Today I finished reading Steven King’s Finder’s Keepers. One of the things I underlined in my Kindle was when Pete says that Rothstein’s work changed his heart. I immediately thought of the book that had the biggest impact on me when I was a young reader, The Once and Future King, by T H White. The book didn’t change my heart, rather, it articulated truths about my core being that opened my heart and showed it to me.
The book made me laugh until I was in pain. And it made me cry for days. I could say so many things.
The Once and Future King, a World War II anti-war novel, is a compilation of five books.
The Sword and the Stone
The Ill Made Knight
The Queen of Air and Darkness
Candle in the Wind
The Book of Merlyn
The books were originally published in the late 1940s. The Book of Merlyn wasn’t published until the late 1970s. When The Book of Merlyn came out, I couldn’t believe it! There was MORE!
I’ve always thought that, if I were to be given one wish, I would wish that I could flip a switch that would allow me to read a book, see a movie, hear a piece of music for the first time again. I’ve read many books more than once, but I can never read them again for the first time. That’s what I want. I want to read a book for the first time the second time I read it…and the third. Maybe that’s not such a good thing. If I could do that, I might only read one book, thus denying myself the pleasure of so many wonderful storytellers.
I digressed. I squealed in the bookstore the day The Book of Merlyn came out. But, after reading it, I had a sense that something was wrong. The Book of Merlyn tells the story of Merlyn changing Arthur into animals so that he can learn the different ways creatures of the earth govern their societies. But some of the stories in the Book of Merlyn had already been told at the beginning, in The Sword and the Stone.
I discovered that parts of the work had been edited out because they were considered too controversial. So, when the greater work, The Once and Future King, was published in a single volume, The Book of Merlyn was removed. Some of the endearing animal stories from The Book of Merlyn were placed in The Sword and The Stone. And parts of the Sword and the Stone were removed, altogether.
I pieced this together in a T H White meandering. In the 1980s, when I was a poor college student, I walked past a collector’s bookstore on my way to the bus. Of course, I went in. Often. One day, I found a first edition of The Sword and the Stone. It still had the flawless original jacket. I think I got tears in my eyes and paid something like $12.00 for it. I know we’re supposed to put such treasures in glass-encased bookshelves, to be admired but not touched beyond a mild dusting. But the book vibrated in my hands, begging to be read. The book is dogeared now, but it’s still my treasure. Cringe if you must.
That’s where I discovered Madame Mimm! And the snake story appears in the original version, that same snake who has such an important role in the final chapters. So, once again, I had discovered MORE!
Since then, I have found separate publications of each of the collected works, mostly in libraries. Each one is worth a separate read. Each was edited for compilation in The Once and Future King.
White creates characters who spin their own stories, some so comical that I smile just thinking of them, some hapless but never passive, and some profoundly dark. He throws in little delightful bits, like Arthur speaking with a boy named Tom of Warwick. I didn’t pick up on it when I read The Once and Future King the first time. But I caught it in the musical version of Camelot, at the end, Richard Harris as Arthur, speaking to Tom of Warwick, sending him home to tell the tale of Camelot. Where once it never rained ‘til after sundown…sorry. Sir Thomas Malory was from Warwickshire.
The stories of Arthur came from all over, but the first writer that I know of to compile the stories of Arthur was Sir Thomas Malory in the 1200s. Malory wrote parts of Le Morte d’Arthur from prison. It was while I was reading Malory that a friend said to me, “If you like that, you have to read The Once and Future King.” I thoroughly enjoyed Malory. But I read a prose version of it by Keith Baines. Very readable. I love the battle scenes. They’re hysterically funny. A knight can be gashed from groin to sternum, steaming guts spilling to the ground, and he’ll pick them up, stuff them back into his belly, wrap himself up and return to battle.
Malory also included Tristram stories, which are a hoot. That guy was a total man-whore, who used the excuse, sorry, honey, I thought she was you. My favorite Tristram story is the one when he rescues one of the Elaines, I can’t remember which one, and Tristram wouldn’t know either. Elaine is being publicly boiled in a cauldron of oil for some transgression. Tristram pulls her naked, pink body from the boiling cauldron, saving her life and causing her to fall madly in love with him. When I say madly, I mean it. The lady turns out to be quite coocoo in later stories. But, after the oil incident, she was reportedly pink for days.
Most college students have been assigned the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I’ve found so many stories like that in second hand bookstores, and they’re like little pieces of candy.
Next that I know of is Tennison’s epic poem, Mort d’Arthur. Tennison’s work best told the story of The Lady of Shalot, which has been rendered beautifully in music and painting. I have a poster of the Waterhouse painting in my dining area.
White came along in the 1940s. Steinbeck wrote a compilation of some of the Arthurian stories. Mark Twain wrote humorous story of a time traveler, who goes back to Arthur’s time, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
I can’t think of any other prominent works about Arthur. These are just the things I’ve read. I suppose I could go back to before Malory. The further back I go, the closer I will get to writings made when the nitty gritty of the stories can be laid bare.
The stories depict a time in England when Roman Christians were in the process of stamping out paganism and replacing it with Christianity. The world is populated by witches, who are evil, whose ways must be vilified and annihilated. The greatest quest of the round table is to find the holy grail. Knights gain strength from their purity, each sin diminishes them. Only Galahad, who is without sin, is able to see the grail. If I go back to before Malory, will I find writings made when people believed these things? When pagan England was under siege of Roman ideology? When rituals focusing on the lyrical processes of Nature were going underground, to be replaced by a system whose god had martyred his own son. In place of herbal remedies and midwives, stone edifices were erected to house stories with a focus on white men, their deeds, their battles, their destruction. To find stories written during those times would be a prize.
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