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language: English
country: UK
year: 1938
form: novel
genre(s): fantasy
series: The Once and Future King, #1
dates read: 8.6.21-10.6.21, 4.3.24-8.3.24
I reread T.H. White’s The Sword in the Stone this week (technically I read the standalone version for the first time and then went back to the ant and goose lessons in the version in The Once and Future King) and I don’t know why I only gave this 3.25 stars on Storygraph when I read it for the first time? it’s obviously a flawed novel — principally, it’s very taken with its nostalgic and highly revisionist vision of “Old England.” but it’s also doing — or at least attempting — a bunch of very compelling things, most notably a critique (however partial) of the mainstream conception of Englishness, of “aristocratic values,” and of war. it does still accept the premise that there is an essential Englishness (and that this is fundamentally good), but it does better on the aristocracy and war fronts.
on rereading I was struck, especially, by this description of Kay as —
He was not at all an unpleasant person really, but clever, quick, proud, passionate and ambitious. He was one of those people who would be neither a follower nor a leader, but only an aspiring heart, impatient in the failing body which imprisoned it.
first of all in its own right and second of all by the contrast between this characterization of Kay — trapped between his ambition and his inability to realize it — and this characterization of Arthur:
Besides he admired Kay and was a born follower. He was a hero-worshipper.
I am obsessed with this. Arthur was a born follower. even at the end, everything he does is from his hopeless and gay devotion to Kay, undeserving (and too conscious of this) and miserable in himself.
(having looked back at my livetexting from 2021 I see that in the version in The Once and Future King there’s more weird feudal apologism, which is definitely why I gave it a lower rating.)
moods: adventurous, lighthearted, reflective