On Being Less Awesome Than Mervyn Peake

Dear Blog,

My oldest friend, after reading a draft of my fantasy spy story, gave me a copy of Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake, which I had never read.

The reason, in part (or in full?), was because my friend was decidedly unimpressed by my lackluster (or lack of) portrayal of Spira City, my made up version of early 20th century Paris, or the island fortress where the final chapters take place. Mervyn Peake’s castle-fortress Gormenghast was meant, I think, to inspire me to greater ambition, to give me a sense of what might be done with Place, in a novel. (I put up a wee review of the novel here).

In fact, this very dear friend of mine had nailed one of my biggest weaknesses as a writer. Well, maybe it’s one of my biggest weaknesses. I suppose that’s really for a reader to judge (though I’d prefer they didn’t). I am no good at describing places. And buildings in particular. I do a little better with natural scenes. Maybe.

I’m not sure how to get better at it. When I was a kid, I used to skip over the descriptions of places. I just didn’t care all that much. And I’m sure that it is linked to my lack of skill as a home-decorator. So anyway, I finally opened up Titus Groan a few weeks ago, and here is the very first paragraph of the book:

Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls. They sprawled over the sloping earth, each one half way over its neighbour until, held back by the castle ramparts, the innermost of these hovels laid hold on the great walls, clamping themselves thereto like limpets to a rock. These dwellings, by ancient law, were granted this chill intimacy with the stronghold that loomed above them. Over their irregular roofs would fall throughout the seasons, the shadows of time-eaten buttresses, of broken and lofty turrets, and, most enormous of all, the shadow of the Tower of Flints. This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow.

Wow. Right? Me, I probably would have written “surrounded by poor huts” and “tall, dark tower” and hurried on to the Character Has Feelings About Stuff That Happens bit.

Of course, most books that aren’t set in space or in the middle of the desert have buildings in them and not all writers dwell as passionately on their buildings as Mervyn Peake does. You can read any writer and feel insecure that the thing they do well is not the thing you do well, and maybe you should be doing the thing they do well as well. Sometimes the things I can’t do well loom so large in my imagination, and seem to overshadow the things I can do well. I want to be better, of course. A better mother, a better writer, a better person, a better interior decorator. I am trying to be better. I am hoping that when the friend who gave me Titus Groan reads my second spy story, he won’t think that the city of Tianshi is a total flop. (Yes, I know, Tianshi is awfully similar to Tian Di and why is that? I will tell you sometime, blog, but it is all Chinese – randomly in the case of Tian Di, and not at all randomly in the case of Tianshi!). But the sad fact is, I will never be as fine a writer as Mervyn Peake. Even so, I hope that when the book is done, its successes will outshine the failures, and the failures will not be so noticeable.

Still, Place / Setting is important. I am working on it. This is the second paragraph of my New First Draft:

Spira City would be brilliant with gas lamps, but Tianshi, the walled capital of Zhongguo, is pitch black at night. There is the odd flicker of a torch here and there, the dim glow of a candle in a window; the rest is darkness. Tonight I am restless. I don’t want to sleep, I don’t want to drink, I don’t want to talk. I am thinking of home, The Twist; its winding streets, raucous laughter spilling out of the brothels, half-starved cats stalking rats, the smell of spice and snow and smoke. The sounds and smells are all different here. Wet stone from the afternoon rain, which came down in a torrent while the bells of Ei-ji chimed their magic for it. The click of dice and low voices as I pass a torch-lit courtyard. Chicken feces and the faint scent of fried pork mingling in the air. They call it the Heavenly City, and by day the many-coloured tile rooftops shine in the sunlight, the markets overflow with silks and spices, terribly thin but strong young boys run through the streets with rickshaws calling out for rides, slender trees hang heavy with spring blossoms. With the dark, a hush falls. Where Spira City comes alive at night, Tianshi nestles down close to the earth, the people withdraw, the lights go out.
For years I’ve longed to get out of Spira City, to see the world. Now I find I’m feeling homesick.

Not exactly knuckled masonry and swarming epidemics of hovels, but we all do what we can.

Yours, Peake-enviously,

Catherine