What would Mervyn do?

Following my last post I got a number of messages. Pleasantly, most them wanted to know what the hell a Gormenghastian is. Around the time that Tolkien's books were cutting their swathe, Mervyn Peake published his own world view. Like Tolkien, he had maybe spent too much time being gassed in the trenches. I do not know this I am only guessing.

I have never actually read the Lord of the Rings books. I struggled through The Hobbit because C***** was reading it & I thought I should make an effort. I then made it clear that for the rest, she was on her own.

I never would have heard of Gormenghast had it not been for B***. She knew we got BBC on our satellite & asked me to tape it for her (the series had not yet played on PBS & yes, we still taped programs; it was a while ago). I did tape it for her & then discovered that the broadcast had been interrupted to cover the annual marches & accompanying violence. So I watched the whole damn thing to see which episodes I needed to retape (all of them). Let me go on record: watching people shoot & gas each other over a dispute that makes the Palestinian/Israeli conflict look nouveau was a blessed relief when compared to this program. That being said, all you Tudors fans want to put it on hold because this is the very creepy role that put Jonathan Rhys Meyers on the map.

It has been suggested that I do not like them (Tolkien, Peake) because of the religious leanings. On the other hand I do like the Narnia books & they are more overtly religious than all the others. Of course I missed this completely the first time I read them. When someone finally clued me in, my first Aslanic insight was "organized religion is an artful predator"; probably not the message C.S.Lewis meant to send.

So what would Mervyn do? I haven't the faintest idea.