Updates

Weather update:

Snow again.

Reading update:

You’d think this kind of weather would give me more time to curl up with a good book, but alas, now that the holidays are over and school is back in session, the whole family is thrown back onto the dizzying wheel of activity. Fortunately, before all this back-to-real-life frenzy began, I did manage to finish reading one book: Philip Reeve’s Here Lies Arthur.

In a previous post, I expressed doubts and dismay after early forays into this book. Let me humbly say here that I stand (mostly) corrected. I have to credit Reeve with truly excellent writing and storytelling skills; notwithstanding the fact that only one of the characters appealed to me much at all (NOT the main character, but the “love interest,” if you will, young Peredur), I had a hard time putting the book down. Partly I wanted to see how Reeve would re-cast the classic Arthurian events, but also I simply wanted to know what happened next.

One of my initial questions was, What is Reeve trying to accomplish by turning the King Arthur story so rudely on its head? One answer I found was that the book is about how legends are made, a story about the power of stories. One little gripe: I did have some believability issues with the transformation of the central character Gwena/Gwen from girl to boy and back again (and back again). But perhaps this is Reeve furthering his metafictional theme: Just as Gwena and Myrddin persuade the people of Britain to believe that Arthur is a great hero, is Reeve winking at the reader as he tries to pull one over on us?

Books-into-movies update:

My husband and I have now watched half of the HBO miniseries John Adams (based on the biography by David McCullough). I offer some halfway-point observations. The film takes a whirlwind ride through the American Revolution and its aftermath, focusing more on personality (how the events impact Adams and his family and vice versa) than on the details of the conflict itself. On the plus side, this results in some fascinating insights into the politics of the Continental Congress instead of the well-trod battleground stuff. On the minus side, I did find it mystifying how eleven years of Revolutionary history passed without the Adams children aging one day. True, one child was added (initially predicted by Abigail’s burgeoning belly, appearing the next moment as a four-year-old boy), but otherwise the children looked exactly the same on the day Abigail learned of Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown (1781) as they did the day of the Boston Massacre (1770).

Most humorous portrayal: Benjamin Franklin with his stringy gray hair and his aged French-nobility mistress. Most gratifying portrayal: Thomas Jefferson, with his nonchalant elegance, his soft-spoken and cultured intelligence, his gorgeous clothes (oh! the clothes!). In one favorite scene, he lounges at a desk while Franklin and Adams critique his work on the Declaration of Independence, his facial expression a combination of pain and affected indifference. When Franklin bluntly suggests they should use the word “self-evident” (as in, We hold these truths to be…) instead of Jefferson’s more grandiose phrase, Jefferson lifts his chin and says, “I assure you that I chose every word with care.” Priceless, and something any writer who shares his or her work can identify with. Which leads me to…

Writing update:

I sent the first section of Early First Draft of my current WIP off to my trusted critique buddies yesterday. I think I have a plot. I have 20-odd pages of text. Life is good.

Seventh day of Christmas books

Reading my beautiful new Arthur of Albion, by John Matthews and the library-borrowed Here Lies Arthur, by Philip Reeve, I started to feel nostalgic for my old favorite Arthur books, but for completely different reasons. Arthur of Albion, with its beautiful artwork and traditional tale of Arthur taking his sword from the Lady of the Lake, set me hankering to read Mary Stewart’s account of Arthur’s finding Caliburn, and the wonderful scenes between the young Arthur and Merlin (in The Hollow Hills). On the other hand, as I began reading Here Lies Arthur, I discovered that Reeve has stripped away the romantic trappings to give the Arthur stories a gritty historical feel, a la Bernard Cornwell—though in this case, even Arthur himself turns out to be no sort of hero at all. In fact, he’s a bloodthirsty, uncouth jerk. I wanted to flee to Stewart or to T. H. White to cleanse this image from my mind.

Now, just hold on here. Calm down. Can’t the cherished heroic image of Arthur in my heart and in those great books withstand Reeve’s assault? I think so. I am going to read the whole book. For one thing, my gut reaction got me wondering: What is Reeve trying to accomplish? There’s only one way to find out. If I have to occasionally restore myself with a few chapters of my old favorites, so be it.

(Incidentally, in addition to being great reads, the hardcover versions of Stewart’s Merlin Trilogy and White’s Once and Future King, along with another favorite, Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, make excellent weights for pressing journal covers while the glue dries.)

Fourth day of Christmas books

Yesterday I picked up two books from my local library…

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Here Lies Arthur by Philip Reeve

When I told Superhero Husband that I had to run down to the library to pick up some holds, this is what I got.

SH: I just gave you a book (Arthur of Albion), and you haven’t even read it. You need more books?
Me: You can’t have too many books.
SH: (Looks askance at my overflowing bookshelves.) I beg to differ.
Me: It’s the library. They get returned. Besides, I had already placed a hold on these before I received my fabulous Christmas gift.
SH: (Shakes head in resignation.)*

*Today, the Fourth Day of Christmas, is also our seventeenth wedding anniversary. I will point out in this connection that one of my husband’s most valuable superhero skills is always letting me have the last word. I will also announce to the world how grateful I am for his continued support as Patron of the Arts. He understands that reading is a significant part of my life’s work. And he built me these nifty shelves (four sets!) to help corral all those books.

Twelve days of books for Christmas

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…

Arthur of Albion by John Matthews, illustrated by Pavel Tatarnikov. This is an oversized picture-book aimed for the middle-grade audience, but clearly appropriate for adults like myself, who suffer an Arthurian literature obsession (and who like beautiful things). The endpapers are gold. The art is fabulous. There is a poster-sized fold-out map of “Albion” (England), with a legend detailing the locations of key Arthurian events and places.

Thus far in my perusal I have detected an unapologetic melding of various Arthur traditions, from Welsh sources all the way to the later French romances. For example, we are given the Welsh names of various knights’ steeds and weapons, yet the Anglo-French names of the knights themselves. Doesn’t bother me a bit. The book is gorgeous. Thank you, True Love, and Merry Christmas.

Poetry Friday, feeling Arthurian

Hic Jacet Arthurus Rex Quondam Rexque Futurus

Arthur is gone…Tristram in Carcol
Sleeps, with a broken sword—And Yseult sleeps
Beside him, where the westering waters roll
Over drowned Lyonesse to the outer deeps.

Lancelot is fallen…The ardent helms that shone
So knightly and the splintered lances rust
In the anonymous mould of Avalon:
Gawain and Gareth and Galahad—all are dust!

Where do the vanes and towers of Camelot
And tall Tintagel crumble? Where do those tragic
Lovers and their bright-eyed ladies rot?
We cannot tell—for lost is Merlin’s magic.

And Guinevere—call her not back again
Lest she betray the loveliness Time lent
A name that blends the rapture and the pain
Linked in the lonely nightingale’s lament,

Nor pry too deeply, lest you should discover
The bower of Astolat a smoky hut
Of mud and wattle—find the knightliest lover
A braggart, and his Lily Maid a slut;

And all that coloured tale a tapestry
Woven by poets. As the spider’s skeins
Are spun of its own substance, so have they
Embroidered empty legend—What remains?

This: That when Rome fell, like a writhen oak
That age had sapped and cankered at the root,
Resistant, from her topmost bough there broke
The miracle of one unwithering shoot

Which was the spirit of Britain—that certain men
Uncouth, untutored, of our island brood
Loved freedom better than their lives; and when
The tempest crashed around them, rose and stood

And charged into the storm’s black heart, with sword
Lifted, or lance in rest, and rode there, helmed
With a strange majesty that the heathen horde
Remembered after all were overwhelmed;

And made of them a legend, to their chief,
Arthur, Ambrosius—no man knows his name—
Granting a gallantry beyond belief,
And to his knights imperishable fame.

They were so few…We know not in what manner
Or where or when they fell—whether they went
Riding into the dark under Christ’s banner
Or died beneath the blood-red dragon of Gwent.

But this we know: That, when the Saxon rout
Swept over them, the sun no longer shone
On Britain, and the last lights flickered out;
And men in darkness murmured: Arthur is gone…

Francis Brett Young, 1944

My other favorite Arthurian poems are Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, especially “Gareth and Lynnette.” That one was the original spark of inspiration for my novel Two Swords (Gareth has always been my favorite).

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Brimstone Soup. Head over and feed your need for poetry.

Robin Hood and King Arthur

I have to confess, first of all, that I didn’t make it through Episode 3 of Monarchy last night. I got befuddled during the Wars of the Roses. I have a cold.

Instead of writing about monarchs, I’m going back to my theme of Robin Hood. I became attached to the character of Robin Hood at a young age. I’m not sure whose book I read as a child. When I recently read (or re-read?) the Howard Pyle version, it didn’t seem quite right, though the ending was the same delicious tragedy I remembered. Robin Hood, wounded and dying, shoots one last arrow to mark where he would like to be buried, and the desolate Little John grants his request. I love a good tragedy.

A few years ago I read Robin McKinley’s version, titled The Outlaws of Sherwood. It was OK. Something was missing; it lacked grand romanticism. (I’m not knocking Robin McKinley, by the way; I devoured The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown.)

Robin Hood makes a charming appearance in T. H. White’s Arthurian saga, The Once and Future King. Robin Hood and King Arthur in the same book. Yep. I have to say that The Once and Future King is a work of genius, and my top all-time favorite King Arthur book, which is saying a lot. In the first part, The Sword in the Stone (also made into a good Disney movie), young Arthur (nicknamed Wart) and his foster brother, Kay, get lost while hunting rabbits and meet up with the Merry Men.

Kay looked at him in blank surprise. “Who are you?” he asked.

“Naylor,” said the giant, “John Naylor in the wide world it were, till us come to be a man of the ’ood. Then ’twere John Little for some time, in the ’ood like, but mostly folk does put it back’ard now, and calls us Little John.”

“Oh!” cried the Wart in delight. “I have heard of you, often, when they tell Saxon stories in the evening, of you and Robin Hood.”

“Not Hood,” said Little John reprovingly. “That bain’t the way to name ’un, measter, not in the ’ood.”

“But it is Robin Hood in the stories,” said Kay.

“Ah, them book-learning chaps. They don’t know all.”

The Wart finally figures out that the outlaw’s name is Robin Wood. Then the boys help the Merry Men defeat the witch Morgan Le Fay (grown-ups can’t get into her castle made of lard).

You may well ask how the 13th-century Robin Hood gets involved in a book about the young King Arthur. Here is White’s genius at play: The Once and Future King is an alternative history that encompasses the romantic tradition of Malory (Le Morte d’Arthur, circa 1470s) and places Arthur firmly in the Age of Chivalry.

Another brilliant series about King Arthur is Mary Stewart’s Merlin trilogy. Stewart has Arthur back in the Dark Ages, after the withdrawal of Roman legions from Britain. The second book, The Hollow Hills, is my favorite portrayal of the young Arthur.

Finally, I must mention Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Lantern Keepers and Sword at Sunset, wonderful Dark Ages versions of Arthur and his Romano-British predecessors. Sutcliff is amazing at historical fiction of Roman and Dark Ages times.

More monarchs

Last night’s view of Monarchy was all about Henrys and Edwards, with a couple of Richards for good measure. Strong kings, weak kings, wars and murder. The history started to feel like those chapters in Kings in the Bible: so and so was good, so and so was bad.

And then there was King John.

History aside, my view of King John (reigned 1199–1216) will forever be colored by the 1973 Disney version of Robin Hood, in which John is represented as a whining, thumb-sucking lion without a mane, and voiced to hilarious perfection by Peter Ustinov (“Power! Power!”; “Do you savoir a faire, il y a, n’est pa?” Cracks me up every time.) They don’t make ’em like that anymore.

John makes a more serious, behind-the-scenes appearance in the wonderful Arthur and the Seeing Stone series by Kevin Crossley-Holland. These are my absolute favorite contemporary King Arthur books: The Seeing Stone, At the Crossing Places, and King of the Middle March. Crossley-Holland is a prose-poet who melds the traditional Arthur stories with the story of young Norman Arthur de Caldicot. Read them! Read them!

A couple of years ago, I read one other book in which King John plays a hefty role: Here Be Dragons by Sharon Kay Penman. The book is about John’s illegitimate daughter, Joan, and her marriage to the Welsh Prince Llewellyn (the Great). In Penman’s book, John is shown mostly as a womanizer and a king desperate to hold on to power.

Of course the real King John is known as the guy who was forced to sign the Magna Carta, the Great Charter, which set out boundaries for the king’s power vis-a-vis his barons. Today the Magna Carta is famous for its early delineating of what we call basic human rights.