Book Review: THE ACTS OF KING ARTHUR AND HIS NOBLE KNIGHTS by John Steinbeck

The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights by John Steinbeck
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This precious book is the re-telling of Arthurian legends by no less than John Steinbeck. Gave it a four star rating because it is incomplete! It is 7 chapters long, starting with Uther's lust for Igraine, and ending with Guinevere's and Lancelot's first kiss : the beginning of the end.

The earlier chapters were almost biblical in the narrating of events, with very little dialogue. It was almost boring, what with the endless lists of Sir So-and-so jousting with Knight-Errant-This-and-That. But whatever the faults of the earlier chapters, the last two chapters more than made up for them!

The last and best chapters ("Gawain, Ewain, and Marhalt" and "The Noble Tale of Sir Lancelot of the Lake)" seemed almost as if a new writer had taken hold of the Cross ballpoint pen Steinbeck used... glittering with gems of dialogue, written in Steinbeck's "American." I was amazed and thrilled with the thoughts and speech of several ladies, including Guinevere. Steinbeck's damsels poked fun at the knights, gave them tongue lashings, and spoke their minds in the most delightful way!

And of course, here and there, Steinbeck would insert passages of remarkable insight, such as :

"Granite so hard that it will smash a hammer can be worn away by little grains of moving sand. And a heart that will not break under the great blows of fate can be eroded by the nibbling of numbers, the creeping of days, the numbing treachery of littleness, of important littleness."

"There is the little evil which is disappointed meanness of small men who dress their poverty and nakedness in cynicism."

"Perhaps it is so with everyone, that he looks for weakness in the strong to find promise of strength in his weakness."

"Peace, not war, is the destroyer of men; tranquility rather than danger is the mother of cowardice, and not need but plenty brings apprehension and unease."

I could go on and on, I filled up pages and pages in my journal with these golden passages.

The Appendix can be considered a chapter unto itself, with letters that Steinbeck wrote to his literary agent and friend, and it was particularly enjoyable to read on the author's preparations and efforts from 1956 until 1965, which included at least two trips to Britain and one trip to Italy for research. He wrote 5 days a week, demanded for Cross pens to be mailed to him, got mad at Customs for delaying the release of said pens, took in the sights, ordered and read hundreds of books, and made full use of the Oxford dictionary.

Such a tragedy that Steinbeck never finished it!! But even as it is, it is wonderful.

He wrote: "In turning over the lumber of the past I'm looking for the future. This is no nostalgia for the finished and safe. My looking is not for a dead Arthur but for one sleeping. And if sleeping, he is sleeping everywhere, not alone in a cave in Cornwall."

On Malory, Steinbeck said "Out of this devilish welter of change -- so like today -- he tried to create a world of order, a world of virtue..."

There is a reason why Arthur is taught to high school students everywhere, even in the Philippines. Because in a world of cynicism and evil, there remain "fools" such as knights, who chose virtue over vice, and gosh darn the consequences. These were men who tried to live as men, knowing they could never be perfectly good nor free of sin, but tried their darndest anyway.

There IS a better world, and Arthur and his knights remind us to continuously strive to create this one, in speech and deed.

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