White, T.H.: The Once and Future King
The Once and Future King
Author: T. H. White
Genre: Classic Fantasy
Pages: 640
Final Thoughts: Huge disappointment.
Well this was my final required book for this term at SHU. I actually suggested it on the premise that I wanted to familiarize myself with earlier works of fantasy. And I hate to admit it, especially since so many people are so enamored of the book, but I really didn't like it. Normally, I can whip through three or four hundred pages in a reading day - this 640 pages took two full months to drag myself through.
I'll try to work progressively through the various aspects of the book.
Characterization seems as good a place to start as any. I didn't feel like I had a chance to connect with any characters, except perhaps Lancelot. Even then, I felt little sympathy for him, so what connection was developed was rather undesirable. I realize that a long-term liaison between a noble wife and a high-ranking member of the court probably wasn't all that uncommon back in the day, but I just can't see the people involved as tragic characters, worthy of pity or the admiration of what might have been, had extenuating circumstances not prevented it. Lancelot and Guenever got none of my sympathy.
I ought to mention Merlyn. He frustrated me, too, with no apparent system to either help or hinder his magic. Except that half his magic seems to be the result of his living backwards through time and having access to post-industrial-revolution knowledge of science. But then he seems to confuse the past and future, implying that he's living in both directions at once, which contradicts the whole idea. I felt like he was a joke - a bad joke, at that.
To be honest I was rather baffled by the fact that although this is supposed to be Arthur's story, I really felt like he was a peripheral character - even in the first book, which is commonly considered the section that gets into his head the most. Oddly enough, I did strangely understand his unwillingness to see the affair right under his nose. He wanted so much for it not to be happening that he couldn't bear to acknowledge it. As an indication of his unfailing desire to see the best in every person and situation, it is very fitting. However, it underscores what I think is the greatest weakness of the book, and that is the tremendous weakness of one of England's strongest, most beloved heroes. I'm not saying that portraying Arthur as a normal man doing the best he could with what he had is a bad thing, just that in the context of the rest of White's fantastical, larger-than-life telling it's inappropriate and out of place.
Maybe that's my central issue with the entire book. White seems to have a much different view than I do about what is appropriate, necessary, and in-context. I was reminded repeatedly of those college professors that everyone knows can be distracted from the real lesson plan with a few cleverly worded questions. Before long, the students learn all the topics that will trigger a half-hour diversion, especially when they know the professor will postpone homework assignments until the material is covered in class. I feel like this book is a one-sided transcription of the professor's rambling in what is supposed to be a course on Arthurian legend. White wanders off into whole chapters worth of self-indulgent material ranging from jousting technique to hawking to a ten-page treatise (yes, I counted) on how the "dark ages" weren't really very dark at all. From time to time, he prefaces this with an acknowledgment that the material to follow has nothing to do with the forward movement of the narrative. Other times, he merely ends with the equivalent of "but that has nothing to do with the story" and yanks the reader back on course without even a scene break. Several anecdotes are entirely pointless and inappropriate. I distinctly remember one, which involved Lancelot waking up in a borrowed tent with a naked man sitting on his left foot trimming his fingernails.
It was a distinct effort not to throw the book at that point.
To compound these problems, White peppers his third person narrative with conversational asides to the reader. These include contemporary references (at least, contemporary at the time of writing) and deliberate anachronisms which, again, seem entirely out of place in the context of the rest of the tone and style of the narration. I can't tell whether White is trying to lighten the sometimes very gloomy treatment of the material or using as a kind of world-building. Maybe he just didn't know any better, but it distracted me every time - which is a stretch, since the only section in which I found myself not paying attention to the passage of pages was when Lancelot went crazy. It's funny, because White has a knack for taking fifteen pages to say that Wart was hiding at the top of a tower, and he covered Lancelot's three years of insanity in about five pages.
On the other hand, I have to admit I did enjoy the two paragraph rip on Hitler. Unfortunately, five pages and two paragraphs is not enough to vindicate a 640-page novel.
In the end, the best thing I can say about the book's message is that good intentions are rarely enough to set things right in the world. White is incredibly heavy-handed about making sure his readers get the message, but I think I can bring myself to almost forgive that. Almost every character works with what they see as good intentions - some are clearly deluded, but they do the best they can understand. In the end, it's not just Arthur who fails, but everyone. In effect, it's a very grim picture of the human condition. What a relief that my personal beliefs acknowledge this and move on to offer hope, as I feel White's tome does not.
I will almost certainly never read this again. I started out with the belief that it had to get better as it went along, and by the time I realized it wouldn't I'd gotten through too much of it to bear the thought giving up. In terms of my own writing, I've got hundreds of pages of examples of what NOT to do. I think that's all that can be reasonably expected.
Book #18