I just couldn’t leave this book alone. So, since I haven’t written much in the last month or so, I thought I’d share
some other thoughts about “The Once and Future King” that didn’t make it into the primary review. Kind of like the deleted scenes they put on DVDs, only more worthwhile.
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“The Once and Future King” was published in 1958, but White’s intended ending didn’t make it into the final book. The manuscript for “The Book of Merlyn,” the true final chapter, was discovered in the archives of the Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin in 1975. How did it wind up in Texas, of all places? I have no clue, but they published it separately in 1977.
In it, we find an aged and tired King Arthur sitting in his tent on the eve of battle with his bastard son Mordred. He notices the flap of the tent move and there is Merlyn, his old tutor and friend. For White, this presents him with “the marvelous opportunity of bringing the wheel full circle, and ending on an animal note like the one I began on. This will turn my completed epic into a perfect fruit, ’rounded off and bright and done.’ “
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Much is being made these days of books being written for the Young Adult market having much sex and dysfunction in them. While I can’t speak to that, I can say that there was plenty of dysfunction to go around in medieval times, especially in this tale; Arthur sleeping with his half-sister, Queen Morgause; Lancelot and Guenever having an affair right under the king’s nose and him letting it go on to keep things peaceful with his best friend and wife. I guess humans haven’t changed much over the centuries.
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Speaking about books for young people, I can think of no better book for use in a classroom than “The Once and Future King.” I’m sure this novel could be easily read by any high school level class and it would serve their minds so much better than “Catcher in the Rye,” which I never thought much of anyway.
“The Once and Future King” would actually make them think about things. Things like the nature of man. politics and nationalism and ideologies, love, virtues, the lessons of history. On and on. Important things. This book could actually create some thoughtful human beings.
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As I said in the review, White used the English language like a master painter. Evidently when he got in a writing “groove” he couldn’t write slowly. It was full steam ahead. I can only imagine the job of his editors! Anyway, let me close this post with White’s description of love in medieval times:
For in those days love was ruled by a different convention to ours. In those days it was chivalrous, adult, long, religious, almost platonic. It was not a matter about which you could make accusations lightly. It was not, as we take it to be nowadays, begun and ended in a long week-end.
The man could write indeed!
