The Sword in the Stone

[redbird]

cattitude read me T. H. White's The Sword in the Stone, at a chapter or part-chapter at a time, before bed. We finished last night (the very last chapter is short, so he folded it in with the penultimate).

Basically, this is the story of King Arthur's upbringing and education. In this version, he's fostered by Sir Ector, lord of the Forest Sauvage; everyone knows that Ector's son, Kay, will become a knight, and Arthur, called "Wart", won't, but gets basically the same education. There's some discussion, early, of what sort of education to give the boys, and whether the roads are safe enough to send them to Eton--and then Wart goes out and finds Merlin to be their tutor.

Many adventures are had. The story wanders back and forth across time; late in the book the narrative voice says something like "in the fifteenth century, or whenever it was"--horribly late for Arthur, and late for Robin Hood, Marian, and all, who the boys have a fine adventure with and who wander back into the story occasionally. The entire thing is a festival of anachronism: not only are the characters pulled from various points of English legend, but there's no definable tech level, and just about everyone talks like late Victorian or Edwardian English people, down to complaining about the Bolshevists. It's deliberate and effective humor, not the bad anachronism of an author who doesn't realize that the past is a foreign country.

White does a good job with the characters. I particularly like Merlin, Wart, Archimedes, and the Questing Beast, and have been getting fonder of Sir Ector as the story proceeds. On the other hand, I keep interrupting the story to make rude remarks about some of the characters, notably King Pelenor, who should have more sense in a variety of ways.

The book ends at a tournament, held as a combination of festival-for-its-own-sake and to seek the heir of the dead king Uther Pendragon. Kay has just been knighted and Wart is now formally his squire: Kay forgets his sword, sends Wart after it, wacky hijinks ensue, and Wart discovers that he's to be king, a thought that fills him rather with dismay than glee.


Now we need to select a next reading-aloud book: even if we had it, Cattitude informs me that The Once and Future King isn't nearly as good.

(I'd thought of going back and editing my previous post, but disabling comments means I can't get to the "edit post" page.)

Edited to add: Thanks for all the suggestions; a necessary qualification is "something Cattitude has already read", so we're probably better off with old favorites than with anything new or obscure.

Comments

Thanks.

[redbird]

Yes it does, and now given it's fairly straightforward: that is, I know how to get the itemid, and thus to put it together.

If I'm really lucky, I'll remember this if I ever need to edit a "no-comments" item again.

Re: Thanks.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

I didn't know what the blue pencil meant until I needed to edit an entry in a community this summer. I always used the link 'Edit entries' on the side-bar ('Most recent/Last 20')...

Yes, SinS is wonderful - I started reading it in German when I was studying that language, also marvellous :-)