Some time ago I came upon someone asking what would be a good introduction to the Arthurian cycle and the matter of Britain, and the replies mentioned that this book would be a good one that covered “most of it“.
Dear Reader, if you have been here me for a while you’ll know I am deeply lazy and love “most of it” works, so this piqued my interest.
I am glad it did cause this book was very good, and also extremely odd, but in a good way. Mild spoilers ahead.
The book was actually multiple shorter novels published separately and then bound together in a single volume, and while there is some unity, they read quite differently.
What’s in the books
First, let me mention this: did you see the 1960s “The Sword in the Stone” animated movie from Disney? The one where they turn into squirrels and flirt with other squirrels? The one with the magic battle where they turn into animals and such?
Well, that’s the first book in this saga. Almost all of the movie is from the book. This isn’t Disney making a crab jamaican, it’s 90% White’s imagination.
And the whole saga has all the same character the movie does! It has a ton of anachronisms, Merlyn is a time traveling savant with a bad memory, badgers and urchins (hedgehogs) discuss political systems, Guenevere and Lancelot argue as an old couple (I loved the fact that Lancelot and Arthur call her “Jenny“), the fearsome Questing Beast has to be nursed back into health after falling in love with two knights in a costume (a scene worthy of Laurel & Hardy!). And there is so much more beyond the comedy.
The second book contains the most harrowing unicorn hunt I have ever read (SPOILER!): the children of the Orkney clan (who will end up as the knights Gareth, Agravain, Gaheris, Gawain) saw their Mom going with various man looking for a unicorn in the forest, so the good children decide to hunt one to make her happy.
Except, they end up murdering it. And then decide to carry the corpse to their mother. But they are children and can’t obviously lift a horse, so they decide to hack at its neck to detach the head and then have to drag the poor thing until the castle, crying and commiserating themselves and the creature, finally having to prop the ruined thing on a chair. And their mother does not notice it at all. Until she does, and has the kids beaten.
Look, this single bit may be one of the best bit of literature I have read in my life. I will never forget it. I literally can see the kids doing this in my mind for how beautiful a rendering it was.
Book three is instead a proper cavalry book! With the quest for the grail, and the Lance/Jenny love story. And even here, White is brilliant, even tho he does not make it epic, it’s still great, and as he says “That (Thomas Malory‘s) way of telling the story can only be done once“.
And then we get Mordred’s betrayal and everything else, and we get to the last book, where once again Arthur joins up with his old teacher Merlyn, the badger, the urchin, the snake. And he has more adventures turning into birds, and debating the nature of humankind.
What’s actually in the book
The whole saga might be about Arthur’s (or Merlyn’s) effort to bring might under control, to see whether our species can be better than brutes. That is what Camelot is about! That’s why the round table exists!
The original books were published between 1938 and 1940, with the background of the rise of war and totalitarianism (Merlyn is staunchly individualistic and anarchic and never fails to criticize communism too, although he throws shade on democracy and capitalism too), and these topics come up again and again in the book, but particularly in the last book, written much later. But notice, they are always put in the context of the use of force, e.g. at one point Merlyn says
There was just such a man when I was young—an Austrian who invented a new way of life and convinced himself that he was the chap to make it work. He tried to impose his reformation by the sword, and plunged the civilized world into misery and chaos.
The saga, which opens with hope and a young Arthur which learns from animals, ends up in the same way, except this time he no longer has his life in front of him to fix the world, and has to actually abandon it.
The book has a certain sadness to it, because despite all their efforts, Arthur can’t fix the world, Lance can’t help but betray his king, and Jenny can’t help but end up alone (to leave her lover free of the choice between her and God!). All this while Elaine, Gawaine and all the rest of the cast suffer and die.
And yet, it is a book of hope. The conclusion has this bit
For I am inclined to believe that my beloved Arthur of the future is sitting at this very moment among his learned friends, in the Combination Room of the College of Life, and that they are thinking away in there for all they are worth, about the best means to help our curious species: and I for one hope that some day, when not
only England but the World has need of them, and when it is ready to listen to reason, if it ever is, they will issue from their rath in joy and power: and then, perhaps, they will give us happiness in the world once more and chivalry, and the old mediaeval blessing of certain simple people—who tried, at any rate, in their own small way, to still the ancient brutal dream of Attila the Hun.
(I will note en passant that, like maybe Arthur and many others, Attila’s son Csaba also lays in wait ready to come and help his people in time of need.)
Btw, this is an infinitely quoteable book. I am not aware of a good place for book quotes (wikiquotes sucks for this) beyond goodreads, so go read some there.
Conclusion
This was in no way the book I expected it to be. In almost every way, it was a better book than that. I enjoyed it as an audiobook from Naxos read by Jason Neville, which was a wonderful narrator in many, many morning walks.
So my judgement is clouded by his voice, and if you read the book in dead tree form it might be better, or worse.
And I missed a lot of details, because of that. Audiobooks are great but also terrible. I may re-read it in paper one day.
Vote 8/10: I hope I’ll have time to back to childish things when I’m older, like Arthur.