"The Once And Future King" Discuss Everything *Spoilers*

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

As our scifi book got an early spoiler thread, it's only fair that OaFK does too.

First, I know I've likely scared some folks away from criticizing this book. Please don't ignore your experience because of mine! I want to hear about it! I want to hear everything you thought.

Some discussion questions to start us off:

1. Which "book" was your favorite/least favorite?
2. Did you expect the book to be like this? What surprised you most?
3. Did the change in tone work for you? What did that change convey to you?
4. What themes or messages did you think this book touched on?
5. Overall impressions!

Note: This is a previous BR thread, so there are some spoiler tags. Spoiler tags should not be used for the group read discussion from here on out!

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Reasons why you should join us:

-It's a classic. A delightful book of romance and violence, friendship and distrust, swords, magic, talking beasts and scuba divers. What's not to love?

-For most westerners at least, this season can be frustrating. People stop behaving with any sense of logic and get all tied up in bizarre factions. OaFK offers insight into why this might be.

-It's got Christmas scenes, which again, feels somewhat festive. (Pay no attention to the fact that some of the Christmases are decidedly not festive.)

-There are talking animals, one who writes a dissertation on the primacy of Man!

-It's my all time favorite book*. I know this one doesn't seem as relevant as the others, but as I am persistent and rather strident, it may just be easier to cave, read the damn book, and then remind me that you read my favorite book, so now it's time to return the favor. I don't really have a come back for that, so I guess you win.

*Don't worry if it is NOT your favorite book! I realize I found it at a pivotal time in my life. You've likely already reached that pivot. It's fine. I just wanna have whole posts about Lance and Gwen and Arthur, even if you think they should all jump off a cliff and have done with it.

[Beth]

I'll read along! Looking forward to your posts.

[Sarah]

This has been sitting on my kindle for months waiting for me to read it. I’m going to try and jump in too!

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Woot!

[Francisca]

Sweet! I just finished my last book (well one of my books... why read one when you can read three?) so I'll be joining you guys! I haven't read this in AGES so all I remember is loving it :D

[Cheryl]

I seem to recall reading the first part of it in high school, lo these many decades past, and enjoying it. However, I've despised everything Arthurian since. I'll try this....

[Ashley in Wonderland]

Can’t wait!

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

I just accidentally re-read the first three chapters.

(view spoiler)[What do you think of the Wart's first quest? and the friends he meets? (hide spoiler)]

[Dj]

Allison wrote: "I just accidentally re-read the first three chapters.

[spoilers removed]"

I used to do that quite a bit, I find it one of the nice things about the Kindle, I generally don't reread anything anymore. Well unless I feel the need.

[Ashley in Wonderland]

I’m only three chapters in so far, but I’m loving it. There’s so much silliness. I was giggling out loud at the white knight, and I had forgotten how much I love Archimedes.

(I’m sorry, I don’t know if those are spoilers or not, but I don’t know how to hide spoilers.)

[Sarah]

Edited: sorry phone is acting up! Hey Ashley, I don’t really think they are spoilers! But I think the group has had a discussion about it and it means something different to everyone.

If you want to hide spoilers though all you have to do is type < spoiler> before and < /spoiler> after without the spaces.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Ashley, agreed! It starts off so very lovely ^^

[Ashley in Wonderland]

Sarah wrote: "Edited: sorry phone is acting up! Hey Ashley, I don’t really think they are spoilers! But I think the group has had a discussion about it and it means something different to everyone.

If you want ..."

Thank you!

[J.W.]

Definitely following and diving in. I read this the first time two years ago. Now I’ll be listening to the audiobook. It’ll take a long time.

[Cheryl]

Ok, I got my copy from the library. Now to work down to it from my multiple other group reads!

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Cheryl wrote: "Ok, I got my copy from the library. Now to work down to it from my multiple other group reads!"

You've got ambition and a plan! I like it!

You're on a quest now :)

[Cheryl]

:chuckle:

So, pre-reading question: Are stories with 'quests' kin to one another? I'm thinking Arthurian 'romances' and Tolkien and Don Quixote....

Or are they each their own story and genre first, like fantasy vs. satire? I'm thinking of all the people who call "Children's" or "Non-Fiction" genres, not realizing how impossibly broad those classifications are.

Thoughts??

[Francisca]

I’m about 17 chapters in - this beginning is really delightful. I’d have loved to have been “educated” by Merlin and Archimedes is charming. There are also some great one-liners sprinkled throughout and the quirky mix of “authentic” Norman life with anachronistic touches really works.

(view spoiler)[ Where I am Merlin has already turned Arthur, sorry the Wart, into a fish, a merlin, an ant, and is about to try out a bird. Each animal seems to be a comment on different societies - the hierarchical but kindly military society of the falcons, the militaristic and draconian life of ants, etc. It’ll be interesting to see how these weave through the future chapters.

I also find the mechanism of Merlin’s “insight and backsight really interesting: it give White a way to hint at what’s to come without really spoiling the effect.

Also I never thought I’d be so terrified of ants! (hide spoiler)]

[Francisca]

Cheryl - I sort of put Arthurian stories into their own category - it’s fascinating how with the same basic story line so many authors have written such different books! (This is definitely my favorite of them.) I think depending on the author, some influences pop out more than others - certainly Tolkien was very influenced by mythology (esp Nordic) but I don’t think I’d clump him in with the Arthurian crowd.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

"The best thing for being sad is to learn something." I get so much joy out of all of the little lessons. I'll try to catch up err...maybe tonight.

Cheryl--I tend to consider Arthurian legend its own thing since it's so iconic and widespread. Is it a political thriller? A romance? An epic battle? An adventure fantasy? A folktale/myth? I think what almost all of them have in common is the "hero's journey" as theorized by Joseph Campbell. Harry Potter, Arthur, Belgarion, Quixote, Pinocchio, Hercules...they are all in that same vein of passing from boy to legend. But I don't think I'd say they're all like one another genre-wise so much as structurally similar.

[Beth]

Love the ants! I will start this soon - tonight I think - just need to finish Woman in the Nineteenth Century first. The GR page for this book gives the full quotation from Allison's post - I love this one:

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

I think of this line every time my girl cat looks at my spouse, or I see little children at Comic Con meeting their favorite characters. (From Ch. 5) (view spoiler)[". It was nice for the dogs to have their god with them, in visible form." (hide spoiler)]

[Francisca]

Beth wrote: "Love the ants! I will start this soon - tonight I think - just need to finish Woman in the Nineteenth Century first. The GR page for this book gives the full quotation from Allison's ..."

I loved that quote! I keep wanting to highlight giant passages.

I just finished Chapter 21, and I sort of want to sit and savor it a bit. (view spoiler)[ I found the badger and the wild geese the most interesting of all the animals. I really liked his take on the creation myth. And I love how TH White just leaves you thinking through what it is that Arthur is supposed to be learning - accentuated by the fact that this chapter ends with a question, however leading it is. (hide spoiler)]. It's obviously inevitable, but I'm sort of sad that the Wart is growing up.

[Brenda]

You should know that the OaFK is actually a fix-up, made up of several books that had originally bee published separately. These were:
The Sword in the Stone
The Ill-Made Knight
The Witch in the Wood

You can actually get these separate volumes, if you scout around on Abe books or ebay, and it's instructive to compare them to the OaFK. White extensively rewrote the shorter works to stick them together into the combined volume, and left out lots of stuff. He also added the last section, The Candle In The Wind for the big book. The odd volume that came out separately, The Book of Merlyn, was published after his death and has lots of bits that were included in the main book.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Oh, cool, I hadn't realized the individual books had been edited that much! I'll have to go hunting.

[[deleted user]]

This is by far the best way to confront the King Arthurs legend. While B Cornwell's Warlords trilogy is teh best historical approach

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

What's bizarre for me is that I don't actually care for the legend overmuch. I just love this book.

[J.W.]

I forgot how humorous the first book is. I love all the little jokes and asides. However, as is often the case when I read fantasy books, I feel there are too many songs. I’m sure that’s just my own endurance level.

How awesome is that scene with the wizard/witch duel, btw? Amazing.

[Ade]

I took some influence from this one for a recent gamelit attempt 'Fountellion', in which a virtual world filled with Artificial Life illuminates connections with nature. Players get to transform into animals.

TH White book is the classic. But I must say both Disney and Excalibur movies were great fun in their own unique ways, thankfully.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

J.w. wrote: "I forgot how humorous the first book is. I love all the little jokes and asides. However, as is often the case when I read fantasy books, I feel there are too many songs. I’m sure that’s just my ow..."

Are you listening to it? I just thought of the songs as poems sprinkled in, like the bits at the beginning of the different books. But also I know that many people feel the songs are a bit much, so you're not alone by any stretch!

[Francisca]

I finished book 1 and am taking a pause - mostly because I feel like sitting with the badger scene for a little longer. I seemed to have remembered most of the jokes, and forgotten some of the more poignant scenes of the book: (view spoiler)[ I've also been mulling a lot over the scene where the Wart tells Merlin he would do his knighthood vigil alone and try to defeat "all evil" or suffer the consequences on himself (hide spoiler)]. From what Brenda said about TH White re-writing a lot of this book, I wonder if a lot of the moments were Merlin tears up, presumably thinking about the future - they felt like foreshadowing sprinkled throughout.

...which relates to my other reason to pause: I always feel a little reluctant to keep going (view spoiler)[ knowing how everything ends... the beginning of book 2 already feels darker in tone (hide spoiler)].

J.w. wrote: "How awesome is that scene with the wizard/witch duel, btw? Amazing."

I spent the whole of book one waiting for that scene and it never came. I thought I had remembered it wrong, but I wonder the edition I'm reading is abridged! I think I may go hunt up a paper copy to check...

[Cheryl]

Done w/ first book in the mm pb, no duel....

It's confusing if we're reading different books....
Does the audio sing the songs?
Is anyone reading the original three books, as explained by Brenda above?

[Francisca]

Cheryl wrote: "I have three pp left in the mm pb, no duel....

It's confusing if we're reading different books....
Does the audio sing the songs?
Is anyone reading the original three books, as explained by Brend..."

I wonder if it's in the original The Sword in the Stone, but not in the reconstructed anthology. I do vividly remember the scene from the Disney movie, which might be based on the stand alone version.

[Brenda]

Yes, remember that the SintheS is a separate and longer work. Also, it is more popular than the other original novels, precisely because of the Disney version. If you remember an episode or event and it isn't there, it's back in the longer original version. White cut everything -hard- to put them together into OandFK. Which actually is to the good. If you go read THE WITCH IN THE WOOD you can see how loosey and goosey it is, full of White's patent digressions and side trips.
In toe longer and original SintheS I loved the food castle's temptations. The black ice cream servers singing "Way down in side the large intestine, far, far away/ There's where the ice cream cones are restin', there's where the eclairs stay."

[Francisca]

Haha, well it’s comforting to know I’m not completely losing my memory! I may also go and try to find at least the original Sword in the Stone later. :) Thanks for the background Brenda!

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

The Maid Marian of this story is just so badass. I want to be here when I grow up, except with electricity and running water.

[Francisca]

Allison wrote: "The Maid Marian of this story is just so badass. I want to be here when I grow up, except with electricity and running water."

Yes!! I used to ride around on my bike pretending to be her as a kid, haha. I’d read a whole book about TH White’s Robin Hood (sorry, Wood 😉 ) and Marian, if it existed 😊

[J.W.]

I’m not listening to the individual books but rather the all-in-one. Unsure if they made multiple editions of it or what.

I keep seeing “spoilers removed” in some of these comments; are we going to have a spoiler-full comment?

The songs are kind of pseudo-sung on the audio. The reader does a good job with them, I’ve just never been a big fan of lengthy and multiple songs in books. I guess I did always read the whole things in the Redwall series though.

I’m getting close to the end of book 1, I think.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

J.W., the longstanding rule has been to have one thread per book except for group books. It just gets very confusing when there are multiple threads going around. So, unfortunately, that means we have to watch out for spoilers. If you log in to the website through the internet as opposed to the app you can view the spoilers.

And yeah, having someone sing the songs seems like it'd mess up the flow a bit.

[Francisca]

Well I zipped through book 2 and am now lingering at the beginning of book 3.

(view spoiler)[ There's a bit less humor in this one than the first book (though I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry over the poor Lothrian boys!) and was a bit jumpy with the different perspectives/people, though it works in an odd way. White's Morgause is so self-centered and capricious: that scene where she's trying to find the bone to become invisible and then just gives up halfway through! :o And even though you know it's coming, the end is a bit dramatic, in a hurried, let's move along now, fashion...

And of course, I loved the conversation where Arthur starts to figure out what he ought to do for himself and all the subsequent conversations (the table discussion is great!). And the whole subplot where Grummore & Co dress up as the Questing Beast! :D (hide spoiler)]

[Beth]

I had completely forgotten that Arthur's first time being turned into an animal (a fish) introduced the "Might is Right" thing. (chapter 5 - the king of the tench says "Power of the body decides everything in the end, and only Might is Right.") An interesting bit of foreshadowing.

I've never listened to the audio, but I do like audiobooks so maybe I will listen to it some other time. (It is one of my favorites, I think. I don't really have one favorite book.) I've just finished Book II. I agree with everything you said Francisca. The Orkney boys are great characters.

I knew that this edition was a fix-up but I didn't know the title of "The Witch in the Wood" - I guess that's the same as "The Queen of Air & Darkness" (referring to Morgause), right?

Hmm, I thought I would have more to say. Maybe later.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

I just got to the part in Ch. 14 where Sir Ector is expecting (view spoiler)[the hunt master to show up (hide spoiler)]. It makes me chuckle still how overdramatic he is. He'd be so cartoonish except that the first book is all so whimsical that he feels quite natural to me.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Poor Merlin XD (Ch 20 book 1)

(view spoiler)[ "Why do people not think, when they are grown up, as I do when I am young?"
"Oh dear," said Merlyn. "You are making me feel confused. Suppose you wait till you are
grown up and know the reason?"
"I don't think that is an answer at all," replied the Wart, justly. " (hide spoiler)]

[Cheryl]

I found an early (first?) edition of The Sword In The Stone in my library system and it's glorious. So much was cut for the omnibus. I don't have time/energy to read it now, but I did skim through the wizard vs. witch duel and that was fun. I love the endaper illustration by Robert Lawson. And the 'decorations' by the author are actually illustrations in their own right, and quite charming. I highly recommend it.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Cheryl wrote: "I found an early (first?) edition of The Sword In The Stone in my library system and it's glorious. So much was cut for the omnibus. I don't have time/energy to read it now, but I d..."

I do need a new copy, and I think I'm 'bout to get convinced to get the four separate books instead. And there are illustrations?!

I feel completely robbed!

[Cheryl]

yup!

[Ashley in Wonderland]

I feel guilty for being behind, especially since I suggested the buddy read! But I've just FINALLY finished book 1, and I'm having so much fun with it! I'm really loving everyone's comments too!

In the Disney movie, the scenes where Wart was turned into different animals were always my favorites, and the same with the book. I especially LOVED the badger and the geese. And I've always known ants were belligerent. I feel like I'm learning so much too. :) (view spoiler)[The badger's lesson about Man was great, and I was completely fascinated by Merlyn's explanation of the origins of bird language. I was so sad for Wart when Merlyn left him and so elated when Sir Ector sent him back to him as a gift (along with all his other gifts - like the fewmets from Pellinore and the Beast, and Archimedes' great-great-grandson :D :D ). (hide spoiler)] And so many great quotes and words of wisdom. I'm kicking myself for not having read this a long time ago. Along with my childhood favorites The Neverending Story and Harry Potter, it would've fit in so nicely.

I'm also upset to find out mine is an edited version. I'll definitely be looking to get the full versions soon.

[Brenda]

No one has reprinted THE WITCH IN THE WOOD or THE ILL-MADE KNIGHT, probably for good reason. White's great weakness as a writer was digression; he'd wander off into the distance and not come back to the point for yonks. By editing them for the fix-up White shed a lot of stuff and made the entire work stronger.

You can get a good look into the process by looking at the freestanding original SWORD IN THE STONE and comparing it to the tighter version in OAFK. A lot of sections that had great charm were bobbed out. But did they -help-? Actually, no.

[Ashley in Wonderland]

I’m three chapters into book 2, and I’m in love with Merlyn’s wisdom. Have any of you read The Book of Merlyn and if so, what is it like?