Steve Kilbey is best known as the frontman of Australian legends the Church, whose “Under The Milky Way” was one of the defining alt-rock singles of the late ’80s. He has also released records with the likes of Grant McLennan, Martin Kennedy and Donnette Thayer, as well as a number of solo albums. Aside from being a member of the Australian Songwriters Hall Of Fame, Kilbey pens poetry and is an accomplished painter. His latest CD is Life Somewhere Else (Communicating Vessels) by Isidore, a collaboration with Jeffrey Cain (Remy Zero). Kilbey will also be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week.
Kilbey: Some of the greatest books written in the English language are these three by Mervyn Peake circa 1950s. If weird, baroque, Gothic tragedy is your bag, then you will never go past Gormenghast. Set in a nonspecific time and place, rich in anachronistic mayhem and strangeness, we follow Titus Groan, the heir to an Earldom, as he moves through time. These books are so incredibly rich in detail and observation that you can almost taste the tense, dark and dank world behind the walls of Gormenghast Castle. It’s not just the most bizarrely unbelievable story, but the words and sentences are such treats for lovers of lesser-used, richly Latinate English. Obscurely gorgeous, it’s the kind of stuff that we just don’t see much of these days. The very best use of the English language I have ever seen, bar perhaps Dylan Thomas.
There’s Swelter, the fat pig of a cook and murderous enemy of Mr. Flay, the exiled manservant to the Groans. There’s Fuchsia, Titus’ poor, mad melancholic sister, and there’s Barquentine and Sourdust, who are historians to the house of Groan. Best of all is Steerpike, the most cunning and hypnotically evil villain ever but not in an obvious way. Steerpike will confuse you when you find yourself hoping he can survive his assault on everyone and everything in the castle.
Titus himself is a reluctant hero. Oh, he has some über-strange adventures, too, such as forcing himself on the flying girl creature, which he regards as his stepsister because her mother was his wet nurse.
The first book, Titus Groan, tells of his father’s madness (he thought he was an owl, and he was pecked to death in the “Tower of Flints”) and of Titus’ boyhood. The second book, Gormenghast, is the main course, a big thick heavy tome. Peake himself provides bleak ink sketches of his characters. Gormenghast is about the rise of Steerpike from kitchen boy to a position of power to a guerrilla waging a covert, deadly war. The third book, Titus Alone, is totally and utterly unexpected. Somehow, Titus gets into a modern-day (think the ’40s/’50s) type world (which is still as weird as all hell!), and he searches for a way to get back home. It’s brilliantly demented, and it’ll dislocate you ‘n’ back again page after page.
If you heed my good advice and read these books, you will one day thank me in spades. They are that good!
Video after the jump.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NQAQqRjjPI
