Listening to: Personality Crisis – Mrs. Palmer
Photo: Snowshoeing on Seymour with Stanley
The domain “Flay.Com” seems to get a lot of attention. Not the content (though I’d be flattered), but the name itself.
“Flay” is derived from one of my favourite trilogies, “Gormanghast” by Mervyn Peake. The first, “Titus Groan” was published in 1946 and the second “Gormanghast” in 1950. Some think they are on the level of better known authors like Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. I do. The first two books are unique in that, while certainly fiction and often classified as ‘fantasy’, they don’t actually contain much in the way of fantastic or supernatural elements. Full of ponderous description, if you’re a reader that visually imagines the scenes described, it’s chock full of wonder.
Mr. Flay was the Lord’s personal servant in the series, one of the core characters. I finally got to see the BBC film adaption of Gormanghast years ago when I bought the DVD set. Christopher Lee played the part of Mr. Flay along with a well chosen cast. Worth a watch IMHO.
If you visit the official site, mervynpeake.org, you can find some of the original character sketches and more information on his writings and life:
“Mr Flay appeared to clutter up the doorway as he stood revealed, his arms folded, surveying the smaller man before him in an expressionless way. It did not look as though such a bony face as his could give normal utterance, but rather that instead of sounds, something more brittle, more ancient, something dryer would emerge, something perhaps more in the nature of a splinter or fragment of stone. Nevertheless, the harsh lips parted. ‘It’s me,’ he said, and took a step forward into the room, his knee joints cracking as he did so. His passage across the room – in fact his passage through life – was accompanied by these cracking sounds, one per step, which might be likened to the breaking of twigs.”