Gormenghast
May. 6th, 2009 06:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charloweenI could go into a rant about how much I like Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast books, how I recommend them and re-read them and like them too much to even look up the cast list for the miniseries adaptation, how I even bought the trilogy for a friend's birthday once (because that's how I roll: I'll never give someone a novel as a gift if I don't love the book first).
But, what I like about the books is the language. These are words that want to be read.
From the second book, called Gormenghast (the first is Titus Groan and the third is Titus Alone), the beginning to chapter 5:
"Fuchsia was leaning on her window-sill and staring out over the rough roofs below her. Her crimson dress burned with the peculiar red more often found in paintings than in Nature. The window-frame, surrounding not only her but the impalpable dusk behind her, enclosed a masterpiece. Her stillness accentuated the hallucinatory effect, but even if she were to have moved it would have seemed that a picture had come to life rather than that a movement had taken place in Nature. But the pattern did not alter. The inky black of her hair fell motionlessly and gave infinite subtlety to the porous shadow-land beyond her, showing it for what it was, not so much a darkness in itself as something starved for sunbeams."
That is a passage written by someone who has loved every word he's put down, who's looked at every syllable as if it was rare and special, and, jeez, "not so much a darkness in itself as something starved for sunbeams."
All I'm saying is you don't need frickin' dark elves to write fantasy. All you need is a crumbling castle, a cast of characters who are at once medieval and Victorian and neither, and an absolute gift for language.
But, what I like about the books is the language. These are words that want to be read.
From the second book, called Gormenghast (the first is Titus Groan and the third is Titus Alone), the beginning to chapter 5:
"Fuchsia was leaning on her window-sill and staring out over the rough roofs below her. Her crimson dress burned with the peculiar red more often found in paintings than in Nature. The window-frame, surrounding not only her but the impalpable dusk behind her, enclosed a masterpiece. Her stillness accentuated the hallucinatory effect, but even if she were to have moved it would have seemed that a picture had come to life rather than that a movement had taken place in Nature. But the pattern did not alter. The inky black of her hair fell motionlessly and gave infinite subtlety to the porous shadow-land beyond her, showing it for what it was, not so much a darkness in itself as something starved for sunbeams."
That is a passage written by someone who has loved every word he's put down, who's looked at every syllable as if it was rare and special, and, jeez, "not so much a darkness in itself as something starved for sunbeams."
All I'm saying is you don't need frickin' dark elves to write fantasy. All you need is a crumbling castle, a cast of characters who are at once medieval and Victorian and neither, and an absolute gift for language.
