"Titus Groan"

[fiefoe]

The sheer size of this book (which is actually an omnibus) gave me pause, so I looked into the introductions to see what I was in for.

Quentin Crisp talked mostly about Mervyn Peake as an illustrator. He wrote this in 1946, when MP was only 35.
__ Originality is only to be praised when not prefaced by the look to right and left.
__ An illustrator is very much like an actor. If he lends himself utterly to every book he illustrates he is involved in shifting his whole outlook on life, to say nothing of varying his technique incessantly.

Anthony Burgess (last seen in the introduction to "The Wild Party"):
__ (The world of Gormenghast) has absorbed our history, culture and rituals and then stopped dead, refusing to move, self-feeding, self-motivating, self-enclosed.
__ It is,... a rich wine of fancy chilled by the intellect to just the right temperature.

Onto Chapter One, where massive shadows dominate:
__ a certain ponderous architectural quality
__ (The Tower of Flints:) At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow.
__ The sole passion was directed, once their days of love had guttered,...
__ All radiance gone.
__ They were all-but forgotten people: the breed that was remembered with a start, or with the unreality of a recrudescent dream.