Tag Archive: Steerpike


What makes Rabbit run

Filed under: Books, Fiction, Gender — Leave a comment
February 11, 2016

RABBIT, RUN by John Updike (Penguin Books, First published, 1971)

235845Powerful works of fiction are not dependent on the nobility or likability of the characters.

Two of my favorite fictional creationd are Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov from Crime And Punishment and Mervyn Peake’s Steerpike from the Gormenghast trilogy. Each are prime examples of men behaving badly motivated by a bitter and twisted ambition.  Their ruthless and murderous actions are deplorable but they are both fascinatingly complex characters.

Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom is in a wholly different kettle of fish. There is nothing endearing about him and the very banality of his failings mean that he barely qualifies as an anti-hero. He is not a killer, nor does he crave power but his selfishness, random lustfulness and frustration are ugly traits that infect the lives around him.

A one time basketball star, he is unable to come to terms with a humdrum life with a dead-end job and a dismal marriage. He wants out but has nowhere to run.

Updike’s cynical depiction of the human condition is so absolute that we are pitched into the mire of Rabbit’s squallid affairs without a moral compass. We are not required to condone or condemn his actions nor to sympathize when he hits rock bottom to the point that : “He feels underwater, caught in chains of transparent slime, ghosts of the urgent ejaculations he has spat into the mild bodies of women”. Continue reading →

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WHAT MAKES HOSING FUN?

Filed under: Music, Poetry — 7 Comments
June 12, 2009

What makes hosing more fun?   Is it:


(A) Thoughts of death

(B) A good hosepipe        or

(c) Jack Daniels

If you answered (A) or (C) then you already understand the words to Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’s song ‘Death To Everyone’ where he sings:

“Death to everyone is gonna come /And it makes hosing much more fun”.

This lyric has always mystified me.

What exactly is ‘hosing’ in this context?

Turning, as you do, to Google I found that these words had been submitted to Word magazine as an example of rubbish lyrics.

Coincidentally, the author called himself ‘Steerpike’ – which is my alias on Last.Fm and E-music and would have been on WordPress too if someone hadn’t beaten me to it.

This rival Steerpike assumed that the lines were nonsense and that the Bonnie ‘Prince’ was guilty of making it up as he went along. The replies to his post reveal another story.

‘Hosing’ is, to put it bluntly,  another word for ‘fucking’!

Turning to the Urban Dictionary for further illumination, the word is defined as “the act of fornication with no regard for the pleasure of the recipient. Usually accompanied by alcohol and characterized by frenetic intensity”.

Apparently Jack Daniels is often the alcohol frequently chosen to assist this activity. The dictionary defines ‘Jack Daniels hosing’ as fucking which is “often punctuated by slurred expletives, fleeting visions of naked ex-lovers, and a grippng inability to recall the first name of the person with whom you are coupling”.

So it seems Will Oldham aka Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy knew what he was singing all along and as the corrected Steerpike sagely observed “washing the car will never be the same again”.

If by any chance you don’t know this amazing song, it can be found on BPB’s masterpiece ‘I See A Darkness’ & here it is from YouTube:



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STEERPIKE

Filed under: Books, Fiction — 2 Comments
December 21, 2007

Steerpike is one of the most fascinating fictional creations and one of my personal favourites – I chose the name as my alter ego on Last.fm and E-music (I wanted to use it on WordPress too but somebody beat me to it).

The character appears in Mervyn Peake’s Titus trilogy being first introduced in Titus Groan (1946) and featuring prominantly in the second novel entitled Gormenghast (1950). The trilogy concluded with Titus Alone in 1959.

The novels are a rich combination of Dickensian satire and surreal Gothic fantasy. The quest for freedom is a key theme as followed principally through the heir apparent Titus Groan, wild child Lady Fuschia and an outsider employed as a kitchen boy who is Steerpike.

Steerpike personifies a kind of Nietzchian will to power in his goal of taking over the influential post as Master of Ritual and essentially control the lives of all those in the castle . He plots the downfall of the hierarchy with a single mindedness which ultimately becomes wildly obsessive and recklessly self destructive.

He is initially the most human of the many diverse characters in the novel but gradually becomes crueller and ruthlessly manipulative as the story progresses. He is a brilliantly conceived anti-hero and and the novels form a masterly trilogy. The second volume is by far the best and where all the key action happens.

Mervyn Peake (1911 – 1968) was also an accomplished and under appreciated artist and poet. He illustrated the Titus books himself and many other works of children’s literature including Alice In Wonderland.

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