{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2707", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 2707, "subject": "Ghastly Gorm", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2001-06-29T08:38:10+00:00", "last": "2001-06-30T00:53:49+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2001-06-29T08:38:10+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Ghastly Gorm", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "William Ansley, quotha:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I did enjoy the Gormenghast books immensely. Well, the first\ntwo, but I even enjoyed _Titus Alone_, just not as much. \n(That ending!)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, it isn't really supposed to be an ending, nor was the \n\"trilogy\" intended to be three books long. Peake was dying \n(in great pain) when he wrote _Titus Alone_, which explains\nat least _some_ of its infelicities*; he tried to get on with \nthe fourth book but didn't get very far. \n\n------\n* The greatest \"infelicity,\" the fact that the story does\n not take place in Gormenghast, is not in fact an\n infelicity except by accident. The longish series was\n intended to be the story of Titus, not of the castle;\n the castle was such an overwhelming presence that it became,\n in effect, the main character of the first two volumes of\n the projected series. If the whole had been completed\n (and if Peake had been at his full powers in writing \n it), I gather, Titus would have been more clearly the\n center of the whole thing and the castle more clearly \n a setting.\n-----" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "For all the rest of you who did enjoy the Gormenghast trilogy,\nthere is a novella about Titus as a young boy called \"Boy in\nDarkness\" which is, in my opinion, as good as the best bits of\nthe novels. It actually takes place away from Gormenghast, for\nthe most part. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Ummmm... no, I don't think so. Just in one of the odder quarters\nof G., where you can forget you're in a castle. Think of the\nplace where the christening is held, that sort of place. Titus\ndoesn't actually _leave_ Gormenghast until well into the second\nvolume, and \"Boy\" seems to take place between TA and G.\n\n\n--Dan'l" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "William Ansley", "address": "wansley at warwick.net" }, "date": "2001-06-30T00:53:49+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Ghastly Gorm", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "My, we are an argumentative bunch, aren't we? (Myself included.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At 8:38 AM -0700 6/29/01, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\nWilliam Ansley, quotha:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": " I did enjoy the Gormenghast books immensely. Well, the first\n two, but I even enjoyed _Titus Alone_, just not as much.\n (That ending!)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Well, it isn't really supposed to be an ending, nor was the\n\"trilogy\" intended to be three books long. Peake was dying\n(in great pain) when he wrote _Titus Alone_, which explains\nat least _some_ of its infelicities*; he tried to get on with\nthe fourth book but didn't get very far.\n\n------\n* The greatest \"infelicity,\" the fact that the story does\n not take place in Gormenghast, is not in fact an\n infelicity except by accident. The longish series was\n intended to be the story of Titus, not of the castle;\n the castle was such an overwhelming presence that it became,\n in effect, the main character of the first two volumes of\n the projected series. If the whole had been completed\n (and if Peake had been at his full powers in writing\n it), I gather, Titus would have been more clearly the\n center of the whole thing and the castle more clearly\n a setting.\n-----" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Actually I knew that _Titus Alone_ was unfinished and that Peake \nintended to have Titus return to Gormenghast eventually. But, the \nbook was published the way it was, with the ending it had. I don't \nsee how I can judge it as what it might have been but wasn't, rather \nthan what it is, a book with a (to me at least) quite unsatisfactory \nending.\n\nThe fact that TA didn't take place in Gormenghast didn't bother me \nparticularly, in fact I rather liked the weird, science-fictional, \nsomewhat Kafkaesque world in which Titus found himself." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": " For all the rest of you who did enjoy the Gormenghast trilogy,\n there is a novella about Titus as a young boy called \"Boy in\n Darkness\" which is, in my opinion, as good as the best bits of\n the novels. It actually takes place away from Gormenghast, for\n the most part." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Ummmm... no, I don't think so. Just in one of the odder quarters\nof G., where you can forget you're in a castle. Think of the\nplace where the christening is held, that sort of place. Titus\ndoesn't actually _leave_ Gormenghast until well into the second\nvolume, and \"Boy\" seems to take place between TA and G." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This assertion surprised me so much that I had to re-read the story. \nHaving done so, I stand by my assertion: Titus did leave Gormenghast.\n\nI will quote from _Peake's Progress_, in which \"Boy in Darkness\" runs \nfrom p. 179 to 233.\n\nFirst of all we have in introductory paragraph written at the \nbeginning of the story on page 179.\n\n-----------------------------------------------\nThis story was commissioned in 1955 and published by Eyre & \nSpottiswoode in 1956 together with two other stories, by William \nGolding and John Wyndham, under the title _Sometime Never: Three \nTales of Imagination_. The boy in the story is Titus Groan, and the \nstrange experience he undergoes is an imaginative exercise of an \nevent which _might_ have happened to him, when he escapes from his \nritual laden home of Gormenghast.\n-----------------------------------------------\n\nOK, the events in the story didn't happen at all apparently (the \nwhole episode is so dreamlike that this seems probable) but, assuming \nthey did, one of the events is Titus leaving Gormenghast.\n\nOn p. 187. after Titus has been traveling for a while:\n\n-----------------------------------------------\nBy now he was several miles from the castle itself and deep into less \nobvious territory\n-----------------------------------------------\n\nHe moves on and on, until he is past the last landmark he recognizes, \nthen he crosses a river he has never seen before and is then carried \nfor miles farther and brought into the depths of an enormous mine.\n\nAfter he escapes, on page 233:\n-----------------------------------------------\n The Boy was lost for a long while but, walking in a kind of \ndream, came eventually to the banks of a wide river ... He boarded a \nlittle boat and was pushed across the water ... by the time the boat \ntouched ground on the far side his adventures had melted from his \nmind.\n It was not long before one of a host of searchers found him lost \nand weary in a crumbling courtyard and carried him back to his \nimmemorial home.\n-----------------------------------------------" }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "William Ansley" } ] } ] }