The Once and Future King - T. H. White

The Once and Future King (White, 1958)

If you valiantly soldier through Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur, you owe it to yourself to read this book not too long afterwards.  On the other hand, if you haven't read Malory, this book might come off as rather confusing... The Once and Future King is as much a loving exposition and valiant defense of Malory as it is a strikingly original fantasy classic.

This book is actually a collation of three short novels published in the 1930s, plus a concluding fourth written in the 1950s.  The first two novels, The Sword in the Stone and The Queen of Air and Darkness, are very original works focusing on the childhood and early youth of Arthur.  The Sword in the Stone practically defines the Disney animated film before it even existed as a cultural genre: whimsical tone, talking animals, dancing flatware, silly magic, and cheeky modern dialogue inserted in the mouths of ancient characters. It's no wonder Disney scooped it up... Yet this playfulness mixes with a slightly academic presentation - White dissects a joust (expanding on Malory's stock descriptive phrases), discourses on falconry, and works through serious thought on right and wrong during Merlyn's lessons for the Wart.

The whimsy (or even glibness) of Sword darkens for its sequel, which focuses on the childhood of Gawain and his brothers and the founding of the Round Table. The Ill-Made Knight (part three) takes its title from Malory (Le Chevalier Mal Fet) and is almost a straight retelling of all the Lancelot stories in Le Morte D'Arthur. Though this section is the least original, White masterfully shapes Malory's disjointed narrative into a coherent tale without doing much violence to it (other than making a few obviously sensible revisions, like merging the two Elaines). Finally, The Candle in the Wind retells (again with few if any revisions) the last days of the Table, up until the night before Arthur's final battle.  That last night, Arthur examines his life, trying to find out why his quest to bring peace ended with catastrophe.

As a whole, the novel deals with childhood, learning, love, friendship, faith, history, government, war and peace, and might versus right. White's characterizations of Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Mordred, Pellinore, and the rest evoke mirth, subtlety, empathy, and tragedy. Sweeping panoramas of history crop of here and there, revealing impressive scholarship. Philosophically, White tries for something grand at the end, some solution to war and violence in the world, but his conclusion falls flat for me - he digs deep into human nature, but his conclusion (eliminate wars by eliminating borders) completely ignores the human facts of sin, greed, and power he uses to undermine other proposed solutions. It still makes for a great read, and it shines a powerful light on the inner strength of its narrative source: Le Morte D'Arthur.

Arbitrary rating: 4 out of 5 loving expositions