grip before they slip through one's fingers and slide into oblivion, the startling, the ghastly or the blindingly exquisite fish of the imagination before they whip away on the endless current and are lost for ever in oblivion's black ocean.”

>>9722685
“There was a library and it is ashes. Let its long length assemble. Than its stone walls its paper walls are thicker; armoured with learning, with philosophy, with poetry that drifts or dances clamped though it is in midnight. Shielded with flax and calfskin and a cold weight of ink, there broods the ghost of Sepulchrave, the melancholy Earl, seventy-sixth lord of half-light.”

>>9722685
It gets better and better starting from there.

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"I was brooding, boy. Than which there is no richer pastime. It muffles one with rotting plumes. It gives forth sullen music. It is the smell of home."

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How about this gem with double colon followed by double semicolon, from the first page of Gormenghast:

"Withdrawn and ruinous it broods in umbra: the immemorial masonry: the towers, the tracks. Is all corroding? No. Through an avenue of spires a zephyr floats; a bird whistles; a freshet bears away from a choked river."

"Danger is more real than beauty in a boy’s mind."

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.

I have the trilogy lying menacingly on my bedside table, but I haven't started it yet. Oddly nervous about it.

>>9723135
It's actually quite fun, with its comedy character names, weird characters, and completely-overwrought-but-actually-great prose. Even the serious bits have an eyebrow slightly raised.

Lesser-known Gormenghast facts #357: for all its European gothicness, it's also subtly China-inspired.

>>9723234
I can see that, actually. Where did you read that?

For the life of me, I can't get into Titus Alone. Groan and Gormenghast and The Boy in Darkness had me in their talons from the getgo, but I've tried to get into Alone three times and lost interest real quick. Does it suck?

Also, recommend non-Gormenghast Peake.

>>9724021
Either an introduction or something about the BBC adaptation, which aimed at a very vaguely Chinese-inspired castle design in parts to reflect it.

Peake spent at least part of his childhood in China, IIRC. The decaying cobwebbed halls and calendar of rituals which everybody has to carry out but nobody really understands come straight from foreign accounts of the late Qing Dynasty.

>>9722755
>>9722447
>>9722741
>>9722954
Loved every single one, thanks.

Reading Titus Groan now, it's great. Really loving the atmosphere and prose, really a pity that Peake is underrated

I frequently enjoy the audiobooks of Titus Groan and Gormenghast,and force myself to deal with Titus Alone once in a blue moon. But I wanted something else by Mervyn Peak to see if he holds up. I found Mister Pye,and it was relatively amusing,but nowhere near as entertaining as the Gormenghast books. Can anyone recommend other books by Mervyn Peake ?