The Book of White: Reading T.H. White’s The Once and Future King
Most literary folk vaguely know the story of King Arthur: that he
pulled a sword from the stone to become king of England...that the wizard,
Merlin, helped him achieve power through various mystical lessons...that his
wife, Guenevere, fell in love with the greatest knight in the land, Arthur’s
right-hand man, Lancelot du Lac...that Arthur was seduced by his half-sister,
Morgan le Fay, to give birth to Mordred, who became his implacable foe...and so
on. Yet no two stories of Arthur agree
on all the specifics, so whether you read Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, the
anonymous The Quest for the Holy Grail, Chretien de Troyes’ Romances, or
the Lays of Marie de France, you get a very different Arthur, Guenever, and
Lancelot. That’s why T.H. White’s
version of the legend is so welcome, since he takes bits and pieces from each
and translates them from his own perspective to fit his own philosophy. Simply put, the four books of The Once
and Future King (or five, if you count the suppressed The Book of Merlyn)
are one of the greatest fantasy epics ever written, and certainly among the
most original. There’s nothing quite
like it in literature, though it shares a satirical heritage with Swift’s Gulliver’s
Travels and a sense of the fantastic and absurd with Nikolai Gogol. Those expecting a grim, fantasy epic in the
vein of Tolkein or Marion Zimmer Bradley will be somewhat disappointed. However, like all books, if you approach it
on its own terms, and appreciate it as a wholly unique take on the Arthurian
epic, you’ll be surprised, confused, delighted, and amazed by White’s achievement.
