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The Once and Future King
The Once And Future King
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Reviews - The Once and Future King
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Matthew, Assistant List Master
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rated it 3 stars
Oct 01, 2019 07:33AM
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Okay, so this is for October, right? I need to add that to my official TBR so I remember, lol!
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October through December
Whew! Okay, even better. It's rather a long book, so it'll give me time to read it. Thanks!
I finished! I found this a difficult book to read, probably because it is indeed 4 whole books in one, and 4 completely different books at that. Though the first book can be read as a delightful story, if you would want to do so, the further along you come in the books the less likely you are to read it as a story. I think that by book four it is entirely impossible to read it as a story. The social commentary and political tension burst off the pages.
Perhaps it is a radical coming of age process, the protagonist grows from a playful child into a grown man, the story grows into something very mature over 4 books and the reader grows with it too. The first book is a pleasurable experience, la die da, reading is a fun adventure, as you progress in the story the reader becomes as serious and contemplative as the protagonist himself. When thinking about this book I like to imagine the writer's progress too. He started off perhaps as a happy go lucky storyteller and then he got sucked in by the darkness of his times. As he lived between 1915 and 1964 and the first book in this collection was printed in 1939. Elements of those political tensions around the two world wars are neatly transferred to mediaeval England. Highly recognizable yet not anachronistic at all (as worrying as that might be).
Throughout the well-know story elements of the Arthurian legend, based on a recognized scholarly text, there are elements from White’s personal life too. White was a passionate falconer, pilot, sailor, goose-hunter, fisherman, and scholar of medieval texts. All of these pastimes can be found in the books. White, at one point in time, was “threated� for homosexuality, also something referred to (though not explicitly) in the text.
The overall focus of the book is, in my opinion, on how hard it is to find and maintain a balance between strength and justice (or might and right). And what right anyone has, even if a king, to demand people to follow a certain system of governance by free choice alone. Is violence ever justified? Even if kept in check by a forced search for divinity?
Not only Arthur’s England, but all modern civilizations are based on the use of force to create and maintain a just political system. However, all Arthur’s hardly fought gains are undone by internal tensions and treachery (by his own son no less). Extrapolated to modern times: justice depending on force will continually be under threat. However, what if anything is the solution then? That question remains unanswered as Arthur in the end rides off to fight, personally, to defend the innocence of England.
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Click here for my review
