Quote:
Originally Posted by Teresa Edgerton  As you probably know, I love the Gormenghast books. And I think what makes them fantasy is three-fold:
1) They describe a culture and a way of life so gloriously grotesque and improbable that they have only the most tenuous connection to reality.
2) Though there is nothing directly supernatural, there is little of the truly natural. Many of the characters are so very much larger than life (or, in a few cases, like Nannie Slagg and the wretched Bright Carvers, smaller), that they are ruled by unnatural obsessions and unnatural passions.
3) There is no other genre or classification into which they could possibly fit. |
I'd tend to agree on this. The Gormenghast books -- and, for that matter, Peake himself, to a large degree -- are rather
sui generis, but fantasy is the only classification I can think of where they would fit. Superb books, and one of the great examples of what fantasy can do at its best... to defy all preconceptions about the genre and become something wonderfully unique and special... and evoke that sense of wonder and the numinous while saying so very, very much about the human heart along the way. Like another favorite we share, Hope Mirrlees'
Lud-in-the-Mist; or David Lindsay's
A Voyage to Arcturus, or Cabell's wonderfully quirky, witty, satirically biting, provoking, and often moving, almost unclassifiable
Biography of the Life of Manuel....