A high point came near the end in the death battle between the servant Flay and the cook Swelter. It was one of the longest scenes in the book, but wonderfully sustained. Near the beginning comes the lightning bolt of a summer storm:
To Flay it seemed an eternity of nakedness, but the hot black eyelid of the entire sky closed down again and the stifling atmosphere rocked uncontrollably to such a yell of thunder as lifted the hairs on his neck. From the belly of a mammoth it broke and regurgitated, dying finally with a long-drawn growl of spleen. And then the enormous midnight gave up all control, opening out her cumulous body from horizon to horizon, so that the air became solid with so great a weight of falling water that Flay could hear the limbs of trees breaking through a roar of foam.
The end scene in which Titus is made Earl of Gormenghast was also glorious.
I’m afraid I didn’t make enough checks to mark my favorite passages and sentences. I bought the book used and besides such checks there are just two places where a reader wrote had written a note.
In the chapter called The Burning, the second paragraph describes a seating arrangement which seems to have an editing flub regarding who is sitting next to whom. An attentive reader notes in the margin: “? Nannie was on Gertrude’s right.”
At the end there’s a scene where Mr. Rottcodd, curator of the so-called Bright Carvings, looks through a window to see there is a new Earl, and realizes that he has seen no one for over a year. He hadn’t known the previous Earl died.
What had happened? As he asked himself the question, he knew the answer. That no one had thought fit to tell him! No one! It was a bitter pill for him to swallow. He had been forgotten. Yet he always wished to be forgotten. He could not have it both ways.
Alongside the paragraph, the reader wrote “yes, you can.”
No comments:
Post a Comment