The Once and Future King by T.H. White
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My dad is incredibly well-read. When I'm at my parents' house, I enjoy browsing through his book collection, where I find all kinds of great stuff: works by the church fathers and the Reformers, theology, church history, historical biography, philosophy, science fiction, novels, anthologies of ancient and modern literature, etc. And amazingly, my dad has actually read most of these books.

Last winter, Dad insisted that I borrow T. H. White's novel The Once and Future King, which he had just finished, but I had never read. So I took it. In the next few weeks, I started to dip into the book here and there, but I couldn't really get off the ground with it. I was in the midst of a busy semester; I had a billion papers to grade; and of course, most importantly, I was (am) a husband and father. Over the weeks, and then months, Dad kept asking me about my progress. Unfortunately, I wasn't making much.

But this summer, I have more time, and so, at his insistence that I read the book, I started over so that I could really capture the experience. As I re-read the first few chapters of the book and then pressed on into new territory, I had no idea how good this book would get. What began as a duty turned into a delight, into an unforgettable reading experience. I feel that this is a book that I could re-read and reflect on for the rest of my days. I understand now why Dad wanted so badly for me to read it.

In The Once and Future King, T. H. White retells the legend of King Arthur, Merlyn, and the Knights of the Round Table. He writes with a full awareness of what Malory, Spenser, Tennyson, and others have written. But like the other tellers of Arthurian tales, White brings so much more to the story than the Arthur myth. This is a book about life, about England, about humanity itself.

The book is actually a collection of four books White had published separately. First is The Sword in the Stone. I was familiar with the old Disney movie made from this work, but of course, the book is much better. White gives the story a light, innocent tone, punctuated with moments that are funny (there's a hilarious recounting of a boar hunt) and moments full of wonder and beauty (I loved the descriptive passage where the boy Arthur, or "Wart," lost one night in the forest, encounters a knight in full armor in the moonlight). The tone is so light because this section portrays Arthur as a boy, as someone who doesn't know who he is. Wart's adventures with his tutor Merlyn and with Kay, King Pellinore, Robin Wood, and the other characters are imaginative and episodic, and they emphasize his innocence.

The second book, The Queen of Air and Darkness, begins with a complete change of tone. Arthur has become the king, and he is now responsible for a kingdom. He also has enemies who do not want him to reign, and whom he must conquer. This book focuses on Arthur's Celtic relatives known as the Orkney clan, which include Agravaine, Gawaine, Gareth, Gaheris, and their negligent witch-mother, Morgause, who happens to be Arthur's half-sister. In this part of the story, the young man Arthur loses his innocence, and a chain of dark events is set in motion that will eventually lead to Camelot's undoing.

The third book is The Ill-Made Knight. It focuses on Lancelot's growth from an innocent boy gifted with weaponry to a loyal knight who becomes the king's best friend. Then, in spite of Lancelot's attempts to resist temptation, he becomes Queen Guenevere's illicit lover. White's portrayal of Lancelot is amazingly complex, and I found this to be the best of the three books. The book depicts evil, but the moral tone is appropriate.

The last book, The Candle in the Wind, is the tragic end of the story. What happens to Arthur, Guenevere, Lancelot, and Gawaine and his brothers is partly because of the treachery of Arthur's son Mordred, whom White portrays masterfully, but it is also because of the choices that Arthur, Lancelot, and Guenevere have made. And each of them realizes this in the end.

As I said before, this book isn't merely about Arthurian legend. It's about what it means to be human. It's about growing up, losing our innocence, gaining bitter experience, and never being able to go back to what we once had. It's about the futility of imposing ideals on the real world, where men would rather rule by might, not right. It's about the quest to bring justice to a fallen society. It's about the horrible consequences of sin--how the ripples caused by a pebble cast into the water eventually become huge, destructive waves. And it's about the evil that resides deep down in the human soul--evil that causes men to hurt and kill each other in fights and wars that should never have started in the first place.

Beyond the story's insight into the human soul, this book is worth reading for several other reasons: White's wonderful prose, his rich knowledge of the medieval period and of English history, his hilarious and ironic references to the twentieth century (Merlyn is a time-traveler, so White refers to the modern era several times), and his sheer imagination.

This is a great book. I know why many people see it as the greatest work of fantasy of all time.

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