The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights by John Steinbeck, a review

John Steinbeck is rightly remembered these days as a Pulitzer-prize winning author of The Grapes of Wrath and secondarily, East of Eden; almost no one talks about his foray into Arthurian myth.

Yet his heart lay in time-shrouded tales of questing knights and the shining castle on a hill. Steinbeck was ensorcelled by the stories of King Arthur his entire life. They were his gateway to a true love of reading at age 9, and from youth all the way to his death in 1968 the stories of King Arthur were never far from his mind. 

Steinbeck embarked on his own spin on Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, writing The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights in a two-year period from 1958-59. Sadly the book was never finished … but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read it.

You should. I just did, and I’m better for it.

The King Arthur stories are not (just) stories of dudes in armor riding off on great quests. They are part of our western literary canon, but even more so, part of the fabric of western myth. They instruct us how to behave, but also where we fall short.

And so we have passages like this (cue Nicol Williamson); not a celebration of our species’ predilection for violence, but certainly a good as explanation of any as to why we’re still fighting wars in the 21st century in the shadow of millions of heaped corpses still fresh from the 20th: 

“Then Arthur learned, as all leaders are astonished to learn, that peace, not war, is the destroyer of men; tranquility rather than danger the mother of cowardice, and not need but plenty brings apprehension and unease. Finally he found that the longed-for peace, so bitterly achieved, created more bitterness than ever did the anguish of achieving it.”

Here is Steinbeck’s Merlin, wise beyond comprehension to the point of being able to see the future, yet he too is subject to the lusts that rule men, falling helplessly under the binding spell of Nyneve:

“In the combat between wisdom and feeling, wisdom never wins. I have told you your certain future, my lord, but knowing will not change it by a hair. When the time comes, your feeling will conduct you to your fate.”

This is a tale of many characters but Launcelot is the central figure; Launcelot who is the best of all knights, but of course with a fatal flaw; who despite his love for Guinevere wins every bit of our admiration because when asked if he is content to be the world’s perfect knight the question nearly splits him in two before he regains his composure. This internal struggle is rendered beautifully by Steinbeck:

A black rage shook Sir Launcelot, drew his lips snarling from his teeth. His right hand struck like a snake at his sword hilt and half the silver blade slipped from the scabbard. Lyonel felt the wind of his death blow on his cheek. 

Then, in one man he saw a combat more savage than ever he had seen between two, saw wounds given and received and a heart riven to bursting. And he saw victory, too, the death of rage and the sick triumph of Sir Launcelot, the sweat-ringed, fevered eyes hooked like a hawk’s, the right arm leashed and muzzled while the blade crept back to its kennel.

Lancelot and Guinevere.

Launcelot is if not the “greatest” knight the most sympathetic, because he wrestles with his conscience and occasionally fails, yet never relents. Unlike the perfect Galahad who recovers the grail, for Lancelot every day is a battle that leaves him bone-weary, either with foes eager to test their mettle or against his own weaknesses—vanity, violence, disloyalty. And yet we love him for it, as does his young cousin and knight in training Sir Lyonel:

Sir Lyonel knew that this sleeping knight would charge to his known defeat with neither hesitation nor despair and finally would accept his death with courtesy and grace as though it were a prize. And suddenly Sir Lyonel knew why Lancelot would gallop down the centuries, spear in rest, gathering men’s hearts on his lance head like tilting rings. He chose his side and it was Lancelot’s.

This is a book of quests, and one of my favorites is when Lancelot confronts a broken Kay, who used to be a great champion but is now a shell of his former self. Lancelot asks him why he has fallen; Kay explains the weight of responsibility, and the mundane, soul-crushing management required of a kingdom:

“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. I could fight men but I was defeated by marching numbers on a page.”

I suspect a modern office middle manager, or Kull at his writing desk, would be nodding his head sagely. Lancelot does as any good friend should; he dons Kay’s armor and shield and rides out to knock a hundred men off their horses and send them groveling back to Arthur’s court to submit to the queen as Kay’s prizes, unbeknownst they were fighting the greatest knight in the land.

The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights is of course notably unfinished, published posthumously in 1976; leading one to speculate. Did Steinbeck finally lose interest in Arthur? Was it becoming tedium, because the story was not his and he knew how it would end? Could he not bear to engage in the full measure of tragedy in a time when he and his wife were reportedly at their happiest?

We don’t have an answer. In its early stages Steinbeck described it as the greatest work of his life. Keep in mind this was late in his career, AFTER all his major works were completed.

It is perhaps fitting the story ends with a kiss, perhaps the most passionate and illicit in western literature. From there it’s all downhill for Camelot. Perhaps Steinbeck did not wish to deal with the full measure of the tragedy. Which seems unlikely given the tragedy in his better known literary works, but Le Morte D’Arthur is the big daddy of tragedy.

We can only guess. But I’m glad we have what we have. Highly recommended.

A few notes: Because it was unfinished and Steinbeck indicated that it took him some time to get down the style, he intended to go back and do rewrites. As such it’s a uneven to start and does not truly get going until the Morgan Le Fay chapter about 100 pages in. Up until then it feels like a beat-for-beat translation of Le Morte D’Arthur with updated diction, but at that point takes on something of the pace of a modern novel.

A perilous quest...

Most critics then and now did not care for the book, mainly because they were expecting something much more Steinbeck and not a faithful adaptation/quasi translation of Malory. Steinbeck’s agent was puzzled upon seeing an early draft, leaving him stung by the reaction. Perhaps they were expecting a family of migrants on a dusty trek/quest to California, riding flatbed trucks instead of chargers? That does sound cool come to think of it but not what we get here. I suspect Steinbeck held Le Morte D’Arthur in such reverence he found no need to try to improve upon it; he set out to tell the same story in plainer English and IMO for what we have, succeeded. 

He might also have felt like the original stories were being lost. In an age of radical literary experimentation and increasing Hollywood exploitation (then and now) he was not wrong. 

My edition has a wonderful series of letters at the back, most from Steinbeck to his literary agent or his longtime friend. These offer terrific insight into his first-person research that included trips to Wales, Glastonbury, Tintagel and other places associated with Arthur. We get valuable insight into Steinbeck’s writing process, including his struggles to find the right literary voice and approach, eventually settling on “a close-reined, taut, economical English, unaccented and unlocalized … it just as simple as that and I think it is the best prose I have ever written,” Steinbeck says. And everywhere his love of Malory that shines through any faults he found in the original. Steinbeck was very well versed in the old stories and I enjoyed reading his own analyses of the myth, as here where he compares the stories to modern televised westerns:

And it can be shown and it will be shown that the myth of Arthur continues even into the present day and is an inherent part of the so-called “Western” with which television is filled at the present time—same characters, same methods, same stories, only slightly different weapons and certainly a different topography. But if you change Indians or outlaws for Saxons and Picts and Danes, you have exactly the same story. You have the cult of the horse, the cult of the knight.

Steinbeck felt the profound human truths at the heart of the story, truths which transcend time and place, and sought to preserve it whenever possible. This is not George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, it is something much older and in my opinion, far deeper. It will endure the ages.  To close with Steinbeck: “I am not writing this to titillate the ear of the twentieth century. Perhaps I am overambitious, but I am trying to make it available, not desirable. I want the remote feeling of the myth, not the intimate feeling of today’s man who in his daily thought may change tomorrow but who in his deeper perceptions, I am convinced, does not change at all. In a word I have not been trying to write a popular book, but a permanent book.”

***

A few other thoughts about Arthuriana.

When talking about the north stars of fantasy most seem to skip the King Arthur stories. If I had to speculate, it’s because they occupy some liminal space between mythology, history, and national epic. You can’t really compare Sir Thomas Malory with Dunsany or Tolkien, Howard or Leiber, Lewis or LeGuin, Martin or Rowling.

But of course they are largely fantasy, replete with spells and giants and magic swords. And if you choose to classify them as such, it’s hard to think of anything more fantastic. 

The Ring of the Nibelung/Roy Thomas and Gil Kane

The Ring is mine!

Over the course of my lifetime I’ve been exposed to Richard Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung in many and various ways. The story, or pieces thereof, from the Old Norse literature upon which the operas are based. The thematic content from modern works like The Broken Sword and The Lord of the Rings. Even the music, which I’ve heard in various and sundry films including Apocalypse Now ("The Ride of the Valkyries") and Excalibur (“Siegfried’s Funeral March," "Prelude to Parsifal").

But I haven’t ever seen the opera nor read a full literary treatment of the work. And was overdue to scratch this niggling itch … but wanted to have some fun, with a low bar to entry. And so, I scooped up a treatment I did not know existed until quite recently: Richard Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung, the complete graphic novel as adapted by the great Roy Thomas and Gil Kane, with Jim Woodring.

This was enjoyable. I plowed through it in just a few hours over a few nights. It’s a product of DC Comics, released in 1991, and checks in at a relatively hefty 191 pages. It includes some welcome introductory material, including a foreword introducing the biography and talents of the authors, and an introduction to Wagner’s opera cycle by Brian Kellow of Opera News.

The Ring of the Nibelung is a somewhat complex story, with four acts/operas (Wagner prefers music dramas) spanning long periods of time, told through different sets of characters ranging from gods, giants, and dwarves to the heroic albeit mortal race of humans known as Nibelungs. It starts with the creation of the world, and ends with its downfall at Ragnarok. The centerpiece is the story of Siegfried, a mortal hero sent to slay a dragon, reclaim the gods' stolen gold and rescue the Valkyrie Brunnhilde. These stories are bound together by a golden ring that grants its wearer dominion over the world. Yes, there are some Tolkien parallels here, which JRRT denies and to be fair he likely drew on Wagner’s common influences, not the operas. But we’ve got a greedy dragon hoarding wealth, a precious ring fought over by two brothers (one of whom kills the other to take it for himself), a broken sword reforged, and many other familiar elements.

Overall it's a gorgeous, epic, deeply thematic story well told by Thomas—and as you’d expect from his pen, it moves. Kane’s artwork is marvelous, beautiful, comic booky and muscular but not garish. The men are jacked and the women beautiful. Rather than me attempt to word-paint here are some of the panels:

What does it all mean? There’s a lot to dig into, too much for me after one rapid reading of an adaptation in graphic novel form. But The Ring is undoubtedly a Great Story, and like all great stories contains truth. I’m quite fond of Sir Roger Scruton’s “Reflections on The Ring of the Nibelung,” which he describes as a story for “modern people, for whom the path to heroism is overgrown.” 

From that essay:

Wagner’s story of gods and heroes, of giants and dwarfs, is not a fairy tale. It is addressed to modern people, who have lost the ways of enchantment, and for whom the path to heroism is overgrown. It is a story in which law and love, power and property are all caught up in a life and death struggle between the forces that govern the human soul.

Love without power will not endure, and power without law will always erode the claims of love. We live this paradox, and without the gods to maintain the moral order the burden of it falls entirely on our shoulders. 

Gods come and go; but they last as long as we make room for them, and we make room for them through sacrifice. The gods come about because we idealize our passions, and it is by accepting the need for sacrifice on behalf of another that our lives acquire a meaning. Seeing things that way we recognize that we are not condemned to mortality but consecrated to it. Such, in the end, was Wagner’s message. Yes, the gods must die, and we ourselves must assume their burdens. But we inherit their aspirations too: freedom, personality, love, and law. There is no way in which we can achieve those great goods through politics, which, if we put too much faith in it, will inevitably degenerate into the kind of totalitarian power enjoyed by the dwarf Alberich. But we can create these things in ourselves, and we do this when we recognize the sacred character of our joys and sufferings, and resolve to be true to them.

For more reading and listening, check these out:

Reflections on “The Ring of the Nibelung”

Wagner Götterdämmerung - Siegfried's death and Funeral march Klaus Tennstedt London Philharmonic

An interesting personal insight into Moorcock’s inspirations

Was just listening to an interview with Michael Moorcock on the Monsters, Madness and Magic podcast (recommended BTW). Co-host Dave Ritzlin of DMR Books posed an interesting question, which prompted an unexpected response from this grand master of fantasy (lightly edited for clarity):

Ritzlin: “Earlier, we were talking about the tragic aspect of your fiction. I was wondering if there were any tragedies from your personal life, perhaps the death of a loved one or a romantic relationship that inspired some of your writing, and did it like in a therapeutic way.”

Moorcock: “A few years ago, I would have said no. But since then, I’ve been writing the Whispering Swarm series, which is partly autobiography … as a result I’ve been having to look at myself a bit more closely, as it were. And I think probably my father leaving, which I’ve always said was a good thing for me, I mean he was a pretty dull man and it wouldn’t have been much fun, you know, with him being around when I was younger… but I also had a problem pretty much most of my life, which I didn’t really get to the roots of until I was doing this book. And it’s basically just separation anxiety. It’s abandonment issues as it were, which come from my father leaving when I was what, five or six? … I can’t really think of losing anybody, except my father. Effectively, I suppose he died.”

There is a much separation in Moorcock’s works. I haven’t read all of his stuff, but clearly it comprises a large part of the Elric and Corum stories. Lost eyes/hands, lost loves … severed and destroyed families, separation from home and country. Anything any capable writer without a great personal loss can include in his or her stories, but perhaps given additional resonance and authenticity in these stories due to Moorcock’s very personal loss.

Take this with a bit of a grain of salt. Moorcock later admits in the interview he was writing Elric at a young age, when everything seemed a tragedy (including getting dumped by his then girlfriend), and was “maybe” just channeling teenage angst. Which is a common interpretation of this very angsty character … but maybe it was something more.

Regardless this anecdote is an interesting window into Moorcock as a writer, and his influences, which I don’t think any of us writer types can ever fully know.

Your critics aren’t in the arena. Ignore them.

Here’s something I’ve learned from decades of publishing.

When you are a writer (or podcaster, or visual artist) with something to say, you will inevitably attract an audience. 

And you will inevitably become a target of critics.

When you express yourself clearly, with conviction and experience and wisdom as your guide, you will inspire readers. But, you will also piss a segment of your audience off. 

The latter are people who recognize something they don’t like about themselves in your words, and through social media are conditioned to think that drive by insults are permissible (because of course, in the real world, they are not). They will troll you, claim their second of “victory,” and then return to their regular diet of YouTube videos and porn.

Ignore them. They are beneath you.

Because you are something they are not. 

You’re a creator.

This is not a call to be aloof, and wear blinders to criticism. Stay alert. Listen to legitimate feedback. You will be wrong from time to time. I’ve been wrong, and made mistakes, many times in my life. Own up to errors; use them to get better.

But, when you write from a place of strength, genuine expression, and your own unique  viewpoint, i.e., a place of Truth, a handful of haters will have a problem with it. Recognize that the problem is in them, not you. Understand that they have work to do on themselves. Ignore them, and if you can find it in your heart, find pity for them. They can’t see their own limitations and pettiness; one day they may. 

But above all, don’t give them the gift of your precious attention. Time is your only irreplaceable resource. Stay on your path. Keep creating.

Here’s a helpful coping strategy: Critics and haters are an inevitable part of the game. They are indicative of success. Despite my annoyances, I like them because it means I’m writing well. 

This is not a call to be an edgelord, to produce antagonistic and needlessly provocative material. But if you don’t piss anyone off, ever, you’re probably doing something wrong.

One of the quotes I return to again and again is Teddy Roosevelt’s Man in the Arena. You probably have heard it before, but if not, here it is:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

I am the man in the arena. I’ve written thousands of newspaper stories, and newsletter and journal articles. Thousands more blog posts, for this blog and a dozen other websites. I’ve written dozens of print essays. And now a book. I’ve hosted and produced hundreds of podcast episodes. Spoken in front of audiences larger than a thousand, for more than a decade. I’ve mentored young writers and editors, and led teams.

And, I’ve been paid well to do it. I earn my living at the keyboard. I’ve won multiple awards.

This is not boasting; these are facts. I am now at the place where I can distinguish cheap attacks from legitimate critiques, because I know far more than just about all my critics. More about my own work, and about what it means to be a professional, then they do.

If you’ve written, or painted, or coded a website, built a house, made anything using your creativity and your heart and soul, you too are that man in the arena. You are a striver and doer of deeds; your critics are the cold, timid souls hurling insults from the sidelines. Never donning the pads and getting dirty in the playing field, where it counts.

Win or lose, you are striving, and your striving is admirable. That makes me your fan. 

My advice to anyone reading this who creates for a living: Keep doing it. You’ve already accomplished more than 90% of the world ever will. Don’t take praise as a sign you are unassailable; stay humble. But likewise, don’t take criticism personally; stay the course. 

If you can do this, you will win.

Joe Lansdale: The art of good writing

Joe Lansdale is one of my favorite authors. He consistently delivers good, tightly-plotted stories, populated with memorable characters, and moments of violence, sometimes shocking, but leavened with a great sense of humor throughout. He keeps you turning the pages, which in and of itself is an art form. He has a inimitable voice that comes through on every page.

Reading "Hyenas" from his collection Hap and Leonard (love those characters, who briefly enjoyed the limelight with a far too quick to be cancelled TV series ) reminded me of how good Lansdale can be. Look at what he does with this opening. You're effortlessly all in with a just a few paragraphs of description.

When I drove over to the nightclub, Leonard was sitting on the curb holding a bloody rag to his head. Two police cruisers were parked just down from where he sat. One of the cops, Jane Bowden, a stout woman with her blonde hair tied back, was standing by Leonard. I knew her a little. She was a friend of my girlfriend, Brett. There was a guy stretched out in the parking lot on his back.

I parked and walked over, glanced at the man on the ground.

He didn't look so good, like a poisoned insect on its way out. His eyes, which could be barely seen through the swelling, were roaming around in his head like maybe they were about to go down a drain. His mouth was bloody, but no bloodier than his nose and cheekbones. He was missing teeth. I knew that because quite a few of them were on his chest, like Chiclets he had spat out. I saw what looked like a chunk of his hair lying near by. The parking lot made the hunk of blond hair appear bronze. He was missing a shoe. I saw it just under one of the cop cars. It was still tied.

I went over and tried not to look too grim or too happy. Truth was I didn't know how to play it, because I didn't know the situation. I didn't know who had started what, and why.

It paints a scene that begs the story to be told. Kudos to Joe.

If you haven't read any of his stuff I recommend you start with his Hap and Leonard stories (Mucho Mojo is a particular favorite of mine) or perhaps his standalone novel The Bottoms. This stuff may not be sword-and-sorcery but it moves like the best of it.

Robert E. Howard in his own words

In honor of what would be his 105th birthday, I thought I’d let Robert E. Howard’s own words do the talking.

Here’s a few of my favorites culled from his Conan, Kull, and Solomon Kane stories. There’s so many to pull from but I chose these because they capture the ferocity, humor, and poetic qualities of Howard’s writing.

If you got any favorite passages to share, post ‘em here.

There comes, even to kings, the time of great weariness. Then the gold of the throne is brass, the silk of the palace becomes drab. The gems in the diadem and upon the fingers of the women sparkle drearily like the ice of the white seas; the speech of men is as the empty rattle of a jester’s bell and the feel comes of things unreal; even the sun is copper in the sky and the breath of the green ocean is no longer fresh.

–"The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune”

To read the rest of this post, visit The Black Gate website.

On Stories: Discovering a kindred spirit in C.S. Lewis

Though he’s best known as the author of the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) was also a prolific essayist and an ardent defender of fantasy literature. In addition to medieval studies (The Allegory of Love) and Christian apologetics (Mere Christianity), Lewis wrote several essays about the enduring appeal of mythopoeic stories, connecting fantasy’s remote, heroic past to its flowering in the early 20th century.

Lewis’ passion and erudition in the mythopoeic comes pouring through in On Stories and Other Essays on Literature, a collection of essays and reviews loosely tied around fantasy literature. Lewis’ overarching theme in On Stories is that the best mythopoeic/romance literature (which includes works like E.R. Eddison’s The Worm Ouroboros, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, and H. Rider Haggard’s She) stacks up with the best mainstream literature, and thus deserves to be not only enjoyed, but studied and preserved (I can sense a lot of nodding heads around here, but keep in mind that Lewis wrote these essays in an age when it was heresy to compare fantasy fiction to “real” lit).

To read the rest of this post, visit the Black Gate website .

Over Sea, Under Stone

"You remember the fairy stories you were told when you were very small--'once upon a time . . .' Why do you think they always began like that?"
"Because they weren't true," Simon said promptly.
Jane said, caught up in the unreality of the high remote place, "Because perhaps they were true once, but nobody could remember them."
Great-Uncle Merry turned his head and smiled at her.

--Susan Cooper, Over Sea, Under Stone

On a whim I removed the first book from Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising Sequence, Over Sea, Under Stone, from my bookshelf and started reading. I literally haven't cracked this book in more than 20 years.

I'm always afraid to re-read books that I enjoyed as a child, fearing that I'll either find them poor in retrospect, or that I'll discover I've simply outgrown them and lost my sense of wonder. But 70-odd pages in I've been pleasantly surprised by Over Sea, Under Stone. I'm sure I'll be posting a full review soon.

Quote of the day

From J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit:

As they sang the hobbit felt the love of beautiful things made by hands and by cunning and by magic moving through him, a fierce and jealous love, the desire of the hearts of dwarves. Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick.

I love this quote because it nails the reason why I love (good) fantasy fiction: It elevates your spirit and lifts you above the mundane. A well-told tale can stir the hearts of even the smallest, meekest fellows.

Quote of the day: Tolkien's vision of hope

"Sam struggled with his own weariness, and he took Frodo's hand; and there he sat silent till deep night fell. Then at last, to keep himself awake, he crawled from the hiding-place and looked out. The land seemed full of creaking and cracking and sly noises, but there was no sound of voice or of foot. Far above the Ephel Duath in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."

Quote of the day--Lord Dunsany

"And you that sought for magic in your youth but desire it not in your age, know that there is a blindness of spirit which comes from age, more black than the blindness of eye, making a darkness about you across which nothing may be seen, or felt, or known, or in any way apprehended."

--Lord Dunsany, The King of Elfland's Daughter

Why Tolkien is the man

"Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it."

--J.R.R. Tolkien

Everyone to some degree or another is in "prison." It may be a lousy job, poverty, a bad relationship, an unhappy social life, or the prison that encloses all mankind--frail bodies of flesh, our own mortal coil. Tolkien, a World War I veteran who saw several of his best friends die in the muddy trenches of France, and lived through World War II and the Nazi blitz, knew that as well as anyone.

But why should we put our heads down and accept banal realities? If you don' t like the look of your prison walls, choose another path. There are other worlds to explore. Tolkien didn't like the look of our own world, so he went ahead and created Middle-Earth. Although we cannot "see" this world and the worlds of our imagination with traditional senses, they are no less real than gray prison walls. They live within our minds and hearts, and as long as we pass down great works of art like The Lord of the Rings, are eternal.