At the Half-Wit in Crystal I found, in the horror section, Ancestral Shadows. Really new and with Kirk’s Cautionary Note on the Ghostly Tale.

“All important literature has some ethical end,” Kirk says, “and the tale of the preternatural—as written by George Macdonald, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and other masters—can be an instrument for the recovery of moral order.”

What I was surprised to find was a blurb by Ray Bradbury on the dust jacket. They also have a blurb on there from a letter T.S. Eliot wrote to Kirk, but Eliot says nothing about the merit of the stories.

It seems to me Kirk needs a critic, somebody to make him better known and appreciated. This Guroian who keeps cropping up does not move me. The only tale I’ve heard (Kirk reading, you can get it on the ISI lectures site) was pretty good. He’s fallen on hard times to be published out of an outfit like Eerdmans.

And I wonder if Eerdmans is selling him and I just ended up with a random new copy, or if he’s being moved out of their warehouse in one of these strange surges of Eerdmans that periodically afflict the Half-Wits in our area. If the latter, then perhaps more of you can come into the joy.

An hundred pages in and not yet a tenth of the way through the volume I have long ago passed the realization that I have made a great discovery. It leads me to reflect that the best authors are inimitable and the best works stand alone, at least in the realm of the fantastic.

I might say that Mervyn Peake is like Poe, but Mervyn Peake has characters. Peake is like Poe in that Peake has heavy and sinister atmospheres, and the corresponding descriptions of fantastic places; but Peake also has nature and sunlight.

Peake is like Charles Williams without the supernatural. He is most like Williams in being altogether unique, an imaginer whose imagination ranges far beyond the borders of other imaginations. I have read all of Williams’ novels; in one hundred pages of Peake I have found one I am sure is equal.

It is early to judge, but compared with the satisfaction and completeness of Tolkien’s one long work, Gormenghast promises to pay off as well. The most wonderful thing about Tolkien is that when you are done with the story you devour the appendices and after that you are left looking around for more. Only one hundred pages into Gormenghast it is a matter of great satisfaction to consider that I still have a thousand pages to go.

I would also compare Peake to another fantastic writer: CS Lewis. Lewis is always interesting, I do not find him failing to hold my attention by making tedious excursions or including parts that do not advance the story. I do not get that feeling from Peake either, and this is strange considering he writes more like a painter than anything. Yet it is because of this his descriptions are as precise and illuminating, usually, as Lewis always is.

The most fascinating thing about Peake is the way he describes. If you think of each chapter as a painting you will not be too far off. I read in the introduction that Peake was also an artist besides a writer. In his success at both he was compared to Wyndham Lewis. Peake has a most remarkable way with language and a wonderful power of description. This if from the first page:

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.

The kind of description Peake undertakes can only proceed by intuition, and his intuition seldom fails him (I think Dunsany is more unerring). Because Peake writes as if he is drawing or painting, you get a lot of description, a lot of atmosphere, the details are all brought together and then you get the bit of action that it was all being built up to display. It is amazing. I have to put down the book and repeat the sentences sometimes.

So voluptuous is his way of writing, and so glad was I of what I had discovered—and just in time for a week of vacation—that I made myself some hash browns, two eggs and coffee and celebrated at 9PM with a hearty meal.

And last I would compare Mervyn Peak with Susanna Clarke. Like Clarke he has populated his story with the most interesting, disturbing, impetuous, pathetic in an intriguing way, strange and alluring collection of people. He reminds me of Fielding, and is also called Dickensian—but I would not know about that. Like Fielding and like Clarke, he has the proper measure of wit, and uses it as deftly if more sparingly. And what interesting ways Peake has with dialogue! Just like Susanna Clarke.

Well, enough; I am very pleased. The book is so rich that even if I spend three hours every day, I’m unlikely to proceed much further than a hundred pages. I’ll probably spend more since there is nothing to call the heart like a week off and a good, thick book. I’ll probably spend less since I am always stimulated in my writing when I read rich, imaginative works.

After Ireland I wanted Irish books. The main satisfaction I have had was listening to a popular novel called Rosie Dunne. It was well concluded and there is something about a wonderful and satisfying conclusion that will make up for a great deal. I just read a mediocre article by Sally Thomas in FT. The ending was good and made me glad I had persevered. I do not say I had to do a lot of persevering to get through Rosie Dunne, for the situations were well conceived, and funny, and mostly interesting. Sometimes the dialogue was less than brilliant, and there cannot have been a great deal of depth, even to my seeming, in the characters. But Cecilia Ahern has learned to love to observe people with interest. If the proper function of literature is to deepen your consciousness of the world by enhancing in some way your understanding of human kind, then this novel achieved that. It may not say very much about what I know of people, but now I think I know a little more. The execution of the ending, bringing every part finally together, was well done.

The word Gormenghast caught my eye at Half-Wit on Saturday. The author was unknown and I seldom look at a book by an unknown author because I have plenty of known author’s books to look for and to read; and I buy very many books as it is. But I took it out and saw on the back a blurb by CS Lewis.

“[Peake's books] are actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before, and enlarge our conception of the range of possible experience.”

So in one fell swoop Lewis gave me three, nay four things: 1 I finished Rosie Dunne a little later that day, and he suggested to me a way to understand what I experienced. 2 He furnished me with a small but valuable bit to build my literary theory. 3 He gave me that wonderful suggestion: that a book might be like a rare dream. 4 He let me know I would probably enjoy the writing of Mervyn Peake a great deal.

I bought the trilogy called the Gormenghast Novels. Everything I know about them so far is very interesting. I’ve got a week off coming up, and I’m looking forward to scheduling 3-4 hours a day for Gormenghast.

At last I visited the new Half-Wit which I figured would be well picked over by now. It is within walking distance of Bauder’s house and the closest one for quite a few others in the area. It set me back $50, however.

I found a collection of essays by Eudora Welty. She’s got essays on writing and essays on writers, like Jane Austen and William Faulkner. I find the writing on writing by some authors very helpful; Welty is one of them.

I found a couple of Wodehouse’s book in the Overlook editions I’m collecting. I’ll have you know I resisted two others.

I found the complete short stories of Maupassant in a very slender volume with two column text and a built in bookmark. Among the writers of short stories, Maupassant is in the first rank.

I found Wise Blood and hesitated. It is in a good softcover, but not hardcover. So it took me a while to despair of ever finding the hardcover. It will be read sooner than later.

I found not the little, abridged Minority Report but the full thing in hardcover, so I went for it. And I found Miller’s Canticle for Leibowitz in hardcover for not much and quickly became dissatisfied with the cheap paperback I own.

They have a good history section, but I did not look at the religious because already I had found too many things.

Now to my reading and no more writing for today.