First published in 1958, it is yet another retelling of the King Arthur story, with Merlin, Lancelot, the sword in the stone, the round table, the quest for the holy grail, and so on. Those of us who grew up within the English cultural tradition know the story well, and so in writing this White had the challenging job of keeping the story fresh and interesting while also being honest to the tradition.
White most definitely meets the challenge, and this book is a must-read. I'd put it on my list of great world novels.
A large part of this is because the book is both excellent storytelling and penetrating social commentary. And at 637 pages, there are a lot of words to do both.
The storytelling starts with Arthur as a child (then known as the Wart) growing up as a less privileged noble -- that is, still with a pretty decent, comfortable life, but nowhere near the top of the social pecking order. He meets up with Merlin, who becomes his personal tutor.
In White's version of the story, Merlin's magic is that he lives his very long life backwards -- he remembers the future and is heading into the past. So, Merlin is our connection with modernity and modern thinking, as he remembers living through our current modern times. The nature of Merlin's magic is left unclear, but he appears to be able to talk with people out of this world who help him perform the magic. There is the suggestion that his magic is technology from our future (Merlin's deeper past). Unfortunately, however, Merlin's help is inconsistent because often he is (understandably) confused and cannot remember what has happen versus what will happen. Merlin is also absent for most of the time that Arthur is king.
But Merlin means well, and does a decent job of raising Arthur to be a caring, well-meaning man. The driving force of Arthur's rule as king, what he learnt from Merlin, was
that humanity was perfectible: that he was on the whole more decent than beastly: that good was worth trying: that there was no such thing as original sin (p. 626).And this is the heart of both the tragedy of the story and also White's thought-provoking social commentary.
Part of the tragedy of the story is that we English readers know that things don't go well for Arthur. We like Arthur and we recognise a lot of his values as our own. We want him to win out and transform Medieval society into a just, humane, modern-like society. We want him to be happy. And yet, as we read we cannot keep from our mind that White has to follow the traditional story and it would be wrong to rewrite it into a happier ending. And yet, and yet, we still hope for a happy ending as we read.
So, White's storytelling has us hooked.
But as I say, the book is not merely storytelling, but also social commentary. White's characters are deep, three-dimensional, complex, imperfect, real people. There are no real "baddies", and even the bad-ish ones are understandable and have our sympathies. Likewise, none of the "goodies" are completely good -- they all make mistakes (sometimes pretty serious and awful). This allows White to raise some deeply challenging questions regarding who we are, how we should act, and what is the best sort of society.
White's social commentary is in turns serious essay-style exposition, biting satire and ironic wit. He has elements of Jonathan Swift, Rudyard Kipling and P. G. Wodehouse, and is, in places, laugh out loud funny. (Some of the funnier parts, for me, involved the older generation knights, who could have been Bertie Wooster's mates.)
Some of the social/ethical issues raised included:
(1) How should we, as individuals, balance our obligations to the wider community with our preferences towards our own interests and loved ones? Arthur exemplifies this challenge. He deeply loves both Lancelot and Guenever. But at the same time he is driven by Merlin's Grand Idea and his obligations as king and ruler. Circumstances drive him to have to make the impossible choice between personal love and impartial justice.
(2) Is Merlin's Grand Idea true? Arthur lives his life assuming it and working towards a better future. And yet, circumstantial events result in mistakes, which seem to snowball to crush Arthur's plans. At the end of his life, Arthur is left wondering if his life's work was a mistake.
(3) On-the-whole decent people can make mistakes so bad that it is hard (impossible?) to forgive them. To what extent can (and should) victims forgive those who wronged them? And what happens if these victims go down the path of anger, hatred and revenge? What sorts of sympathies do they deserve, especially when their anger creates more victims and hurt?
(4) To what extent are we products of the circumstances of our past? Or to what extent can we break free of our upbringing to recreate ourselves? The characters often seem to be tied to the circumstances of their pasts, and this is often intergenerational. Is there some truth to the idea of Original Sin?
(5) What is the nature of love relationships? Arthur, Lancelot and Guenever have a complex love relationship. In more modern times they may have even worked well as a committed romantic threesome (I think!). White informs us that in modern (1950s) times Guenever would have simply run off with Lancelot, leaving Arthur and so avoiding the tragic consequences of the story.
These sorts of thought-provoking questions have no easy answers, and no easy answers are provided in the book. This means that this book could be an excellent conversation-starter for older teens and up.
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