The Queen Who Would Not Stay Buried

Some books are read; others are returned to, the way one returns to a house where something important once happened. White's Arthuriad is the second kind. I first read it at fourteen, missed nearly everything, and loved it anyway — which may be the most honest review it has ever received.

What strikes me on this reading is how little the book cares for its own myth. Arthur is not a legend here but a boy being educated out of his instincts, one animal at a time. The famous transformations — fish, ant, goose — are not whimsy. They are a curriculum, and the lesson is always the same: look how power organises itself, and ask who pays.

The best thing for being sad is to learn something.

Merlyn's line is quoted everywhere, usually as comfort. In context it is closer to a prescription written by a doctor who knows the disease is terminal. Learning does not save Arthur. It only lets him see clearly what he cannot prevent — which, White seems to argue, is the whole dignity available to us.

Read it again if you have not lately. Bring a pencil.