The Matter of Britain
An old saw of writing (novels, movies, TV, whatever) holds that there are only so many stories, and we’ve told them all already, and it’s just a matter of how you tell them. This is a resolutely cynical thing to say, of course, and partially reliant on a loose definition of “the same story.” (There’s a David Eddings anecdote, possibly apocryphal, about a movie producer who simplied all stories to Goldilocks or Cinderella. He’d buy Goldilocks, but he wouldn’t buy Cinderella.) But it’s true that there can be pleasure in a retold story, and that extends beyond archetypes like the ones our possibly-imaginary producer was discussing.
For one, I pretty much never get tired of reading retellings of the story of King Arthur, or if you will, the Matter of Britain. It’s pretty much at the heart of a whole genre/set of stories/trope-generation machine that I grew up with, and for all that knights in shining armor ought well to be played out after eight to fifteen centuries of this, there’s just so much going on there. There’s a certain line storytellers walk between “new and interesting” and “familiar enough to care about,” and a story like Arthur’s can sit right on the line. It doesn’t matter if you already know how the journey ends, if getting there is fun.
An entire examination of the genre of Arthurian literature, of course, is a thing of actual scholarship, not a blog section devoted primarily to “books with dragons and spaceships on the cover.” But pithy reviews of a handful of significant Arthurian fantasy novels? Sure, why the hell not? For the sake of brevity, I’m going to stick with “books that tell the general story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table,” as opposed to stuff inspired by or taking place in the world of same. (Shout-out to Guy Gavriel Kay’s Fionavar Tapestry here, though; go check it out, it’s good stuff.)
The Once and Future King, by TH White: yeah, this is the gold standard, the book that pretty much codified the whole King Arthur thing for the 20th century. It’s also probably my favorite single novel of all time, starting with a children’s fairytale told with dry, irreverent, oh-so-very-English humor and slowly weaving in the essential tragedy of the story. The basic conceit – that the tale of Arthur is the true history of Britain and people like the Plantagenets are the myths and legends – is so sharp that it’s almost a shame how good and legendary this book is, locking the trope out for everyone else. It’s kind of a waste of time to “review” a classic like this; I’m just pointing out that any experience of the Matter of Britain should start here, and so far for me, that’s where it comes all the way back around to end, with probably the most powerful closing line I’ve yet to read.
The Mists of Avalon, by Marrion Zimmer Bradley and The Pendragon Cycle, by Steven Lawhead: I always lump these two together in my head as two tremendously successful retellings that are essentially at odds with each other. Mists, of course, needs no introduction; it turned the whole genre on its head. The Cycle reads almost as a reaction; instead of fairy-tale otherworldliness, Mr. Lawhead drops an Atlantis-tinged fantasy into the center of accepted British history; against Mists’ mother-goddess paganism, the Cycle filters the story through a lens of Christian civilization (a primary theme when the myths were popularized in 12th-century France & England.) Of the two, I think Mists succeeds better, with more compact storytelling and believable characters; of course, you have to mention that while it seems yawn-worthy now, telling the story through Morgaine Le Fay was a hell of a thing. The fact remains, though, that neither Mists not the Cycle are particularly well-written, with page after page of purple prose and affected dialogue. You can give them both some leeway for being written (or at least begun, in the Cycle‘s case) back in the 1980s, sort of a banner time for florid spec-fic; even so, they can be a slog. Mists of Avalon is well worth reading for the importance, but Pendragon Cycle is best left to the completist.
The Warlord Chronicles, by Bernard Cornwell: Mr. Cornwell, of course, is best known for his Sharpe books, in which a British soldier fights the Napoleonic Wars until he sinks enough French ships to be promoted to Sean Bean. They’re gritty blunt-force kind of novels, favored by military history wonks, and Mr. Cornwell brings that readable, workmanlike quality to his retelling of the Matter of Britain, founded thoroughly in the annals of Dark Age British history. There’s a lot of neat tidbits – for instance, Chronicles’ Lancelot is a scheming braggart, and the portrayal of Arthur as a long-suffering regent is a good way to tackle the eternal question of why he gives the villainous Mordred any authority to begin with – but grounding the story in the dirt and blood of actual history raises a couple of issues. The first is that some factually based events, like a battle fought between two Celtic shield walls, are just too goddamn stupid (although accurate!) to make good reading; the second is that the Matter of Britain is a mythology, and stripping it of that strips it of much that makes it good reading. Still, three well-written books.
The Wicked Day, by Mary Stewart: I should note that Mrs. Stewart wrote five Arthurian novels, mostly concerning Merlin the wizard and the various things he got up to before and while putting his protege on the throne. These are not at all bad books, at least what I’ve read at them, but they’re not what this article is talking about. The Wicked Day, on the other hand, tears through the majority of Arthur’s reign in a single book, and all from the perspective of that misbegotten malcontent Mordred, growing up in the hands of Arthur’s half-sister and bitter enemy. Mordred grows up brilliant, confused, and in over is head, eventually going with his half-brothers to the court of his father and getting caught up in the politics that send all involved teetering towards the tragedy of the book’s titular climax. Mrs. Stewart’s Mordred, as it turns out, is a pretty good guy – maybe too good, as a well-written villain is one of reading’s great pleasures. (I should note that the Mordred of Mists of Avalon is one of the best things about that book.) His Scottish brothers, the fractious Gawaine & co., are more interesting, and overall the book stands alone fairly well without needing to read the Merlin-related novels that precede it. It’s got more than a hint of “what could have been” to it, though.
The Pendragon, Catherine Christian: I had never, ever heard of this book before coming across it in a used bookstore one day. I’d never heard of Ms. Christian either, who primarily made her living writing stuff for the UK’s equivalent of the Girl Scouts, and so I was pretty thrilled to find out that Pendragon (yeah, there’s limited title potential) is one of the great hidden treasures of the Arthurian genre. Written in 1978, it places the reins of storytelling in the hands of Bedivere, Arthur’s oft-overlooked boyhood chum, and lets him go. Ms. Christian is good with prose, but it’s her terrifically adept storytelling that takes center stage, wearing in the key events of the mythos without stretching belief as to how Bedwyr manages to encounter so many of them. Pendragon bridges the fine divide between “knights in shining armor consorting with wizards and sorceresses” and “grody British tribesmen killing each other in the dirt” in a way that few other examples of the genre do, and plays with the expected outcomes just enough to keep things interesting while not just outright changing them. I can’t recommend it heartily enough.
Arthur Rex: A Legendary Novel, by Thomas Berger: I’m not gonna lie, this is straight-up one of the weirdest books about King Arthur you will ever read. Mr. Berger is best known as the author of Little Big Man and generally made his living dipping into various genres to subvert their tropes, poke at their conceits, and generally have a good, irreverent time. Rex is no exception, told in the grand high style of most translations of Thomas Malory’s 15th century Arthurian codifier, and giving the whole story a thorough skewering, but with obvious affection. It’s hard to tell sometimes where Mr. Berger is kidding and where he’s playing it straight, but that’s part of the fun of the read. One of the things I enjoy most about Rex (besides the laughs) is the attention it gives Gawaine, another character in the Arthurian mythos who’s been given short shrift by history. Myself, I blame the French – did you know Lancelot didn’t even exist until the 12th century? Anyway, Gawaine (usually regarded as the most human, failure-prone, and therefore interesting of Arthur’s knights) is given pride of place in this particular retelling, and that excuses a whole lot of too-clever weirdness on my part. I recommend reading it at least for the experience.
So that’s a handful of noteworthy books about King Arthur and the folks who surrounded him, out of dozens of not hundreds of others. Your turn, numerous and attractive readership. Disagree with my take? Got your own recommendation for fans of all things Round Table? Drop ‘em in the comment box. I’m always looking for more to read.
