Ignatz
3rd Level Red Feather
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Lately I've been reading "The Metamorphoses" by the Roman poet Ovid. If you love the stories of Greek and Roman mythology but have found "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" too daunting, Ovid is your man. His take on these stories is much more congenial for a modern reader than Homer...vivid, suspenseful, humorous, erotic and poignant. Somewhat overlooked nowadays, "The Metamorphoses" enjoyed a status in Shakespeare's day comparable to "The Lord of the Rings" or Harry Potter in ours (though it was written two millennia ago during the reign of Augustus.) I recommend the translation by Horace Gregory (available in paperback from Signet). His rendering is clear, poetic and very readable.
While we're on the subject of epic fantasy, let me put in a plug for another neglected masterpiece, this one from the 20th Century. On your shelf next to your Tolkien and Lewis, you should reserve a place of honor for the Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake. Any great work of imagination will take you out of our world and into its own, but this one does it like no other I know of. Gormenghast is a huge, sprawling castle as large as a small city, presided over by the Groan dynasty and steeped in aeons of tradition. It is populated by the richest gallery of colorful and grotesque characters you'd ever dream of encountering. Peake was a poet and a painter as well as a novelist and his prose is lush with images that will never leave you: the Hall of Bright Carvings, the Tower of Owls, the melancholy Lord Sepulchrave and his wife, the ponderous, implacable Gertrude with her attendant swarm of cats...the gaunt chamberlain Flay striding gloomily through the halls of Gormenghast, his knees popping like rifle shots at every step...the daft, power hungry twins Cora and Clarice taking tea on the trunk of a huge tree which grows out from the the wall of the castle...poor, mad Fuschia, daughter of the Lord and Lady, living almost as a recluse in her secret attic...the giddy Dr. Prunesquallor and his preposterous spinster sister Irma...the mysterious and resourceful Steerpike whose purposes cannot be fathomed. If Charles Dickens had been an opium eater, he might have written this story. The first two volumes of the trilogy, "Titus Groan" and "Gormenghast," are really two parts of one long novel. (The third book, "Titus Alone," is a sequel and the quality drops precipitously; the author, knowing he was dying, wrote it hurriedly. Fortunately, it can be dispensed with.)
While we're on the subject of epic fantasy, let me put in a plug for another neglected masterpiece, this one from the 20th Century. On your shelf next to your Tolkien and Lewis, you should reserve a place of honor for the Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake. Any great work of imagination will take you out of our world and into its own, but this one does it like no other I know of. Gormenghast is a huge, sprawling castle as large as a small city, presided over by the Groan dynasty and steeped in aeons of tradition. It is populated by the richest gallery of colorful and grotesque characters you'd ever dream of encountering. Peake was a poet and a painter as well as a novelist and his prose is lush with images that will never leave you: the Hall of Bright Carvings, the Tower of Owls, the melancholy Lord Sepulchrave and his wife, the ponderous, implacable Gertrude with her attendant swarm of cats...the gaunt chamberlain Flay striding gloomily through the halls of Gormenghast, his knees popping like rifle shots at every step...the daft, power hungry twins Cora and Clarice taking tea on the trunk of a huge tree which grows out from the the wall of the castle...poor, mad Fuschia, daughter of the Lord and Lady, living almost as a recluse in her secret attic...the giddy Dr. Prunesquallor and his preposterous spinster sister Irma...the mysterious and resourceful Steerpike whose purposes cannot be fathomed. If Charles Dickens had been an opium eater, he might have written this story. The first two volumes of the trilogy, "Titus Groan" and "Gormenghast," are really two parts of one long novel. (The third book, "Titus Alone," is a sequel and the quality drops precipitously; the author, knowing he was dying, wrote it hurriedly. Fortunately, it can be dispensed with.)
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