For What Use Are Books To Anyone

Mervyn Peake Is A Finer Poet Than Edgar Allan Poe, And He Is Therefore Able To Maintain His World Of Fantasy Brilliantly Through Three Novels. It (gormenghast Trilogy) Is A Very, Very Great Work ... A Classic Of Our Age.

In The Presence Of Real Tragedy You Feel Neither Pain Nor Joy Nor Hatred, Only A Sense Of Enormous Space And Time Suspended, The Great Doors Open To Black Eternity, The Rising Across The Terrible Field Of That Last Enormous, Unanswerable Question.

Each Day I Live In A Glass Room Unless I Break It With The Thrusting Of My Senses And Pass Through The Splintered Walls To The Great Landscape.

His Was Not The Hatred That Arises Suddenly Like A Storm And As Suddenly Abates. It Was, Once The Initial Shock Of Anger And Pain Was Over, A Calculated Thing That Grew In A Bloodless Way.

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.