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Why yes, it's another Gormenghast ramble: I guess this is my latest Aspie fixation, and it's certainly a rich one...
One of the latest in a series of packages of things bough via Amazaon showed up today, bringing a collection of short stories by Mervyn Peake, including most prominently "Boy in Darkness", a kind of side-story to the Gormenghast novels. There's an interesting point which Maeve Gilmore (Mrs. Mervyn) makes in the preface:
"[N]o book, however long, can possibly chronicle every incident in its character's life. There are many events, and adventures or meetings with people which take place outside the book, just as we, however close we are to our families or friends, can only know a small part of what makes up other people's lives."
You could definitely use that as an apologia for fanfiction writing. We fanfic writers are merely writing the bits that the canon creator didn't write, didn't think to write, or decided not to write. There's apparently a notebook in which Peake had jotted a bunch of ideas for Gormenghast, which never made it into the bricks, including the possibility of making the Steerpike/Fuschia pairing fully canonic (up to and including SP impregnating Fuschia, which leads to her suiciding; I can't help wondering if the "SP as a Groan bastard" theory which mini-series canon strongly yet subtly supports is in there as well, because if it isn't, it was a lost opportunity on Peake's part since it puts the story into the same league as Greek tragedy). Which leads me to add that I'm poking at a pair of very short "missing scene" fanfics: one which explains why Fuschia in her mid-twenties is described as "no longer a virgin" (ie. I reveal who her lover/bed-buddy is; not telling till I post it) and the other is a rather tragic sketch set after her suicide, in which Prunesquallor has to do a post-mortem examination.
Also, I have (technically) finished reading the bricks! Though I had a moment of "Hey, wait, what?" when I happened to open the omnibus and find that "Titus Alone" was several chapters longer than my stand-alone paperback edition (the Ballantine paperback from the 1970s). I was more than a little irritated, since I don't tend to like the edited version of anything. However, it turns out the edits were made in order to make the narrative more coherent. Which lead me to think, "Okay, I can get that from an editorial standpoint, but from a thematic and creative standpoint, it kind of goes against the grain of a world where madness and eccentricity dominate and where things losing their meaning is the order of the day."
I have to admit, I rather liked "Titus Alone", not quite as much as the first two books, but I still enjoyed it immensely. And as I move toward intro'ing one version of Titus Groan at a Certain Mansion, I'm thinking of making some strong references to elements in it, although his entry point will be coming at the end of the books/end of the mini-series, since I'm combining book and mini-series canon (it's sort of book continuity with the trappings of the mini-series, thus he won't be expecting an Evil Albino when he meets our SP).
One of the latest in a series of packages of things bough via Amazaon showed up today, bringing a collection of short stories by Mervyn Peake, including most prominently "Boy in Darkness", a kind of side-story to the Gormenghast novels. There's an interesting point which Maeve Gilmore (Mrs. Mervyn) makes in the preface:
"[N]o book, however long, can possibly chronicle every incident in its character's life. There are many events, and adventures or meetings with people which take place outside the book, just as we, however close we are to our families or friends, can only know a small part of what makes up other people's lives."
You could definitely use that as an apologia for fanfiction writing. We fanfic writers are merely writing the bits that the canon creator didn't write, didn't think to write, or decided not to write. There's apparently a notebook in which Peake had jotted a bunch of ideas for Gormenghast, which never made it into the bricks, including the possibility of making the Steerpike/Fuschia pairing fully canonic (up to and including SP impregnating Fuschia, which leads to her suiciding; I can't help wondering if the "SP as a Groan bastard" theory which mini-series canon strongly yet subtly supports is in there as well, because if it isn't, it was a lost opportunity on Peake's part since it puts the story into the same league as Greek tragedy). Which leads me to add that I'm poking at a pair of very short "missing scene" fanfics: one which explains why Fuschia in her mid-twenties is described as "no longer a virgin" (ie. I reveal who her lover/bed-buddy is; not telling till I post it) and the other is a rather tragic sketch set after her suicide, in which Prunesquallor has to do a post-mortem examination.
Also, I have (technically) finished reading the bricks! Though I had a moment of "Hey, wait, what?" when I happened to open the omnibus and find that "Titus Alone" was several chapters longer than my stand-alone paperback edition (the Ballantine paperback from the 1970s). I was more than a little irritated, since I don't tend to like the edited version of anything. However, it turns out the edits were made in order to make the narrative more coherent. Which lead me to think, "Okay, I can get that from an editorial standpoint, but from a thematic and creative standpoint, it kind of goes against the grain of a world where madness and eccentricity dominate and where things losing their meaning is the order of the day."
I have to admit, I rather liked "Titus Alone", not quite as much as the first two books, but I still enjoyed it immensely. And as I move toward intro'ing one version of Titus Groan at a Certain Mansion, I'm thinking of making some strong references to elements in it, although his entry point will be coming at the end of the books/end of the mini-series, since I'm combining book and mini-series canon (it's sort of book continuity with the trappings of the mini-series, thus he won't be expecting an Evil Albino when he meets our SP).