/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.22634034]

Holy shit. How come nobody reads this anymore? It's genius (first 2/3rd, at least).

[Anonymous No.22634039]

Anything written pre-COVID is completely invalid.

[Anonymous No.22634046]

>>22634034
> How come nobody reads this anymore
We do. It’s in the latest top 100

[Anonymous No.22634092]

>>22634046
>top 100
Wut is this

[Anonymous No.22634174]

>>22634034
>gets only good at Boy in Darkness and Titus Alone
The first two novels are too long and not that great.

[Anonymous No.22634194]

>>22634092
/lit/‘s annual top 100

[Anonymous No.22634209]

I've read it and rereading it now that its getting cold

[Anonymous No.22634218]

>>22634174
it really passes me off that boy in darkness is not in this omninus

[Anonymous No.22634244]

>>22634218
It’s not in any omnibus, I think.

[Anonymous No.22634259]

>>22634218
>>22634244
Did the Folio edition at least have it in there? 2.5 and 3 barely add up in length to volumes 1 and 2.

[Anonymous No.22634265]

>>22634259
No, just the 3 novels.

[Anonymous No.22634272]

>>22634265
Fuck. It's quite the Lynchian kino. It's a crime to cut out that small bit of quality the trilogy has.

[Anonymous No.22634297]

>>22634272
Yea, it’s a crime it’s not included or even reprinted. It’s been out of print since like the 2000s. Shame, really

[Anonymous No.22634639]

Just picked it up at the library yesterday and I am loving it!! So excited to see other folks talkign about it.

[Anonymous No.22634836]

I barely made it through the first three chapters. Boring as fuck. What's the attraction, anyway?

[Anonymous No.22634845]

>>22634836
The prose and imagery for me. I like how Peake writes

[Anonymous No.22634859]

>>22634845
I can see that, but there's nothing else to hold my interest.
Some rich guy in a castle holds a contest where all the peasants make little artworks. The winner gets to have it displayed in a gallery that no one visits; the rest are burned. The gallery's caretaker never leaves the gallery; God knows how much dust has built up, or how he poops. The butler (or something) comes up to tell him the lady of the castle had a baby, but is apparently so socially inept that it takes him forever to convey something simple. He then visits the kitchen where everyone is getting drunk. The lead chef gets in some rando's face, makes a bunch of pointless empty threats, then passes out.
I gave up after that. It seemed so pointless.

[Anonymous No.22634870]

My favourite part in all the books has got to be when Steerpike scares the Twins into silence. I'm near 100% certain that he starts speaking in some kind of poetic metre, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to identify it. It reminds me of Poe and The Raven almost, so perhaps whatever metre is used in that?

[Anonymous No.22634878]

>>22634870
it's iambic pentameter

[Anonymous No.22634924]

>>22634845
Peake isn't even that good. He is trying a slightly antiquated style but the actual gothic novel writers did it three times better. It's only great after Peake goes off the rails after the first two volumes.

[Anonymous No.22634946]

>>22634924
Example of someone who did it better?

[Anonymous No.22634953]

>>22634870
>I come as Warning! Warning! Your throats are long and white and ripe for strangling!
>x - x - - - - x- x- x- x - x - -
Is it? That doesn't seem like the iambic pentameter I know of, though I'll admit I have only a weak familiarity with metre in general.

[Anonymous No.22634958]

>>22634953
>>22634878
Meant to reply to this.

[Anonymous No.22635260]

At least we have this:
https://archive.org/search?query=subject%3A%22Gormenghast+trilogy%22

[Anonymous No.22635279]

>>22634174
Bad bait

[Anonymous No.22635337]

>>22635279
They hated him for he spoke the truth.

[Anonymous No.22636363]

Bump for interesting thread.

[Anonymous No.22637812]

Bump. It's not for everyone but it's hardly "boring", just because most of the action isn't violent (although there is no shortage of that) doesn't mean there's no interest. The best parts are the descriptions of the grotesques and their awful interactions, really top comedy.

[Anonymous No.22637817]

>>22637812
The character have fun interactions, I give you that. But the writing style is boring compared to his predecessors he tries to imitate.

[Anonymous No.22637845]

>>22637817
Well, I'd love to know who the predecessors are, because to me it was revelatory prose writing, seeming florid but actually quite precise. I really had no expectations going in, and I was absolutely floored at how funny and creative and vivid it was, I still have no exact reference point, except maybe the pictures of Edward Gorey

[Anonymous No.22637866]

>>22637845
>tfw just read a small Gorey book
heh
Honestly, you should read Lovecraft and Poe and stuff like Udolpho, Melmoth, Otranto, Ossian, The Monk. Lots of castles there.

[Anonymous No.22638058]

>>22637866
Yeah I've read Lovecraft and Poe, as obsessed for a while. There's no comparison, Lovecraft is as far from Peake as it's possible to be, and Poe's not far behind (and only because Poe has so much variety). Peake is playful and droll and really enjoys language, Gormenghast has some "Gothick" aesthetics but this is pretty superficial, he's closer to Wodehouse. His characters are like the gargoyles on a gothic cathedral - frightening at first glance, but often silly or weirdly charming if you look at them for a while. The sculptures were having fun with it, and that's the impression I get from Peake as well

[Anonymous No.22638133]

>>22634034
This used to be a /lit/ favorite before the /pol/ invasion several years ago, back when we discussed literature. Though I still see it mentioned sometimes.

[Anonymous No.22638164]

>>22634244
Michael Moorcock is a huge faggot, so is Neil Gaiman. They break us bucks by giving them every intro to every decent book in the SF/FA genre.

That said Moorcock at least wrote a few good novellas in the 70s whereas Gaiman never wrote a thing worth reading after Sandman

[Anonymous No.22638250]

I'm going to say what I always say about Gormenghast on /lit/ - it contains far more imagery than it does meaning. I'm not always convinced that the emperor is wearing clothes.

[Anonymous No.22638294]

>>22638250
I don't think it's a philosophical novel in disguise, I don't think it ever tried to give that impression. It's just an aesthetic pleasure, a lovely thing that surprises you with beauty.

Which is not to say it is meaningless, it has heart and moments of insight, but it is art for its own sake, and that's a fine thing too.

[Anonymous No.22638336]

>>22638294
I agree with you that it's art for its own sake, and I think I agree that it never pretends to be otherwise, though I don't really know much about Peake's philosophy of art. I'm sure we have a pretty equal estimation of the book and it's place in the canon, though I'm not sure I can personally enjoy that type of literature.

[Anonymous No.22638431]

>>22638336
Not everyone has to like everything, and sometimes it's more about the circumstances of the encounter than the work itself.

[Anonymous No.22638501]

>>22638250
Peake was a painter before he was a writer, and that shows in his writing. I still think it has some interesting themes, like it's portrayal of rigid adherence to tradition (Peake grew up in Beijing in the final days of the Qing), but it's strengths are certainly within the prose and imagery that he conjured, and those are quite unique to the novels.

[Anonymous No.22638528]

The most interesting influence Peake had in newer times was probably in Muir's Gideon the Ninth. All-encompassing castle world with clashing aesthetics and humor and a protagonist trying to escape.

[Anonymous No.22638530]

I will start to read it now

[Anonymous No.22638573]

>>22638164
Neverwhere is good

[Anonymous No.22638590]

Unwin Peake Lord of Starpike in Fire & Blood and the whole Regency of Aegeon III is a big Gormenghast reference.

[Anonymous No.22638592]

>>22638164
I’m interested in some Moorcock books, any recs? Pic rel caught my eye, I like the title.

[Anonymous No.22638610]

>>22634244
Wtf I’m having a Mandela effect right now. Wasn’t this edition introduced by China Mieville?

[Anonymous No.22638619]

>>22638592
Read Elric and listen to Hawkwind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfYsRlFKPtw

[Anonymous No.22638639]

>>22638592
Read Gloriana, it’s Moorcock’s homage to Gormenghast and The Faerie Queene

[Anonymous No.22638641]

>>22638592
That's definitely my favorite if his, he's written infinite sword & sorcery books (I read several of the elric melniboné books in high school, they were good if you like that), but this is one I still think about. It's a social satire more than a fantasy adventure thing, it's a very clever concept and has some great characters (although it loses steam near the end). Not much like Gormenghast though.

[Anonymous No.22638694]

>>22638164
Moorcock's stuff was pretty revolutionary though, and paved the way for a lot of what modern fantasy /lit/ is. He's like the transistor on the Lord of the Rings pipeline.
I agree on Gayman though, I'd go so far as to say that Sandman isn't even good and he certainly isn't literarily relevant even within the confines of genre fiction.

[Anonymous No.22638699]

>>22638592
I enjoyed "The Rituals Of Infinity". Almost PKDesque.
>>22638619
Hawkwind are like gods to me. The first 6 albums are absolute gold, as is Nik Turner's solo work.

[Anonymous No.22638706]

>>22638590
pretty much everything outside of the ASOIAF main series is some overly referential garbage

[Anonymous No.22638721]

>>22638706
Even the main series itself is just a big ripoff of English history. e.g Lan(c)asters being the conniving scheming family with red imagery, hadrian's wall, civil war for the throne, etc. etc.

[Anonymous No.22638728]

>>22638706
There’s even a Lord or something named Elmo ffs

[Anonymous No.22638731]

>>22638721
I give him more credit on the front of the main series because he comes up with a large majority of the interpersonal drama himself, and weaves it together himself, and there's obviously some fantastical factors included that aren't stripped from English history. but the shit like Fire and Blood and the world of ASOIAF or whatever the fuck it is called is just an amalgamation of a bunch of different literary and film references, I mean half of the worldbuilding for Essos is just a Lovecraft strip which is enough to prove for me all those dark towers won't ever actually be relevant to the main story. once you take out that personal drama it just becomes dangerously close to a boring and hackish copy/paste job, which makes shit like F&B a complete waste of your time.

[Anonymous No.22638737]

>>22638721
By that logic Shakespeare should also be dismissed. He based many of his plots on history.

[Anonymous No.22638744]

>>22638699
>Hawkwind are like gods to me.

Fuckin' A! Hawkwind Live Chronicles, Master of the Universe is GOAT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUYMJO4mxIE

[Anonymous No.22638767]

>>22638744
The guitar riff around 2:01-2:15 of "Master Of The Universe" from the "In Search Of Space" album is my ringtone.
And let's not forget Nik Turner's excellent solo work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OytZekcZst4

[Anonymous No.22638904]

Fuchsia bringing Lord Sepulchrave pine cones was the saddest thing I've ever read.

[Anonymous No.22638991]

>>22634034
I thought it was great, though I didn't continue past the first one. So many grand Dickensian villains being horrible and causing suffering wore me down a bit. On another tack though, it was a big influence on a video game writer I really like, and the exploring the castle parts were a significant inspiration for Book of Hours which just came out a month or two ago.

[Anonymous No.22638998]

>>22634034
I've slogged through it twice. Don't remember why.

[Anonymous No.22639060]

>>22634039
ok that got a chuckle outta me

[Anonymous No.22639067]

>>22634859
F I L T E R E D
I
L
T
E
R
E
D

[Anonymous No.22640257]

>>22638737
Yeah, and they are literally titled 'Henry I' or 'Richard II', not passed off as fiction slop you fucking drooling retard go back to picture books they're clearly more than enough for you to handle

[Anonymous No.22640277]

>>22638731
Fire & Blood is all interpersonal drama. I don't believe you've read it.

[Anonymous No.22640405]

>>22640277
eh, it's more of a summarization of interpersonal drama through a biased lens. decidedly less referential than some of the other "extended universe" shit he's done but still pretty much irrelevant as a piece of literature. it's literally all telling you "and then this happened, and this happened, and then the reign of Aegon the Sisterfucker was over"
I admittedly didn't finish it, but only because I recognized it for the waste of time it was.

[Anonymous No.22640536]

What's the appeal?

[Anonymous No.22640630]

>>22640536
gothic atmospheric kino

[Anonymous No.22640725]

>>22640405
filtered

[Anonymous No.22640777]

>>22640257
> Yeah, and they are literally titled 'Henry I' or 'Richard II',
Not all of them. He changed Amleth to Hamlet, for example.
> Yeah, and they are literally titled 'Henry I' or 'Richard II',
> not passed off as fiction slop you fucking drooling retard go back to picture books they're clearly more than enough for you to handle
He’s very transparent about his historical influences.

[Anonymous No.22640800]

>>22634034

I'm kind of glad Gormenghast never got the same big fanbase a lot of other fantasy sereis did like LOTR, Harry Potter, Ice and Fire, etc. I imagine it would only become pretty terrible. Though I heard Neil Gaiman is interested in doing some sort of adaptation, the 90s BBC one wasn't too bad but I think it condensed a lot of the plot. I'm also surprised some big named director like Tim Burton never got an interest in these novels since it seems like something that would mesh well with his aesthics.

I'd rank the books like this:
Titus Groan>Gormenghast>Titus Alone>Titus Wakes

Third book went in some interesting places like the city being a combination of both fantastique and science fiction stuff loved how Peake just went balls to the wall crazy and letting his imagination run wild. Titus Awakes wasn't too bad but it's not great since it's largely made up of fragments put together by Peake's widow but it's interesting to see where the series potentially would've went with

>>22634836

Peake's atmosphere is great he kind of reminds me of a British Alfred Kubin in a lot of ways plus it feels kind of liminal space horror the way he envisions the various long corridors and hallways.

>>22638590

He also has nods to Jack Vance and a couple other sci-fi authors. Bran also climbing the walls in Winterfell feels heavily influenced by Steerpike clmibing the castel and spying on Fushcia

Has anyone read anything else by Peake apart from Gormenghast? Mr Pye was pretty fun but it just felt like I was reading a brochure for Sark

[Anonymous No.22641199]

>>22640800
>didn't rate Boy in Darkness
itsover.jpg

[Anonymous No.22641259]

>>22640725
Hey, don't come crying to me when none of it has any relevancy whatsoever to the resolution of the main series. It's a half-assed project that shouldn't have even been put out, he'd been better off just writing more Dunk and Egg stuff cause at least those have plots and characters.

[Anonymous No.22641281]

>>22640800
Neil Gaiman should just die already. He’s ruining everything

[Anonymous No.22641294]

>>22641281
Yeah

[Anonymous No.22641482]

>>22641259
Imagine being such a plot fag you cuck yourself out of the best content in all asoiaf.

[Anonymous No.22641515]

>>22641482
If you can get kicks from a bunch of and then statements, feel free

[Anonymous No.22642216]

>>22639067
You can't explain why anyone should like this book either, can you. All you can do is seethe.