The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum - View Single Post - "just a book" or "a descriptive treatise on an imaginary ecosphere " ?

Lyta_Underhill · 07-25-2003, 02:58 PM

Indeed, Sauron666, Lovecraft is a wonderful writer! To this day, I still walk about my country realm and point out the people who have "The Innsmouth Look!"

Another writer who brings a realm to life and who is much less well known than Lovecraft is Mervyn Peake, the author of Gormenghast and an accomplished illustrator and poet as well! His works focus more on the visual and aesthetic aspects of a place or time and is the author for whom I first started using the term "word painting." His trees talked to each other as well, but you did not get the explicit details; you were looking through Titus' eyes (or perhaps a detached artists'), and the secrets are not revealed to him but painted on a canvas before you. He had a subtle and subversive philosophy, coupled with a real feel for the grotesque that seemed to bespeak a sense of hyper-reality, without being improbable; indeed, his villain Steerpike is probably my favorite and most closely drawn villain in literature! And Tolkien's descriptions of the blindness in Saruman and Sauron especially seem to match up to the weaknesses of Steerpike. But the focus is different and less polarized than Tolkien's. The details in Gormenghast are amazingly finely drawn--I cannot do them justice in my little overview; I think there is a common thread between the three authors: Tolkien, Lovecraft and Peake. They all use an other-ly language, so to speak, a high-spoken or stylized language: Tolkien's high prose for its appropriateness to the tone and subject matter of the narrative, Lovecraft's 19th century sort of diaristic prose for the enclosed, claustrophobic, dark and slow revelations that seem to cry out for such language for its proper pacing; Peake's arabesques of words and visually descriptive prose for the purpose of painting an entire realm through words (where Tolkien gives only cursory physical descriptions, Peake goes over the top and even makes comparisons of people to animals or more elemental things). And this style, when used by these masters, does not cloy or feel unnatural or have the slightest "put-on" feeling to it. Many people think this about Lovecraft, but the fact that he maintains the tone and does not stray from the mindset necessary to justify his chosen style raises it above other attempts at the 19th century style in writing IMO.

OK, I don't know if you all wanted to hear that discourse, but thanks for indulging my need to share it! [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

Cheers,
Lyta

P.S. Thanks for providing me with the proper phrase, Gilthalion! [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] Internal consistency! And you're right! I do need to read "On Fairy Stories," if I can get my hands on it! (Posting this here, because I was in process of posting when yours popped up!)

07-25-2003, 02:58 PM	#11
Lyta_Underhill Haunted Halfling Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: an uncounted length of steps--floating between air molecules Posts: 841	Indeed, Sauron666, Lovecraft is a wonderful writer! To this day, I still walk about my country realm and point out the people who have "The Innsmouth Look!" Another writer who brings a realm to life and who is much less well known than Lovecraft is Mervyn Peake, the author of Gormenghast and an accomplished illustrator and poet as well! His works focus more on the visual and aesthetic aspects of a place or time and is the author for whom I first started using the term "word painting." His trees talked to each other as well, but you did not get the explicit details; you were looking through Titus' eyes (or perhaps a detached artists'), and the secrets are not revealed to him but painted on a canvas before you. He had a subtle and subversive philosophy, coupled with a real feel for the grotesque that seemed to bespeak a sense of hyper-reality, without being improbable; indeed, his villain Steerpike is probably my favorite and most closely drawn villain in literature! And Tolkien's descriptions of the blindness in Saruman and Sauron especially seem to match up to the weaknesses of Steerpike. But the focus is different and less polarized than Tolkien's. The details in Gormenghast are amazingly finely drawn--I cannot do them justice in my little overview; I think there is a common thread between the three authors: Tolkien, Lovecraft and Peake. They all use an other-ly language, so to speak, a high-spoken or stylized language: Tolkien's high prose for its appropriateness to the tone and subject matter of the narrative, Lovecraft's 19th century sort of diaristic prose for the enclosed, claustrophobic, dark and slow revelations that seem to cry out for such language for its proper pacing; Peake's arabesques of words and visually descriptive prose for the purpose of painting an entire realm through words (where Tolkien gives only cursory physical descriptions, Peake goes over the top and even makes comparisons of people to animals or more elemental things). And this style, when used by these masters, does not cloy or feel unnatural or have the slightest "put-on" feeling to it. Many people think this about Lovecraft, but the fact that he maintains the tone and does not stray from the mindset necessary to justify his chosen style raises it above other attempts at the 19th century style in writing IMO. OK, I don't know if you all wanted to hear that discourse, but thanks for indulging my need to share it! [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] Cheers, Lyta P.S. Thanks for providing me with the proper phrase, Gilthalion! [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] Internal consistency! And you're right! I do need to read "On Fairy Stories," if I can get my hands on it! (Posting this here, because I was in process of posting when yours popped up!) __________________ “…she laid herself to rest upon Cerin Amroth; and there is her green grave, until the world is changed, and all the days of her life are utterly forgotten by men that come after, and elanor and niphredil bloom no more east of the Sea.”