Everyone discovers Gormenghast at 19

[Extollager]

"...everyone seems to discover Gormenghast at the age of nineteen..."

http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/fleming_07_11.html

Anyway, here's a piece on Peake, born one hundred years ago this year, and mentioned fleetingly (?) now and again here at Chrons. Did anyone do anything noteworthy to mark the occasion? I confess I didn't, but perhaps others did.

I was just about 19 when I read Titus Groan for the first time, though.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

And I was about 23, my husband in his late twenties (he read it before he met me, so the two facts were unrelated) ... in fact, most of the people I know who have read the book read it in their mid-twenties. I see no reason to give any credence to sweeping generalizations based on the people one knows or the culture (in the case of the author of the article, apparently academia) one inhabits.

I imagine there are a number of people of all ages who first discovered the book because it was recommended to them by someone online.

I love the story about the elephant, though. I do thank you for sharing that.

 

[Pyan]

And some of us read it a lot earlier. I was 14, and discovered it because, sadly, I read an obituary for Peake in a Sunday newspaper a week after he died..

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Wow, pyan. If you average my age at first reading it with yours, it's 18.5 years old.

Maybe there is some truth in that article ...

 

[JunkMonkey]

Nineteen was about the time I found it. 33 years later and I still haven't finished it.

 

[mosaix]

25 for me. Recommended by my brother-in-law to be.

 

[GOLLUM]

I first discovered Gormenghast in my early twenties as I recall it now.

I've been meaning to reread it before reading Maeve Gilmore's (wife of Peake) rediscovered attempt to continue the story. That book is called Titus Awakes.

 

[Connavar]

Im glad i didnt read this author when i was 19, i would have thought his prose,writing to be too much for me then.

I didnt even know who Peake was then. I only learned afterwards how important writer he was.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Late teens for me. It's just one of those things...

 

[Extollager]

Im glad i didnt read this author when i was 19, i would have thought his prose,writing to be too much for me then.

Your remark reminded me of a little anecdote. I'd been a dedicated reader of fantasy for several years by the time I entered college, where I discovered that one of the professors was also a great one for reading fantasy. In fact, he offered a course on imaginative literature in which I enrolled, late in my freshman year. (The college was on a term-based rather than semester-based schedule. I think this course lasted for about ten weeks.)

The books that he chose seem (from my records) to have been:

Le Guin's A Wizard of Earhsea
Lewis's trilogy of Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength
Charles Williams's The Place of the Lion (this might have been "extra credit" reading)
Peake's Titus Groan
and, as I recall,
Hoban's The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz

I'd read all of these except the Peake and Hoban titles before, but felt receptive indeed towards Peake. In fact, I borrowed the professor's copy of Peake's widow's memoir, A World Away, and read that just before reading Titus Groan.

When the class met to discuss the first (I assume) assigned portion of Peake's novel, students expressed their dislike of the book. I don't remember just what was said -- whether students said the book was "boring" or whatever. But I remember the professor not being shocked, but being visibly hurt by things that were said. I trust that I expressed my enjoyment of TG.

Having written all of the above, I now realize that it might sound like I'm implying that you, Connavar, would have been among the students who expressed their dislike of the book and might have played a part in making the professor feel bad. No! I do not mean to imply anything one way or the other about what you might have said had you been there. I mean only that your comment reminded me of this poignant moment.

 

[Connavar]

The thing is i feel ashamed of the reader i was at 19, you didnt sound like implying me but i know i would have thought Peake writing was boring. Im 29 now but at 19 i read maybe two lame trasy John Grisham novel per year. Im literature student now who loves reading,talking classic lit.

At 24 i went from two books per year to becoming constant reader that read 80-100 books per year. Im the opposite of you guys in the age it takes to discover writers like Peake. At 19 at i was in high school and thought literature was boring yeesh.

Im glad im well read enough now i can apprciate writers like Peake

 

[Fried Egg]

I was 21 when I read Ghomenghast but I never really enjoyed it that much at the time. Perhaps I should give it another go...

 

[D_Davis]

Ah, good old number 19.

All roads lead to the Dark Tower.

 

[Extollager]

The books that he chose seem (from my records) to have been:

Le Guin's A Wizard of Earhsea
Lewis's trilogy of Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength
Charles Williams's The Place of the Lion (this might have been "extra credit" reading)
Peake's Titus Groan
and, as I recall,
Hoban's The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz

I'd read all of these except the Peake and Hoban titles before, but felt receptive indeed towards Peake.

Not that it matters for our discussion of Peake, but I misstated myself. I had not read The Place of the Lion before. I had read Many Dimensions by Williams -- but not Place.

 

[nixie]

I was a lot older than 19. Have only just read the trilogy this year.

 

[Extollager]

It seemed like there was a Peake renaissance or something getting started back in the middle third or so of the Seventies, when I began reading him. Anyone remember that? It was then that the book Mervyn Peake: Writings and Drawings came out, Chatto reissued The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and Methuen reissued Treasure Island with Peake's remarkable drawings (so different from the wonderful open-air-adventure paintings of N. C. Wyeth); other Peake books were reissued, and within a few years, two biographical-critical studies came out, one by John Batchelor and the other by an author whose name I forget. The Mervyn Peake Review started up in the late Seventies or so. Peake's Progress came out around then, although that's something I don't own.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I suspect some of the people here weren't even born in the mid-seventies. Some were only small children.

Since I was in my twenties in the mid-seventies, I do remember that the Gormenghast books, at least, came to the attention of a lot of SF and Fantasy readers, but I don't think that any of Peake's other works were ever discussed.

I found out about those on my own, many years later.

 

[jojajihisc]

I'll discover it at 37 or 41, it depends how those years go.

 

[hitmouse]

There is a persistant trend amongst reviewers in the broadsheets to imply that admiration for Peake is an adolescent fancy. I suppose that might be true to some extent, but Peake is often used as a disparaging totem for a slightly embarassing juvenile literarary fervour. The same could equally be said for Jane Austin or the Brontes, but it isn't.

I picked Titus Groan up in my early teens and then read the whole trilogy countless times after that.

I recently read Titus Awakes and thoroughly enjoyed it. If you are looking for a Peake pastiche then you will be disappointed. It is clearly not intended to channel the original books, but is rather a very sad but beautiful story by Maeve Gilmore. Titus has aspects of Peake about him, but he continually meets a disturbed and disabled man who is obviously Peake in his later tragic years.

 

[GOLLUM]

I was a lot older than 19. Have only just read the trilogy this year.

Like 21 Yeh...

I was a very small child in the 70s (things haven't changed much since then...) and only knew of Mervyn Peake and the legendary Gormenghast in the mid 1980s but did not tackle the work until the late 80s.

Interesting to read Hitmouse's comments on Titus Awakes. I received a copy earlier this year but do not intend to read it until I've reread Gormenghast.