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Viking's
new edition of The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights
keeps alive John Steinbeck's final and unfinished novel, an
adaptation of Thomas Malory's Fourteenth Century book Le
Morte d'Arthur for the modern reader. The figures involved
couldn't be bigger: Steinbeck, of course, is a giant of Twentieth
Century literature, and the Arthurian legends are some of
the foundational stories of Western literature. It's as if
the Beatles had reinterpreted Mozart for the modern age.
There
are seven Arthurian legends in the volume, which are introduced
by both John Steinbeck's original forward and a new forward
by Eragon author Christopher Paolini. Paolini reflects
both on the personal importance of the Arthurian legends to
him and on Steinbeck's process of adapting them. Steinbeck's
original—and more interesting—introduction describes
his love of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, which first
inspired in him a love of words after the agony of learning
to read had initially caused only a bitter hatred of books.
Because
The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights is unfinished,
and because the appendix contains nearly 100 pages of letters
from John Steinbeck (and a few from his wife) to his editors
as he worked on this project, this edition provides a unique
glimpse into the writing process of a great writer. Indeed,
Steinbeck's insights into Malory and the Arthurian legends—which
are not necessarily self-evident from the reading of the stories
alone—illuminate both the original text and the writing
process for students of modern and medieval literature alike.
It is
fascinating to observe the intertwining of the voices of these
two canonical writers in this volume. Malory, Steinbeck notes,
grew immensely as a writer as he worked on the stories:
[Malory's] sentences become more fluid and his dialogue
gets a sting of truth and his characters becomes more
human than symbolic though he tries hard to keep the symbol,
and this I am sure is because he was learning to write
as he went along.
Steinbeck's
adaptation evolves along with Malory's writing. The stories
begin stiffly, with Steinbeck's voice barely whispering through
the linear, straightforward style of the original prose. But
as both writers find their footing—Malory as an author
and Steinbeck as an interpreter—the prose becomes richer
and more pleasing to the modern ear, which was Steinbeck's
goal with his adaptation. Though the characters do remain
symbolic and larger than life, they begin to take on more
complex and human dimensions.
Nevertheless,
the characters in the book are likely to seem somewhat alien
to the modern reader. Motivation and individuality—not
particularly important concepts in myths—are lacking,
especially in the initial stories. Characters act not because
they are complex individuals with intricate psychologies,
but rather because they are grand players in a grand history
of grand actions. The myths are interesting as a history both
of literature and of England, but some contemporary readers
may find them a little tedious, particularly at first.
What
is most unsatisfactory about the work is that the letters
in the appendix give little insight into why Steinbeck never
finished this book, which he started in 1956 and worked on
steadily through 1959, nearly ten years before his death.
There is no correspondence between 1959 and 1965, when the
letters start up again abruptly cataloging Arthurian artifacts
that Steinbeck went to observe in Italy. He talks little of
the work, and by the end readers will get the sense that he
ran out of momentum or was overwhelmed by the task; in the
final letter in the collection he writes, "I go struggling
along with the matter of Arthur. I think I have something
and am pretty excited about it…if it seems bad, I can simply
destroy it. But right now I don't think it is bad. Strange
and different, but not bad." Readers are left with the same
speculations Paolini makes in his introduction: Perhaps he
couldn't find a unifying theme, found himself too constrained
by the preexisting template, or could never really stop researching
to truly begin writing.
Whatever
the reason this book remained unfinished, it is nonetheless
a worthwhile addition to any library. Readers interested in
character-driven dramas may find themselves a little bored,
but students of literature both modern and ancient, fans of
fantasy and fairy tales, and children will likely enjoy this
work. Indeed, this is an indispensable book for any child's
library, as it has unleashed a love of fantasy and literature
in many a reader, and familiarity with the tales of King Arthur
and his Noble Knights is an essential Western cultural touchstone.
(December,
2007)
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