The Once and Future King

The Once and Future King (1958) is a historical fantasy epic by TH White. The titular king is Arthur. A collection of five books, it traces Arthur’s childhood as the orphan Wart to his old age and death. Beginning as a whimsical children’s fantasy, Once and Future King gets progressively darker and more dramatic while maintaining steady humour and anachronisms. 

The Once and Future King includes five books individually published between 1938 and 1941:

1. The Sword in the Stone (made into a 1963 Disney film)
2. The Witch in the Wood
3. The Ill-made Knight
4. The Candle in the Wind
5. The Book of Merlyn

The last book reads more like a philosophical treatise where, through Merlyn, White explores the morality of violence and war. Publishers originally rejected this book which is why parts of it are in the Sword in the Stone. The Book of Merlyn did not reach shelves until 1977, 13 years after White’s death. 

White’s primary source was Le Morte D’Arthur (1485) by Thomas Malory. Once and Future King follows the same plot – the Round Table, Guinevere’s adultery and the final battle with Mordred – but gives greater insight into the minds and motivations of its principal characters. The Grail Quest is brushed over.

Arthur is a well-meaning and thoughtful but naive figure. He knows his wife is sleeping with his best friend but turns a blind eye because publically knowing would compel him to execute them both. He intends on bringing lasting peace to Britain by stifling the violent instincts of its lords and believes in following his own laws.

Merlyn is Arthur’s tutor. In this version of the Arthur story, Merlyn is an absent-minded, quirky magician who lives backwards. Merlyn knows the future – and references it often – but cannot understand where people come from. He tutors Arthur by transforming him into a series of animals to impart valuable lessons. His familiar is a talking owl called Archimedes. 

Guinevere is Arthur’s queen. She does not love Arthur but yearns for his knight Lancelot with whom she shares a tempestuous relationship. Guinevere has a touchy pride and is formidable when crossed. 

Lancelot, in this version of the story, is brilliant but ugly. He battles his insecurities and self-loathing by becoming the greatest knight alive. He loves both Arthur and Guinevere, but cannot stop himself from betraying his king. The strongest character in the book, Lancelot, is delightfully self-destructive. 

White places the Arthurian Myth in the 13th century. Arthur is a Norman King – his father Uther being analogous to William the Conqueror. The real historical kings of England are referred to in this world as legends and myths.

TH White was a troubled soul who lived alone. He was a closet homosexual and a self-admitted sadist who repressed violent urges his whole life. Rather than fight, he spent WW2 in a cabin in Ireland, where he wrote this book. White channels himself into the tortured figure of Lancelot and his futile attempts at doing the right thing.

To this day, critics hail Once and Future King as the greatest adaptation of the Arthur myth. Contrary to fantasies of the time, character supersedes worldbuilding, making it read more like a drama than an adventure novel. 

The blurb of my version reads:

This is the tale of King Arthur and his shining Camelot; of Merlyn and Owl and Guinevere; of beasts who talk and men who fly; of knights, wizardry and war.

It is the book of all things lost and wonderful and sad; the masterpiece of fantasy by which all others are judged.

Don Quixote

The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha by Miguel Cervantes is the most famous novel in the Spanish language. Miguel Cervantes (1547-1616) wrote two volumes, the first 1605 and the latter 1615. Widely cited as the first ‘modern novel’ for its satirical and self-referential approach, Don Quixote follows the misadventures of a mad knight and his simpleminded squire in post-medieval Spain. Hilarity and heartbreak ensue. 

Alonso Quixano is a middle-aged country gentleman in an unremarkable part of Spain. Retired, he spends his days reading chivalric romances – sensationalised tales of knights and damsels in vogue at the time. Then, after one book too many, an epiphany strikes. He should become a knight-errant too – and embark on a crusade to rid the world of evil.

Quixano adopts the more knightly name ‘Don Quixote’ and sets off on his quest, to the chagrin of his friends and family. The aged workhouse, Rocinante, is his steed and local peasant, Sancho Panza, his squire.

The problem is, Don Quixote lives in a world where knights-errant are a thing of the past. People brush off his old-fashioned speech and claims of virtue as curious at best and dangerous at worse. For fifty-two chapters, Don Quixote embarks on various misadventures that often do more harm than good. To the self-obsessed and gallant knight, inns are castles, prostitutes princesses and windmills giants. Panza, though recognising his master’s madness, follows anyway in the hopes of his promised governorship.

But while Don Quixote is insane, on matters unrelated to chivalry, he proves astute and wise. One of the book’s best passages is when he lectures Sancho Panza on the merits of a good governorship and the need to use proper speech. One does not ‘fart’ but ‘elucidates’. 

The first instalment of Don Quixote became so popular that one Alonso Fernandez de Avellandela wrote a fraudulent sequel. While claiming to be authentic, it was, in truth, a poor work of fan-fiction. Most notably, Avendella reduced Panza from a nuanced spewer of proverbs to a one-dimensional oaf.

Catching wind of the fraudulent sequel, Cervantes (right) published the ‘true’ second volume in 1615. While retaining the original’s humour, it takes on a more modern and philosophical tone. The first book exists in-universe and Don Quixote meets people who have read the same book as the reader. He even addresses the fraudulent Avellandella sequel. No work of fiction had taken this metafictional approach before, earning the book its ‘modern’ reputation. 

Twin ironies beset the story’s legacy. Cervantes satirised the chivalric romance, yet Don Quixote gave the genre a second wind. Cervantes despised Avellandella’s fake sequel, yet it is only known today because he addressed it.

Don Quixote is episodic. Each adventure is more or less self-contained, which is helpful because the book is over a thousand pages long. I read the Edith Grossman translation (2004) over a year – though apparently, each translation has its flavour and character. Of course, nothing can match the original Spanish. Across the Hispanophone world, students study Cervantes as English speakers do his contemporary, William Shakespeare. The English words quixotic and lothario, and the phrase ’tilting and windmills’ come from Cervantes.

Don Quixote is a marvellous work. Humour dates quickly, yet, Don Quixote is genuinely funny to this day – not an easy accomplishment for a book written four centuries ago. 

See Also:

• Santiago
• How California Got Its Name

The Epic of Gilgamesh

The Epic of Gilgamesh is the world’s oldest written story. First composed by the ancient Sumerians around 2,200 BC, it tells the tale of the mighty king Gilgamesh, his friend Enkidu and their adventures in a mythical Bronze Age world.

The Epic comprises of eleven stone tablets found in modern-day Iraq. Like the Greek Iliad and the Hindu Maharabatha, it is an epic poem that rhymed and flowed in its original languages. It would have been read aloud to large audiences and likely draws on older oral tradition. Some of the tablets are damaged, for which scholars fill in the blanks with later Akkadian and Babylonian transcriptions. Archetypes like the hero’s journey, trickster serpent, femme-fatale, wildman and Great Flood originate in the Epic. The original author is unknown.

I listened to John Harris’s prose rendition in audio. His translation is succinct and dramatic while retaining the poetry of the original narrative and delivered with a warm and clear narration.

Gilgamesh is the king of the city of Uruk. One-third human and two-thirds god, his physical strength is rivalled only by his tyranny. Gilgamesh is a stalwart warrior and a stern king, but his oppressive rule and habit of sleeping with brides on their wedding night angers his subjects. Not daring to oppose him, the people of Uruk turn instead to the gods. To quell Gilgamesh’s hubris they create his equal – the wildman Enkidu. After first clashing, Gilgamesh and Enkidu become inseparable. Gilgamesh tames his new friend’s wilder instincts and Enkidu helps him become a better king. They set off to slay the monster Humbaba in the distant Forest of Cedars.

Main characters:

• Gilgamesh (right), king of Uruk
• Enkidu (left), the wildman.
• Shamhat, a temple prostitute
• Anu, king of the gods
• Shamash, god of the sun
• Ishtar, goddess of love and war
• Siduri, tavern-keeper at the end of the world
• Urshanabi, a ferryman and companion to Gilgamesh
• Utnapishtim, a Noah like figure who lives at the ends of the earth

Gilgamesh proves his worth by challenging the forces of the world. The Epic is framed as such:

1. Man vs man: Gilgamesh’s conflict with Enkidu
2. Man vs nature: Gilgamesh challenges Humbaba the Terrible
3. Man vs god: Gilgamesh incurs the wrath of Ishtar and the Bull of Heaven
4. Man vs death: Gilgamesh wanders the earth in search of immortality

Tablet Eleven recounts the Babylonian Flood Myth, from which the Biblical story is derived.

Table Twelve, which was written later in Akkadian, is inconsistent with the story and is seldom included in retellings.

A dominant theme in the Epic of Gilgamesh concerns death and mortality. When Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh mourns for seven days and does not accept his death until a worm crawls out from his dead friend’s nose. Overcome with an existential horror that the same fate awaits him, Gilgamesh abandons his crown and roams the ‘open country’ on a quest for immortality.

Before taking him to the immortal Utnapishtim, the alewife Siduri grants him this wisdom:

 “What you want you cannot have. You will not find a life that does not die. When mankind was created by the gods they kept undying life for themselves, they gave death to man.

So Gilgamesh, fill your stomach, enjoy yourself, take pleasure every day and every night in every way you can, play, dance, refresh yourselves with baths. Wash your hair, put on clean clothes, take your child’s hand in yours and take your wife on your lap. That is life.”

After failing his final quest Gilgamesh returns to Uruk and accepts what cannot change. He emerges a better man for it.

See Also:

• The Historical Babylon

Books I Read in 2018

Aside from blogging more, my goal was to watch less TV and read more books in 2018. The books are listed by the date I finished reading them.  Some I have done separate posts on, others I have not.

January

• Ernest Hemingway – For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). Hemingway at his best. Gritty and insightful.  5/5

February

• Maitland Edey – Lost World of the Aegean (1976). The archaeology of the Ancient Minoans and Early Greeks. Dated but informative. 3/5

April

• Robert Bly – Iron John (1990). An allegorical interpretation of an old fairy tale suggesting what the ancient cultures can teach modern man. 3/5

May

• Aldous Huxley – Island (1962). The utopia to Brave New World’s dystopia. 4/5

June

• Barbara Kingsolver – The Poisonwood Bible (1998).  A family saga of four girls and their missionary father in the Congo.  5/5
• Thomas Sowell – Ethnic America (1981). Details the history and experiences of 11 American immigrant groups. Good on facts and figures, less so on future projections. 4/5

July

• Paul M Handley – The King Never Smiles (2006).  A critical analysis of the modern Thai monarchy. Banned in Thailand. 5/5

August

• Roland Tye – Weekender (2016). Five very different stories about five very different people one weekend in Edinburgh. The connection is revealed only at the very end. 5/5
• JD Salinger – Catcher in the Rye (1951). Great American Novel about a rebellious teenager in the late ’40s. 5/5

September

•  Ian Morris – The Greeks: History, Culture and Society (2010). This old textbook is a good survey of ancient Greece if a little dry. 3/5

October

• Frederick Forsythe – the Dogs of War (1974). A business magnate hires a team of mercenaries to stage a coup in a fictional African country. Good, but not as good as Day of the Jackal. 3/5

December

• Jared Diamond – Guns Germs and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies (1997). Explains why civilization arose in some parts of the world and not others. An excellent read for history and anthropology buffs. 5/5
• Frederick Forsythe – Day of the Jackal (1971). About an assassin hired to kill the president of France and the men chasing him. 4/5

See Also:

• Books I Read in 2019

The Dubliners – Raglan Road

 

‘Raglan Road’ was first written as a poem by Patrick Kavanagh in 1946. He dedicated it to Hilda Moriarty, a university student Kavanagh met, and pursued a brief affair with, on Raglan Road in Dublin. After she criticised his poetic skills for their dreary subject matter, Kavanagh promised he would immortalise her in his poems.

Luke Kelly of the Irish folk group The Dubliners put Kavanagh’s poem to music and in 1986. It has since become a well-known addition to the Irish folk tradition. I love the mournful tune and how Kelly delivers. Frances Black sang it at the funeral of IRA leader cum North Irish first minister Martin McGuinness in 2017.  It also features on Martin McDonagh’s ‘In Bruges’ (2008) – one of my favourite films.

The lyrics tell the tale of a man who falls in love with a woman on Raglan Road. He knows the relationship will hurt him, but goes in anyway. Man, I can relate.

Lyrics:

On Raglan Road on an autumn day,
I saw her first and knew
That her dark hair would weave a snare
That I might one day rue
I saw the danger, and I passed
Along the enchanted way
And I said let grief be a fallen leaf
At the dawning of the day.

On Grafton Street in November,
We tripped lightly along the ledge
Of a deep ravine where can be seen
The worth of passions pledged.
The Queen of Hearts still making tarts
And I not making hay,
Oh I loved too much and by such by such
Is happiness thrown away.

I gave her gifts of the mind
I gave her the secret sign
That’s known to the artists who have known
The true gods of sound and stone
And word and tint without stint
I gave her poems to say
With her own name there and her own dark hair
Like clouds over fields of May.

On a quiet street where old ghosts meet,
I see her walking now
Away from me so hurriedly,
My reason must allow
That I have loved, not as I should
A creature made of clay
When the angel woos the clay, he’ll lose
His wings at the dawn of day.

The Catcher in the Rye

Disclaimer: No spoilers, but this review will discuss the premise and themes of the book. If you wish to go in blind, as I did, I suggest not reading.

The Catcher in the Rye is the quintessential book on teenage angst. Written by JD Salinger and published in 1951, this Great American Novel follows the escapades of antihero Holden Caulfield in New York City over three days.

It is notable for:

• selling over 65 million copies
• being the most censored book in American schools and libraries from 1961-1982
• the reclusive nature of its author
• association with the murder of John Lennon

Catcher was ahead of its time. Nonconformist icon Holden Caulfield foreshadowed the likes of James Dean, rock ‘n roll and the adolescent backlash against conservative 1950s American society. Not surprisingly this is the era the book’s popularity exploded.

Holden Caulfield narrates.  An intelligent but troubled rich kid, Holden is expelled from his fourth school after flunking all his subjects but English.  Not expected home by his parents until Wednesday he packs his bags heads to New York.

Caulfield talks in the New York vernacular of the late ‘40s, back when the often invoked ‘goddamn’ and ‘chrissake’, were considered highly offensive. It is one of the first novels to use the f word in print; moral guardians of the time lampooned it accordingly.

Other words in Holden’s lexicon:

• Sexy – In 1940s lingo this meant ‘horny’, not sexually attractive.
• Crumby – Dirty/unpleasant
• Phony – Holden’s favourite word. Fake, disingenuous and hypocritical.

On the surface the Catcher in the Rye is a coming of age story. The problem is Holden doesn’t want to grow up. Adulthood, as far as he can see, is as corrupt and materialistic as it is morally insolvent and, above all, phony. Even so, Holden lies, chain smokes, drinks and thinks of sex constantly. Only children are truly innocent.

Despite his individualist bent, however, Holden still craves human companionship. Throughout the book he stumbles his way through interactions with a variety of characters which range from hilarious to downright depressive. There is subtext aplenty, not all of which is obvious on first reading.

The Catcher in the Rye is a favorite of Bill Gates, Woody Allen, George HW Bush and, most notoriously, Mark Chapman. The Beatle killer was obsessed by the book, and was found reading it moments after he shot John Lennon dead in 1980.

The Catcher in the Rye is still a polarising book. Your perception depends on the stage in life in which you read it. Fans tend to either identify with Holden, or at least appreciate the style and literary significance.  Detractors dislike the protagonist, his vernacular, or were forced to read it at school.

JD Salinger admitted in 1953 his “boyhood was very much the same as that of the boy in the book.” He too grew up in Manhattan and wrote early drafts while serving in WW2. At the peak of his success Salinger withdrew from the public eye and gave his last interview in 1965. He wrote 15 novels over the following decades, all of them unpublished.

Catcher is the bestselling novel never adapted into a film. Though Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson and Leonardo Dicaprio all campaigned for the role of Holden Caulfield it was not to be. Salinger guarded the book’s rights viciously on the assertion its subjective voice could only work in print. Though the author died in 2010, rights to the book remain firmly in Salinger’s estate – The Catcher in the Rye will not enter the public domain until 2080.

Barbara Kingsolver – The Poisonwood Bible

The Poisonwood Bible (1998) is a novel by American author Barbara Kingsolver.  Spanning thirty years, it follows the trials and tribulations of a Baptist missionary family who relocate from small town Georgia to the heart of the Belgian Congo.

The Price Family are woefully ignorant. Their Betty Crocker cake mixes fail in the tropical climate and, after dismissing the housekeeper’s advice to make mounds of earth around their vegetable patch, they find it flooded the next day.

Reverend Nathan Price, the fanatical family patriarch, only alienates his new home when he insists on baptising her people in the Kwilu river.  For the neighbours it is madness; everyone knows the river is infested with crocodiles. When Reverend Price attempts to preach in the local tongue he proclaims Tata Jesus is bangala! Bangala means lord, but in the tonal Kikongo language, slight inflection is the difference between lord and poisonwood.

The story is told in first person, from the perspective of the Price women:

• Rachel, 15 at the start is a typical 1950s American teenager and the most out of place in their new home. Most concerned with sleepovers, a pleasant sweet 16, and getting a boyfriend, she hates life in the Congo and is the least sympathetic to the plight of those around her.
• Leah, 14 years old is an intelligent and outspoken tomboy who walks in her father’s shadow like a loyal dog. Playing the story’s most central role, Leah gets the most chapters. She was my favorite character.
• Adah, Leah’s younger twin. A mishap in the womb left her paralysed on the right side of her body, for which she blames Leah. Adah, although not much of a talker, is fiercely introspective. She enjoys reading backwards and writing palindromes.
• Ruth May, at 5 years old in the beginning of the story, is far younger than her sisters. Her narration offers a more innocent and open minded perspective on life in the Congo. Typical of younger children, she is the most adept at picking up new languages.
• Orleana Price, the mother of the girls, narrates the start of each chapter from the future, reflecting on past events with an air of guilt. Conversely the girls’ narration is current, and often speaks in the present tense.

Kingsolver’s style goes against conventional creative writing wisdom. The girls show and don’t tell, simply recounting events as one would to a friend without vividly painting the scene. Their narration is highly subjective, emotive and distinct. By the end of the book all five of the girls are living lives as  different from one another’s as their personalities.

The Poisonwood Bible was intended as an allegory. Beginning in 1959, it is set in a turbulent time in the country that suffered the most from colonialism. Figures like Patrice Lamumba, Eisenhower and Mobutu all play their role. Though they never meet the story’s characters, their actions shape their world all the same.

The Poisonwood Bible may be just another ‘white person in Africa novel’, but is anything but a white savior narrative. It is a little too bleak and realistic, if anything.

As a girl Kingsolver lived a year in Kinshasa, Congo, though  her parents were doctors, not missionaries. As someone who writes about places she has lived, Kingsolver could only paint the Congo from the eyes of outsiders.

For research, Kingsolver drew on African literature, history books, 1950s American magazines, the King James Bible and her own experiences. Being a critic of Mobutu, the Congo’s then dictator, she was limited to visiting neighbouring countries for research.

The Poisonwood Bible took Kingsolver ten years to write.  It was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1999, showcased on Oprah’s book club and and won the Boueke Prize in 2000.

“Don’t try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you’re good, bad things can still happen. And if you’re bad, you can still be lucky.”

For Whom the Bell Tolls

‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ is Ernest Hemingway’s third and best-selling novel. It tells the story of a dynamiter tasked with destroying a bridge in the Spanish Civil War.

Drawing from Hemingway’s time as a journalist in that conflict, ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ deals with the themes of death, duty, camaraderie and war. The cliché of ‘the earth moving’ during intercourse derives from this book.

I picked a hardback copy in a rushed visit to a Thai bookstore in 2017, a couple hours before a plane flight. It was my introduction to Hemingway, and I was not disappointed.

The title is drawn from John Donne, a 17^th century English poet. In Donne’s time church bells tolled when someone had died:

‘No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe; every man
is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine;
if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe
is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as
well as if a Manor of thy friends or of thine
owne were; any mans death diminishes me,
because I am involved in Mankinde;
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.’

His communist superiors describe Robert Jordan ‘a young American of slight political development but a great way with the Spaniards and a fine partisan record.” Jordan has lived in Spain for a decade and dreams of returning to his native Montana to teach the language at university. He fights not for ideological reasons like his peers, but a sense of duty to his adopted home and its people.

Jordan is a demolitionist with the International Brigades, the antifascist volunteer force of Wily Brandt and George Orwell. At the start he is ordered to join a Republican partisan band in the Sierra Guararamma. When the Republican army launches its attack on Segovia he will detonate a bridge and thwart the fascist retreat.

The novel takes place over three nights and four days. For much of the book, Jordan wrestles with his mortality. Pablo, the partisan leader, is the only one to recognise the mission’s danger and this strikes tension between the two.  Bonding with the lively guerrillas and falling for the innocent yet long suffering Maria, in four days Jordan learns there is more to life than duty.

The book’s dialogue is written to give the impression it has been translated. Italicised Spanish phrases pepper the chapters and the characters address one another as ‘thou’ and ‘thee’ to represent their rural, old fashioned dialect. Whilst this has drawn criticism, my personal complaint is the handling of curse words. Phrases like ‘mucked off’ and ‘go and obscenity thyself’ replace expletives. It is frustrating, but can be overlooked.

The story reflects the dangers of doctrinal belief. Horrendous atrocities on both sides are accounted, including a rural township’s humiliating anti-fascist purge and the murder of a Republican mayor and his family by Falangist troops. So too is the bone wrenchingly frustrating suspicion and mistrust of the Communist leadership.

Some of the characters are based on real people.

• Robert Jordan is a combination of Hemingway’s friend Robert Merriman, who fought in Spain, and himself.
• Karkov, ‘the smartest man I knew’ writes for the Soviet newspaper and mentors Jordan. He is based on Hemingway’s friend Mikhail Kolstov, whom Stalin purged in 1939.
• Andre Marty, the head of the International Brigades who appears near the end, was a historical figure.

Hemingway described ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ as ‘the most important thing I’ve ever done’. It would have won a Pulitzer Prize were it not for Columbia University president and fascist sympathiser Nicholas Murray Butler. He vetoed and no prize was awarded for 1941.