Titus Groan (Gormenghast, #1)

Before I started reading 'Titus Groan', I'd been aware of the status of the 'Gormenghast' books of which it is the first. There was a sense that it's the hipster 'Lord of the Rings'. Tolkien is MAINSTREAM, man. If you have your finger on the pulse then you know that Mervyn Peake is hot shit, not John too-many-middle-names Tolkien.

This is not the best way to approach "Gormenghast". It is still OK to count yourself as a chosen one of alternative culture after you get into Mervyn Peake, but Tolkien/Peake not a good comparison because they are travelling on different roads.

Middle Earth is in the broad magisterium of myths and legends. In saying that, remember that that kind of story, past and present, can be part of a religious tradition. That's Tolkien's thing. It's all about the big picture of good and evil, gods and devils, and how their cosmic intentions are reflected in humankind.

While reading 'Titus Groan' I very quickly started getting the vibe that it is from a different universe, that of the Fairy Tale. While holy books are maintained and propagated by the authorities - the priests and the divinely appointed kings they serve - fairy tales come from the common folk. You don't have to be rich or powerful and you don't have to have a penis to pass on and embellish a fairy tale. In fact without the poor people with no better form of entertainment, without the mothers and aunts and grandmothers and big sisters, the fairy tales for which the real life lords and princesses hunger so ravenously would not exist.

Both Tolkien and Peake take mythology/fairytales to new realms. Both were working in the tempestuous mid twentieth century. But they go in different directions from their adjacent starting points.

And so to 'Titus Groan'. There's a castle and a king (actually Sepulchrave, the Earl of Groan), a wicked interloper, a Queen, a Princess and a young prince, even a couple of ugly sisters-in-law.

At first you slot into the lifelong habit developed from having the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen read to you at bedtime. You see the characters as archetypes, representing pride, jealousy, ignorance, compassion. But that's just the starting point. There are new types, in particular the scheming, ambitious Steerpike. It's not enough to call him a villain, he is a genuine fairytale PSYCHOPATH. With him and his allies and adversaries, instead of monumental, simplified emotions and motivations in human form, Peake proceeds to zoom into their personalities and their actions like a fractal animation. You get to know the thoughts and plans and feelings of these characters in a detailed, intensely sensual way. You get to know their innermost sensations. Peake can spend paragraphs describing how a character bites into a peach, (the villain's first food after an arduous trek across a desert of architectural stone). Or he will describe the passage of a single raindrop as part of a broader human drama which takes place during a storm.

A fair warning is given to the minimalistically inclined: Peake's language is florid, his sentences leisurely, his vocabulary luxuriant. The names of the characters are magnificent: Prunesquallor. Flay. Swelter. Nannie Slagg. Often their extreme behaviour and bizarre modes of speech are utterly hilarious. Peake also lets well-lubricated sexual motivations drive his characters, something Tolkien was always too hung up to allow into the chaste world of Middle Earth's sparse and doomed romances.

The archetypal characters of Gormenghast castle are somehow simultaneously familiar, yet full of surprises. The most hateful can end up winning your sympathy. The noblest are sometimes also grotesque. They inhabit a world utterly dominated by tradition and ritual. The British Royal family and the sickeningly grandiose coronation of King Charles III look plain next to the daily breakfast of the Earl of Groan. And yet into this decaying world is about to come a total revolution. The rotting traditions of Gormenghast are under attack, and by the end of the novel, you can't wait to see how they are destroyed, whether any shred of them can survive.

It was in the shadow of two world wars, the rise of tyrannies and industrial scale genocide which both Tolkien and Peake wrote their great works. But now in 2024 we are witnessing a new fear of tyranny and environmental destruction, of pride and folly and greed. I feel like we are still living under the fearful shadow of Gormenghast Mountain, with everything about to be overturned.