Of plots and professors
Nov. 14th, 2022 03:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bloodygranuaileAfter finishing the delightfully strange Titus Groan I moved to get my hands on the sequel, Gormenghast, another dense and sprawling affair chronicling the lives and deaths of a bunch of weirdos who live in a giant fucked-up castle. In this one, Titus, the titular baby of the first book, is old enough to start getting into trouble on purpose, which he does in spades, being afflicted with a chronic case of Not Wanting to Spend His Whole Life Doing Stupid Rituals.
Our antagonist, Steerpike, has become the assistant to Barquentine, the Master of Rituals, and has thus become essentially the heir to that position by virtue of nobody else knowing anything about it. Steerpike continues to scheme and plot and murder and be generally duplicitious, adopting a complex long con that is intended to result in Titus dying accidentally during a ritual and Steerpike marrying Fuschia and becoming master of the castle. This goes wrong in a number of ways but not before lots of damage has been done and about half the limited cast of the book is dead. Admittedly, not all the deaths are due directly to Steerpike, but he commits enough of them to serve as the locus of evil in the story.
While the narrative is dark and tragic and the prose is heavy and archaic, this book, like the first one, is also extremely funny. The romance between Irma Prunesquallor and the school Headmaster, Bellgrove, is not without pathos but is mainly ridiculous, as the characters are not particularly well matched except for both being sad old weirdos who are determined to have a grand romance despite everything. Poor Dr. Prunesquallor has to suffer through some extreme brotherly mortification before his sister is able to embarrass herself into matrimony and move out of his house.
Less absurd than Irma Prunesquallor’s plot to bag herself a Professor, and less sinister than Steerpike’s plot to seduce the Lady Fuchsia, is Titus’ plot to just get the hell out of Gormenghast and make the acquaintance of a creature known only as the Thing. The Thing is, in point of fact, Titus’ foster-sister, being the illegitimate daughter of his old wet-nurse Keda. The Thing lives in the woods and eats birds and steals little carvings from the Bright Carvers and generally upsets everybody a lot, but to Titus, she represents freedom. Like basically everything else in this story, this goes in a tragic direction for no-longer-quite-so-little Titus.
Without giving too much away, suffice it to say that Titus, despite his hatred of his position as the Seventy-seventh Earl of Groan, is no fan of Steerpike and becomes even less so when, with the help of the exiled Mr. Flay, Titus and the Doctor blow the cover off his machinations. Just for dramatics, a weeks-long rainstorm then floods all of Gormenghast Castle, from the basements to the first nine stories, leaving just the top floors of the tallest towers to serve as the setting in which a half-mad with grief Titus hunts a half-mad with thwarted ambition Steerpike, in tandem with an all-out manhunt organized by the formidable Countess, until the lengthy final throwdown in the wet, dark, ivy-covered walls of Gormenghast. It’s an amazing scene and I have no idea how the BBC thought they were going to pull off filming it, especially with a budget of like twelve dollars.
While this series is certainly not for everybody I would again have to recommend it highly to anyone who is looking for something dense, rich, and weird. I have heard the third book isn’t as good but I will probably have to check it out myself just to be sure.
Our antagonist, Steerpike, has become the assistant to Barquentine, the Master of Rituals, and has thus become essentially the heir to that position by virtue of nobody else knowing anything about it. Steerpike continues to scheme and plot and murder and be generally duplicitious, adopting a complex long con that is intended to result in Titus dying accidentally during a ritual and Steerpike marrying Fuschia and becoming master of the castle. This goes wrong in a number of ways but not before lots of damage has been done and about half the limited cast of the book is dead. Admittedly, not all the deaths are due directly to Steerpike, but he commits enough of them to serve as the locus of evil in the story.
While the narrative is dark and tragic and the prose is heavy and archaic, this book, like the first one, is also extremely funny. The romance between Irma Prunesquallor and the school Headmaster, Bellgrove, is not without pathos but is mainly ridiculous, as the characters are not particularly well matched except for both being sad old weirdos who are determined to have a grand romance despite everything. Poor Dr. Prunesquallor has to suffer through some extreme brotherly mortification before his sister is able to embarrass herself into matrimony and move out of his house.
Less absurd than Irma Prunesquallor’s plot to bag herself a Professor, and less sinister than Steerpike’s plot to seduce the Lady Fuchsia, is Titus’ plot to just get the hell out of Gormenghast and make the acquaintance of a creature known only as the Thing. The Thing is, in point of fact, Titus’ foster-sister, being the illegitimate daughter of his old wet-nurse Keda. The Thing lives in the woods and eats birds and steals little carvings from the Bright Carvers and generally upsets everybody a lot, but to Titus, she represents freedom. Like basically everything else in this story, this goes in a tragic direction for no-longer-quite-so-little Titus.
Without giving too much away, suffice it to say that Titus, despite his hatred of his position as the Seventy-seventh Earl of Groan, is no fan of Steerpike and becomes even less so when, with the help of the exiled Mr. Flay, Titus and the Doctor blow the cover off his machinations. Just for dramatics, a weeks-long rainstorm then floods all of Gormenghast Castle, from the basements to the first nine stories, leaving just the top floors of the tallest towers to serve as the setting in which a half-mad with grief Titus hunts a half-mad with thwarted ambition Steerpike, in tandem with an all-out manhunt organized by the formidable Countess, until the lengthy final throwdown in the wet, dark, ivy-covered walls of Gormenghast. It’s an amazing scene and I have no idea how the BBC thought they were going to pull off filming it, especially with a budget of like twelve dollars.
While this series is certainly not for everybody I would again have to recommend it highly to anyone who is looking for something dense, rich, and weird. I have heard the third book isn’t as good but I will probably have to check it out myself just to be sure.