“The Gormenghast Trilogy: Titus Groan/Gormenghast/Titus Alone”, by Mervyn Peake

 

1000 pages, The Folio Society

The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake consists of the novels Titus Groan (published in 1946), Gormenghast (published in 1950) and Titus Alone (published in 1959). This was originally intended to be much more than a trilogy, as Peake intended to write, at least, two other books (tentatively titled Titus Awakes and Gormenghast Revisited), but the Parkinson’s disease Peake was battling and his ensuing death in 1968 prevented him from writing more than a few hundred words and ideas for further volumes (another short book, Boy in Darkness, was published in 1956 and describes a brief adventure by the young Titus away from Gormenghast, although it does not name the castle).

This did not prevent Peake’s widow, Maeve, from writing Search Without End in the 1970s, using her husband’s notes for Titus Awakes as a guide; furthermore, her children rediscovered this book at the end of 2009 and published it as Titus Awakes: The Lost Book of Gormenghast, to coincide with the 100^th Anniversary of Peake’s birth. Besides all that, Gormenghast has been included in “Fantasy: The 100 Best Books”, “Modern Fantasy: The 100 Best Novels” and “100 Must Read Fantasy Novels”; as all of these honors would suggest, it has been praised as one of the greatest fantasy works of the 20^th Century.

And…I really don’t see what all the hype is about.

You probably want more than that, so here it is: Gormenghast concerns the Earldom of Gormenghast, a remote and reclusive land dominated by Castle Gormenghast at its center, a sprawling, decaying, gothic-like structure that seems to have a life of its own. All is ruled by the noble family of Groan since time immemorial (Titus is to be the 77^th Earl upon his father’s death). Gormenghast Mountain gives its name to the earldom, which is isolated from the outside world by inhospitable regions on each side of it: marshy wastelands to the north, quicksand and a tideless sea to the east, salt grey marshes to the south and a rocky plain to the west (needless, perhaps, to say, this is a fictitious world with no bearing on our own). And so the whole population of this strange place lives as though the rest of the world doesn’t exist and, as far as the story is concerned, it doesn’t.

I bought this edition of the Gormenghast Trilogy ages ago, and for years it sat on my dresser until I finally got around to reading it – and couldn’t wait to put it right back down again. As an investigation into how stilted tradition and meaningless ritual can stultify and crush a people, then I guess it has merit, but, really now, do I need 1000 pages to tell me that? It’s as if a bureaucrat, having grown tired of writing instruction manuals for how to dispose of excess leavings, turned his hand to writing a novel – about bureaucrats. Is Gormenghast entertaining? Nope. Is Gormenghast philosophical? Nah. Is Gormenghast moving? Please. What Gormenghast is, is frustrating. I don’t need fast-paced action or meaningful insights or emotional outbursts on every page to keep my interest, but what I do need is a point.

What is the point of Gormenghast, then? Well, I guess about how one young lad – Titus Groan, the 77^th Earl – bucks society’s plans for him and sets himself free. But, again, this tale could have been told in a novella; it didn’t need a damn trilogy – and more, if Peake had gotten his way. And Titus himself is not much of a protagonist: he has no character arc, despite Peake’s regularly insistence that, after this life-changing event or that one, he is at last growing up. Rather, he remains a childish, whiny and manipulative brat who, in spite of his antics, demands to be treated like a lord – only to run away when anybody expects anything from his grace the Earl, other than to take their money, food and clothing. It’s one thing to make an antihero your protagonist, but Titus isn’t even that. He’s just…Titus, and there’s not much there. Many people the world over see Gormenghast as a classic, but I am not one of them. Pointless, exasperating, meandering, LONG and ultimately a waste of dead trees.