While searching for something else entirely I found this article on Mervyn Peake, one of the most important people in my bookshelf. Peake was a brilliant, often overlooked writer and artist, and a slightly erratic but still wonderful poet. He’s also one of those writers you either love or…don’t.
Which is why I have, for the past few years, been using the Peake test, or the Peakometre. I ask people if they have read Peake. If they have not (as is usually the case) I wait and watch for other signs of compatibility. If they have and they dislike him (or worse, are indifferent to him), I lose hope. If they love him, I like them immediately. If, the first time I’ve ever spoken to them they say they wish fantasy had gone in the Peake direction instead of the Tolkien one* we are friends for life. Is this a fair or even rational way of choosing one’s friends? Probably not.
I have forced the Gormenghast books down various people’s throats. Shikha took ages to get past the first few pages because of the sheer loveliness of them, she’d keep rereading them. (She did eventually get around to the rest. She loved it, of course). Bhuvi is currently refusing to give me back the copy of Gormenghast she borrowed (luckily I have two. hah!). I bought Mieville’s Perdido Street Station because he’d mentioned Peake on the acknowledgements page. The verse at the top of this blog is from Peake’s A Reverie of Bone.
here are the basics. Read him if you haven’t already.
*Yes I do love Tolkien, but that’s irrelevant to this discussion.