Titus Groan: A Ghostlights Book Club

Enter Gormenghast: an immense, decaying castle where life is governed by rituals so ancient that almost nobody remembers what they mean.

For the first Ghostlights book club, we will be reading Mervyn Peake’s Titus Groan, one of my favourite novels.

It is a sprawling Gothic epic and a work of wildly imaginative fantasy, filled with ruined towers, forgotten chambers, ancient ceremonies, grotesque characters and lives shaped by the enormous castle surrounding them.

Peake’s prose is strange, visual, darkly funny and among the finest writing I have ever read.

Titus is born as the seventy-seventh Earl of Gormenghast and heir to a world apparently incapable of change. Around him moves an unforgettable cast of dreamers, eccentrics, servants, schemers and isolated souls, all enclosed within the castle’s crumbling walls.

Among them is Steerpike, a kitchen boy with the intelligence, ambition and ruthlessness to begin climbing through the castle’s rigid order.

This is not conventional fantasy. There are no quests, invented languages or systems of magic. Peake creates his world through architecture, atmosphere, ritual and character.

Gormenghast feels less like a setting than an immense living presence: part sanctuary, part prison, and a universe unto itself.

Peake was also a painter and illustrator. Manchester Art Gallery’s collection contains his striking 1944 painting The Glassblower, giving this discussion a small and unexpected connection to the city in which we will be meeting.

THE DISCUSSION

We will meet for an informal conversation about the novel and whatever remained with us after reading it.

Possible areas of discussion include:

• Gormenghast as a place and almost a character in its own right;
• ritual, tradition and what happens when meaning disappears;
• Steerpike’s rebellion against the order of the castle;
• isolation, childhood, identity and inherited roles;
• Peake’s mixture of beauty, comedy and grotesquerie;
• whether Gormenghast is a prison, a sanctuary, or both.

No academic knowledge of literature is needed, and nobody will be expected to arrive with a polished interpretation.

You are welcome to bring one passage, character, image or question that particularly interests you, although this is entirely optional.

DO I NEED TO FINISH IT?

Titus Groan is a substantial novel, which is why the meeting is being announced well in advance.

The audiobook edition is excellent too, and print, ebook and audiobook readers are all equally welcome.

Finishing the novel will give you the fullest experience, but you are still welcome if you have read a significant portion and have not quite reached the end.

The conversation may cover the entire novel, so please expect spoilers.

Bring whichever edition you used, or simply come with your thoughts.

PRACTICAL DETAILS

This event is free, but please support the venue by purchasing a drink or something small.

Optional donations towards the group’s monthly Meetup running costs are also welcome:

https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=VELPUMRYRU4LW

Ghostlights Collective explores practical esotericism, folklore, myth, depth psychology and the imaginative arts through participatory events in and around Manchester.