Meredith > Recent Status Updates

I believe there is reason to be deeply concerned whenever an agent or
representative allows personal morality to override a rational analysis favoring negotiation—even with a devil.

Because there may be many options that might serve these core interests, framing the conflict in terms of core concerns (rather than positions) will give you more flexibility when you get to the later steps.

When individuals are in conflict, they often think in terms of
“positions”—what they want or demand...These are positions, not
interests. Interests are the fundamental needs and concerns
that lie underneath those positions. There is only one way to
meet a position, but often many ways to serve an interest.

In helping clients work through such conflicts, I have found that wise decision-making poses three different challenges. The first is to avoid emotional traps that can lead to hasty and knee-jerk decisions.

After helping to resolve many business and family disputes over the years, I have come to believe that for most of us, confronting an enemy poses exceptional negotiation challenges. When I say “enemy,” I do not mean just an ordinary competitor; I mean someone who has deeply wronged us and poses a serious threat to our well-being—someone we may even see as evil.

“While he and I were cordially negotiating, he was already
stabbing me in the back,” you say.
“Oh yeah, they do that—use negotiations as a cover for a
sneak attack,” observes Fred, who fancies himself something of
a history buff. “It’s the story of Pearl Harbor.”

Nannie's head was old with lines and sunken skin, with the red rims of her eyes and the puckers of her mouth. A vacant anatomical ancientry.

Keda's oldness was the work of fate, alchemy. An occult agedness. A transparent darkness. A broken and mysterious grove. A tragedy, a glory, a decay.

These three were beings at the shadowy corner waited on. Nanie was 69, Keda was 22, Titus was 12 days old.

Titus watched Keda's face with his violet eyes, his grotesque little features...there was the history of man in his face. A fragment from the enormous rock of mankind. A leaf from the forest of man's passion and man's knowledge and man's pain. that was the ancientness of Titus.

The only life in the room lay in the throats of the flowers

Each stride was a gesture, a probing. It was a kind of downward, inward search, as though he knew that what was important for him, what he really understood and cared for, was below him. It was in the earth - the earth

Pentecost turned his back upon the castle and made his way upon the cedars, leaving in his wake upon the glittering blotches of the dew, black imprints of feet that turned inwards. As he walked it seemed that he was moving into the earth.

Only their children's had radiance, their eyes, the sheen on their hair, and in another way, their movements and their voices. Bright with a kind of unnatural brightness. It was not the wholesome lustre of a free flame, but of the hectic radiance that the sheet-lightning gives suddenly to limbs of trees at midnight; of sudden flares in the darkness, of a fragment that is lit by torchlight into a spectre

And yet they did not die as might be imagined, any earlier than is normal. On the contrary, from the long line of ancient faces at the three tales nearest the great wall, it might be imagined that their longevity was abnormal.

^Referencing the above quote. There is exposition in this book, but it takes about 90 pages to get it

These then, Lord Sepulchrave, the Countess Gertrude, Fuchsia their eldest child, Doctor Prunesquallor, Mr. Rottcodd, Flay, Swelter, Nannie Slagg, Steerpike and Sourdust, have been discovered at their pursuits on the day of the advent, and have perhaps indicated the atmosphere into which it was the lot of Titus to be born.

This was the loft which was for Fuchsia a very secret place, a kind of pagan chapel, an eyrie, a citadel, a kingdom never mentioned, for that would have been a breach of faith - a kind of blasphemy.

Fuchsia never failed to return the bed to its position as a precaution against her sanctum being invaded. It was unnecessary, for no one saving Mrs. Slagg ever entered her bedroom and the old nurse in any case could never have maneuvered her way up the hundred or so narrow, darkened steps that gave eventually on the attic, which since the earliest days Fuchsia could remember had been for her a world undesecrate.

Had he been of fair skin, had his eyes been green, blue or brown instead of black, then, automatically another set or archaic regulations would have appeared this morning on the breakfast table. This complex system was understood in its entirety only by Sourdust - the technicalities demanding the devotion of a lifetime, though the sacred spirit of tradition implied by the daily manifestations was understood by all.

A great tear rolled down Sourdust's cheek threading its way over the crumpled surface...By not so much as the faintest sign or movement had Sourdust suggested that he was in a state of emotional stress. Nor was he, ever, save that at moments of reflection upon matters connected with the traditions of the Castle, it so happened that great tears emerged from the shadows beneath his brow.

Lord Groan's menu was otherwise. As he sat, this morning, in his high-backed chair he saw before him - through a haze of melancholia that filmed his brain and sickened his heart robbing it of power and his limbs of health - he saw before him a snow white tablecloth

How could he love this place? He was a part of it. He could not imagine a world outside it: and the idea of loving Gormenghast would have shocked him. To have asked him of his feelings for his hereditary home would be like asking a man what his feelings were towards his own hand or his own throat.

Imagery, epistrophe, occasionally onomatopoeia ? Not sure

little things, describing the wax from the candle as drip, drip, dripping

In Vivia, Vivia's descent into the cave

down

down

down

Tanith Lee said Mervyn Peake was an influence and I can already see it with Vivia and some of her short stories such as Old Flame

She uses similar literary devices

'Slagg,' said the Countess, 'go away ! I would like to see the boy when he is six. Find a wet nurse from the Outer Dwellings. Make him green dresses from the velvet curtains. Take this gold ring of mine. Fix a chain to it. Let him wear it around his wry little neck. Call him Titus. Go away and leave the door six inches open.'

The ivy had climbed through it from the outside and had begun to send its tendrils down the inner wall itself and over the crimson wallpaper. Although this ivy had choked out what little light might have trickled into the room, it was not strong enough to prevent the birds from finding a way through and from visiting Lady Gertrude at any hour of night or day.

'That's enough, that's enough, that's enough !'

A magpie moving sideways up & down her left forearm, which lay supine upon the bedclothes, pecked intermittently at a heap of grain which lay in the palm of her hand. On her shoulders sat a stonecat, & a huge raven which was asleep. The bed-rail boasted two starlings, a missel-thrush and a small owl. Every now and then a bird would appear between the bars of a small high window which let in less than no light.