Author Imitation

ChRIS said:

One of my favourite parts of Gormenghast was that featuring the professors. Do you think you could imagine a little story, written in the Peake style, using the original characters and their names?

ChatGPT said:

Here's something in the spirit of Peake, featuring the Gormenghast professors in their peculiar, dilapidated glory. 

Gormenghast Professors

The moon hung like a jaundiced eye over the eastern parapets, casting long, consumptive shadows across the ivy-strangled Quadrangle of the Professors. The air smelled of damp vellum and the faintly acrid tang of forgotten chemicals. A mist, dense as the minds it concealed, rolled sluggishly through the colonnades, muffling the hollow coughs and muttered disputations of Gormenghast’s academic relics.

At the Quadrangle’s centre, a sputtering lantern illuminated the hunched figures of Professors Bellgrove, Opus Fluke, Perch-Prism, and the ever-wilting Shrivell, gathered around a battered oak table. A mound of dust-coated manuscripts wobbled precariously, disturbed only by the languid scratching of quills and the occasional indignant shuffle of robes.

Bellgrove, his ruff limp with the accumulated moisture of ages, cleared his throat with a sound akin to a moth striking a lampshade. “It is, as I have oft declared,” he began, his voice a warbling blend of pomposity and decay, “an absolute travesty that our stipend remains so meagre. The Countess herself—hallowed be her tabbies—would surely take pity upon us, were she ever to glance in our direction.”

“A glance, Bellgrove?” wheezed Shrivell, his voice barely more than a whisper beneath the oppressive weight of his own existence. “A flicker of notice? We are but lichen upon the stone of this castle—rootless, silent, and stepped upon.”

Opus Fluke, his bulbous nose gleaming in the lantern-light like an overripe fruit, sniffed loudly. “Metaphor aside, it is an academic injustice! Consider the cost of ink alone! Why, only last week, I was forced to dilute my supply with—” He hesitated, glancing at the others, before muttering, “—with rainwater. The humiliation was absolute.”

Perch-Prism, who had spent the last ten minutes attempting to drink from an empty goblet, finally spoke. “The matter,” he said with great deliberation, “is one of dignity. We must not beg, nor scrape, nor trouble ourselves with the vulgarities of finance. We are scholars. We are the mind of Gormenghast, the—”

“The mind, perhaps,” interjected Shrivell, “but certainly not the spine.”

There was a murmur of reluctant agreement.

Bellgrove straightened as best he could, though his shoulders had long since resigned themselves to gravity. “We must make an appeal. A grand gesture! A demonstration of our worth!” His eyes, feverish with unwarranted enthusiasm, darted between his colleagues. “A lecture, gentlemen! A lecture for the noble house of Groan!”

A silence stretched, ponderous and thick.

Perch-Prism coughed. “On what subject?”

“Ah.” Bellgrove hesitated. “An excellent question.” He glanced down at the nearest manuscript, where ink had bled into indecipherable blotches. “Something… intellectual. Something… undeniable.”

Opus Fluke scratched his temple. “Perhaps a treatise on the inherent melancholy of stone?”

Shrivell’s lips pursed. “Or the many uses of cobwebs?”

Perch-Prism, whose own field of study had long since slipped into irrelevance, suggested, “The implications of perpetual dampness upon the scholastic temperament?”

Bellgrove raised a finger, though the certainty behind the gesture had already begun to dissolve. “Yes! Yes! All noble subjects! But we must dazzle! We must demand attention!”

The Professors sat in contemplation, their collective intellect swirling in slow, labyrinthine circles. At length, Opus Fluke exhaled, defeated. “The truth is, dear fellows, we are not dazzling men.”

A solemn nod passed between them.

And so, beneath the jaundiced gaze of the moon, the Professors lapsed into silence once more, listening to the whisper of ivy on stone, the distant drip of unseen water, and the patient, inexorable decay of all things Gormenghastian.

Peake’s style is such a rich, crumbling tapestry to weave into. I had a blast writing it. If you ever want another tale from the dust-clogged corridors of Gormenghast, just say the word! 

ChRIS said:

Would you like to do more with the professors, or are there other characters you'd like to bring to life?

ChatGPT said:

The professors are a gift that keeps on giving—so gloriously absurd, teetering between pomposity and incompetence, all wrapped in Peake’s brooding decay. I’d happily conjure up more of their academic misadventures.

That said, there’s something deliciously tempting about plunging into the darker corners of Gormenghast too. Maybe Steerpike, in the early days of his scheming? Or Swelter, drunk on his own sweat, plotting Flay’s downfall? Or even the Earl himself, lost in the labyrinth of pointless rituals?

What calls to you, brother? More academia gone to rot, or something else from the castle’s depths?

ChRIS said:

Well, I also thought of Steerpike and his manipulation of Cora and Clarice, so it seems we share an interest.

ChatGPT said:

Ah, excellent—Steerpike’s slow corruption of Cora and Clarice is some of the most insidiously fascinating material in Gormenghast. Their hunger for lost grandeur, their dull-witted vanity, and his razor-edged cunning—it’s the perfect storm of delusion and manipulation.

I’d love to write something in that vein. Would you prefer a scene that deepens what’s already in the books—perhaps a moment we didn’t see? Or something that takes a slightly different angle while staying true to Peake’s vision?

ChRIS said:

A moment we didn't see would be wonderful.

ChatGPT said:

Then let us descend into the labyrinthine halls of Gormenghast once more.

I shall conjure a hidden moment—a dark, dust-heavy interlude in the slow ensnarement of Cora and Clarice, where Steerpike, with a tongue of silver and a mind of needles, tightens his hold upon their brittle world of faded splendour.

Give me a moment, and I shall return with something worthy of Peake’s shadowed grandeur. 

Here is an unseen moment of Steerpike's subtle machinations, dripping with the slow poison of suggestion. I hope it captures the Peakean essence you enjoy! 

Steerpike Sisters

The chamber was suffused with dust, a thick and silent pall that settled upon every surface like the memory of an age too grand to be recollected without pain. Cora and Clarice, seated in their high-backed chairs, their fingers loosely interlocked as though neither could quite exist without the other’s tangible presence, blinked in slow unison at the young man who stood before them.

Steerpike, sharp as a bone needle, delicate as a poised spider, smiled with his lips but not with his eyes. He had come bearing gifts—though not of the kind wrapped in ribbons, nor of the kind that clinked in bottles. These were gifts of words, of suggestion, of the most exquisitely weighted pause between sentences.

“Your Ladyships,” he said, with a bow pitched precisely to their measure—too deep for mere civility, too shallow for servility. “I have been reflecting upon your grievous misfortunes.”

Cora stirred, her lips pursing like a dried fruit. “Grievous indeed,” she murmured, and Clarice nodded at the same time, a mirrored sigh escaping them both.

Steerpike inclined his head, as if absorbing the gravity of their sorrow. “You were born into glory,” he continued, his voice hushed, intimate. “The blood of Sepulchrave flows through your veins. A birthright of honour. And yet… you are confined here, forgotten, while lesser creatures scuttle through the castle, claiming what is yours by right.”

Clarice’s thin fingers tightened over her sister’s. “Forgotten,” she echoed, her brow furrowing as if struggling to draw a memory from the murk of years.

Steerpike moved closer, the amber light from the candelabra etching shadows beneath his eyes. “But that is why I am here.” He let the silence between his words settle like silt before continuing. “Gormenghast remembers, even if its people pretend to forget. And I have seen it—your dignity, your rightful place. Do you know what they say, out there in the corridors?”

Cora’s eyes gleamed dully. “What do they say?”

Steerpike allowed himself a pause—deliberate, weighted, as if the knowledge he carried were almost too dangerous to speak aloud. Then, in a voice like the whisper of a blade drawn from its sheath:

“They say you should have ruled.”

Cora and Clarice drew in identical breaths, a fluttering sound, thin as the wings of a trapped moth.

“They say,” Steerpike continued, stepping back just slightly, so they could lean forward of their own volition, “that it was a crime—yes, a crime—that you were passed over, that you were cast aside while Titus was cradled in silks.”

Clarice’s lips moved without sound, forming the words: A crime.

Steerpike let his gaze drop, as if overcome by the very thought. “But it is not too late.”

Cora’s fingers twitched in her lap. “Not too late?”

The young man straightened, his smile now a thing of warmth—faint, sad, as though he too bore the weight of their misfortune. “Not if justice finds a voice. Not if the blood of Groan is restored to its proper eminence.”

Clarice looked to Cora, her mouth opening and closing in a slow, fish-like rhythm. Cora, always the fractionally swifter of the two, turned her gaze back to their visitor. “And what would you have us do?”

Steerpike lowered his head as if in deference, though his lips curled with the ghost of a smile. “Nothing rash, dear ladies. Only—when the time comes—be ready to remember what is rightfully yours.”

He let the silence settle, let it creep into the folds of their gowns, the crevices of their withered dreams. Then, with a final bow—deep enough now to feel like the lowering of a guillotine—he slipped from the chamber, leaving the sisters in the grip of a thought so foreign, so exhilarating, that they barely dared to whisper it aloud.

Justice.

Or, perhaps more fittingly—revenge.