Gormenghast: Beyond the Trilogy

William Ansley · 28 Jun 2001, 23:23 · from urth-v0030.mbox · original

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From: William Ansley <wansley at warwick.net>
Subject: (urth) Gormenghast: Beyond the Trilogy
Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2001 23:23:09
Message-ID: <urth-v0030-0520 at digest.urth.net>
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At 8:01 AM -0700 6/28/01, Michael Andre-Driussi wrote:
>bee wrote:
>>I hadn't imagined that my negative opinion of the show would be as
>>controversial as it turned out to be. Here's another of my opinions. I do=
n't
>>think it's controversial, but here goes: Titus Groan and Gormenghast (i.e.
>>the books on which the show is based), are classics and everyone on this
>>list would enjoy them immensely.

I did enjoy the Gormenghast books immensely. Well, the first two, but=20
I even enjoyed _Titus Alone_, just not as much. (That ending!)

For all the rest of you who did enjoy the Gormenghast trilogy, there=20
is a novella about Titus as a young boy called "Boy in Darkness"=20
which is, in my opinion, as good as the best bits of the novels. It=20
actually takes place away from Gormenghast, for the most part. It can=20
be found in the book, _Peake's Progress_ which is a huge (576 pages)=20
collection of Peake's other writings and drawings, which is still in=20
print. It was also published in a collection of three novellas called=20
_Sometime, Never: Three Tales of Imagination (Envoy Extraordinary;=20
Consider Her Ways; Boy in Darkness)_ by William Golding, John Wyndham=20
and Mervyn Peake and by itself as _Boy in Darkness_. Both of these=20
latter books seem to be out of print.

>And alga, she found the show Ghastly, unwatchable.
>
>Ha-ha!  I found the book unreadable twelve years ago, abandoning it soon
>after the library fire; yet I found the tv show (first half, so far) quite
>entertaining, at times I laughed out loud.

I haven't seen the program yet; I am taping the second half now and=20
will watch it all (or enough to satisfy myself of its unwatchablity)=20
this weekend.

>I was hesitant to watch it at all, since I didn't like the book, but I also
>remembered how I didn't like the most-recent, live-action ALICE IN
>WONDERLAND (with Martin Short as Mad Hatter) when it first ran on tv, yet I
>liked it when I saw the thing on video . . . which made me suspect that the
>commercial interruptions were what was really bothering me the most.

I disliked that recent _Alice_ medley (why do they always insist on=20
mixing events from both books together?) quite a bit when I saw it on=20
tv. Perhaps I should give it another chance. Perhaps.

>Different people, different tastes--as usual.

Indeed.

--=20
William Ansley

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