Adam Mills, editor of “101 Weird Writers”
Our newest contributor to 101 Weird Writers, writer and scholar Sofia Samatar, has lent her considerable insights into Mervyn Peake and his work, in the process discovering several threads running though his unique aesthetic sensibilities and charting where they weave together. Much of his short fiction is collected in Boy in Darkness and Other Stories (1976, revised 2007), including “Same Time, Same Place,” chosen for inclusion in The Weird. Early influences included Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson, but the weirdness that permeates his work also demonstrates knowledge of Decadent-era literature and, in art, the Grotesques. Parkinson’s disease robbed Peake of the ability to complete the later novels in the cycle. Mervyn Peake (1911 - 1968) was a visionary English writer, poet, and artist named to The Times’ list of “The 50 Greatest British Writers since 1945.” Peake is best-known for the phantasmagorical Gormenghast series (1946 – 1959). There is no ranking system the order is determined by the schedule of posts. Those who explore Gormenghast castle will be richly rewarded.This post is part of an ongoing series on 101 weird writers featured in The Weird compendium, the anthology that serves as the inspiration for this site. This true classic is a feast of words unlike anything else in the world of fantasy. Unforgettable characters with names like Steerpike and Prunesquallor make their way through an architecturally stifling world, with lots of dark corners around to dampen any whimsy that might arise. Peake has been compared to Dickens, Tolkien, and Peacock, but the Gormenghast trilogy is truly unique. On every day of the year from three hours before daybreak until about eleven o'clock, when the scaffolding and ladders became a hindrance to the cooks, the Grey Scrubbers fulfilled their hereditary calling." "The walls of the vast room which were streaming with calid moisture, were built with gray slabs of stone and were the personal concern of a company of eighteen men known as the 'Grey Scrubbers'.
Peake's command of language and unique style set the tone and shape of an intricate, slow-moving world of ritual and stasis:
The Gormenghast royal family, the castle's decidedly eccentric staff, and the peasant artisans living around the dreary, crumbling structure make up the cast of characters in these engrossing stories. The trilogy continues with the novels Gormenghast and Titus Alone, and all three books are bound together in this single-volume edition. Mervyn Peake's gothic masterpiece, the Gormenghast trilogy, begins with the superlative Titus Groan, a darkly humorous, stunningly complex tale of the first two years in the life of the heir to an ancient, rambling castle.
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