I have a new article out, my first for the Los Angeles Review of Books. It’s on the author and illustrator Mervyn Peake, one of the most important writers in my world. Peake’s final novel, Titus Alone, is widely considered a failure due to the dementia suffered by its author. Some Peake disciples, however, maintain that it is something of a lost masterpiece, instead.
My piece contends that both of these positions are true to an extent, but that neither fully explains the complexity and eerieness of Titus Alone. I also hold that a third factor is vital to considering Titus Alone as a work of fiction: the reflection on Peake’s own, horrific experience of his failing cognitive capacities while he attempted to write his third “Titus book.”
(image above: Peake’s illustration “Dying Girl at Belsen” (1945), from mervynpeake.org)
Reasons to Remain 
Leave a comment