A Fine Retelling: "The Squire, His Knight, & His Lady"

Book: The Squire, His Knight, & His Lady

Author: Gerald Morris

Pages: 229 (Hardcover)

Copy: Yolo County Library (I’m so glad my library has all these books!)

Read: Early July (this was my second reading; first read in Middle School)

Spoilers: a few hints, but nothing big

So here’s the second book in the “Squire’s Tales” series.  This book retells the medieval poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” with the addition of Terrance’s discovery of love.  It’s not a terrible retelling of the ancient poem, though it is a little boring in comparison.  Gone are all the delicate intricacies of the source material, replaced with clever dialogue and budding romance.  On the one hand, Morris has made Gawain’s experiences at the Green Temple a little more human, revealing Gawain’s depression and uncertainty, as well as Arthur’s sadness.  On the other hand, Morris dismisses the subtlety and intricate structure of the original (not that I can really see young readers putting up with the bob and wheel format of the poem or the masterful interlacing of the hunting and seduction scenes).

Overall, this story is better than The Squire’s Tale.  The plot is better thought out (probably because Morris had strong source material, but let’s not be mean) and the characters are as strong as ever.  The depiction of Eileen is, overall, very good, but I can’t help being a little annoyed by her.  She isn’t the cliché of a medieval woman, but she isn’t exactly modern either.  However, she has spirit, and she certainly seems a match for Terrance.

This book also dips into the painful romance between Lancelot and Guinevere.  I was a little excited to see how Morris would handle this famous love triangle, especially in the setting of a young adult novel.  I’d say he’s handled the affair well enough, especially in his depiction of Arthur.  Lancelot is annoying, as expected, and Guinevere isn’t exactly sympathetic, but Morris ties up all the lose ends well.  (It would have been nice if Morris had been really daring and got rid of Guinevere somehow, but I suppose we can’t expect him to completely rewrite the myths, especially since the love triangle is such a well-known aspect.)

This isn’t my favorite book of the series (so far the third book holds that honor), but this is definitely a good read.  More polished and better plotted than the first book, this story shows Morris’s growth as an author and his comfort with his material.  Morris is obviously deeply immersed in Arthurian legend and conveys his passion well.  He also integrates his own characters well with characters out of myth, a move that doesn’t always work.

I’d recommend this to anyone who liked the first book well enough.  This book might actually be a better place to start (maybe treat The Squire’s Tale as a prequel to read later as a way to fill in a few blanks?).  It’s a worthwhile read, and a great introduction to “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” (I’d recommend reading this book then digging up a good translation of the original poem, if only to see the subtle moves that Morris had to abandon in his retelling).  Overall, a good story, but once again: candy, not dinner.  Unless you dislike Lancelot.  If that’s the case, it’s catnip.

-Benvolia

Also Read:

Parsifal’s Page, Gerald Morris (16 July 2011)

Gawain Fan Club: "The Squire's Tale"

Book: The Squire’s Tale
Author: Gerald Morris
Pages: 209
Copy: Yolo County Library
Read: Early July
Spoilers: Nothing specific

When I first read this book in middle school, I was torn between enjoyment and a mild dislike. My second reading only deepened these feelings. The plot is okay, the characters perfectly depicted, the writing is pretty good, but it doesn’t all add up. I like the characters, especially Gawain. Everyone is memorable and vivid. The writing is snappy, with quick, clever dialogue and a good sense of humor. (There’s no swearing. Instead the author uses “By Gog” and “By Gad” which is a little too cute.) I think the biggest flaw of this novel is the plot.

The book runs along at a swift pace, bumping from one adventure to another without much rest or even reflection. Things just happen and the characters accept their adventures without wondering about what has just happened to them. The ending is particularly odd, almost as if the author had nearly forgotten to include this one last adventure and just threw it in at the end. It seems to me that the last adventure could have been the framing adventure for the whole book, with all the other little adventures occurring along the way. Instead, there are a series of adventures without much cohesion. The end is just too easy.

Perhaps Morris was trying to show how far his characters had evolved. Perhaps he was trying to show how much more powerful the various characters have become. Perhaps he just didn’t know how to end the book. I finished the book bemused, feeling as if half the book had been ripped out before I could finish reading.

For all that the weird plotting is an important issue for me, somehow it doesn’t destroy the whole book. I think that’s because the characters are so good and because the writing is interesting. If Morris had been slightly less clever, or taken Arthurian myths slightly more seriously, the book would be unreadable. As it is, this seems like a thinly disguised fan letter to Gawain, which isn’t at all bad. In fact, it’s wonderful.

Lancelot, I think, has taken over Arthurian myths. He lords it over all other knights and all other myths. He has become central to Arthur’s court and central to Arthur’s downfall. But not here. Here, Gawain is growing into the greatest of Arthur’s knights. Here, Lancelot hasn’t even arrived yet. Here, Gawain is the important one. And I think Gawain deserves the spotlight more than Lancelot. Gawain has flaws, but he still tries to be chivalrous. He knows what is expected of a knight, and what’s expected isn’t pretty clothes or shiny armor. It’s hard work, defeat, and sweat. I think Gawain is a better role model. Lancelot is just flimsy in comparison. (I’ll admit I’m getting ahead of myself here—Lancelot doesn’t show up in this series until the second book. But still. Even in this book you can tell that Gawain is a better knight than Lancelot.)

I’d recommend this book to kids mostly. It doesn’t quite hold up to the expectations of an adult—it just isn’t cohesive enough. That being said, it is enjoyable, so it isn’t impossible for an adult to read. (Just be patient.) This is a great introduction to Arthurian myths, especially if you want someone to like Gawain and not Lancelot. I can’t imagine that Lancelot fans like these books very much. The disdain is just too obvious. At any rate, read this book—it’s fun—but just don’t expect too much. This is candy, not dinner.

-Benvolia

Also read:
Deerskin, Robin McKinley, 29 June 2011
The Fourth Bear, Jasper Fford, 30 June 2011
The Squire, His Knight, & His Lady, 1 July 2011
The Savage Damsel and the Dwarf, 3 July 2011
Ready Player One, Ernest Cline (Advanced Reader; Publication Date: August 2011), 13 July 2011
Shatter Me, Tahereh Mafi (Advanced Reader; Publication Date: November 15, 2011),13 July 2011

Blood, Guts, Mayhem, Death...: “The Running Man”

Title: The Running Man (from The Bachman Books: Four Early Novels by Stephen King)
Author: Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman)
159 Pages (pages 533-692) (Hardcover)
Read: 27 June 2011
Spoilers: I go over the plot in scant detail but I don’t really give anything away


To begin with, this book is gory.  Really gory.  There’s blood, everywhere.  There are guts, flying.  There are gunshot wounds, which causes most of the blood and guts.  Having never read Stephen King, I can’t say if there is an unusual amount of blood and guts, but there seems to be quite a bit.  The story is fairly interesting, so getting over the gore seems worth it to me.  However, there is also racism, prostitution, anti-homosexual sentiments, and a screaming woman in distress.  So the worth of the novel is sort of a toss-up.


Stephen King writes in the introduction (a weirdly organized essay entitled “Why I Was Bachman” which is interesting but ultimately useless) to this collection that The Running Man “is nothing but story--it moves with the goofy speed of a silent movie, and anything which is not story is cheerfully thrown over the side.”  He seems rather proud of this assessment.  I think it’s perfectly true, but I’m not sure that it makes the story powerful or even particularly noteworthy.


The set-up is simple.  The masses are sedated by watching violent games on television; in many of these games (if not all, it’s hard to tell exactly) the contestants die.  Ben Richards, strapped for money (his cause is noble, of course), becomes a contestant on the most violent and bloody (and rigged) of the shows, The Running Man.  The story follows his attempt to overthrow the system.  Along the way, King makes room for a indictment of pollution and an exploration of class.


King discusses pollution in an interesting way, suggesting that the effects of pollution are felt by the poorest.  The wealthy are able to escape the negative effects of poisonous air and therefore don’t notice it anymore.  Furthermore, the government of The Running Man censors information about pollution and pollution levels, raising questions about the government’s involvement with environmental injustice.  I think he raises interesting points about pollution and environmental justice, but he discards the environmental question when it starts to take the novel over.  This weakens his argument some, as well as making pollution seem unimportant.  However, this depiction suggests, very powerfully, that environmental issues fade when a person is confronted with terrible personal trauma.  It is depressing, but seemingly accurate.  I think that if King had chosen to focus on the pollution issue he would have had a much more interesting and powerful novel.  As it is, he settled for an action story without any attempts at making it an “issue book.”


King’s discussion of class moves in and out of focus, but remains a theme throughout.  Obviously King has great sympathy and understanding for the suffering of the poor and unemployed and he does his best to uphold them as the better sort of person.  In some ways, this echoes Orwell’s use of proles in 1984, proles being considered the greatest hope for the future, a dream that is complicated by reality.  However, the ending of the novel doesn’t provide closure or even hope for the future.  King points out class issues without suggesting that the lower classes will ever be able to escape.


Interestingly, two of the lowest class characters are readers, suggesting that class can be escaped through education and imagination.  This vision does not work particularly well in the context of the novel.  Ben Richards is depicted as an action hero, but somehow it is necessary to see him also as a sensitive reader of novels.  The other major reader is a gang member, who belongs to a gang of...readers.  They sneak into the library to read about pollution and how the upper classes cope with poison air.  It’s a bizarre moment in the book, one that made me raise my eyebrows (not that I don’t think people should read).  I think reading is great, and I think everyone should sneak into their libraries to read about pollution.  The scenes just aren’t in keeping with the rest of the novel.  I think perhaps King wanted people to know how important reading is and didn’t work too hard on how to deliver that message.


I think this is a fair dystopian novel.  The novel is more about society than about politics, along the lines of Farhenheit 451 rather than 1984.  That being said, this isn’t the greatest dystopian novel ever written.  I think King was trying to take on racism, but he didn’t make his point strong enough.  He just comes across as possibly racist.  Further, he seems to be trying to fight against anti-gay sentiment, but he fails there too.  This isn’t to say that the book ought to have been longer.  The story would have lost its pop and suffered terribly if it were longer.  I just think King should have worked harder on making his argument stronger.


That being said, I’d recommend this to the same audience as Logan’s Run.  The stories are roughly similar (superhuman runs away from bad guys; there’s even a similar scene of claustrophobia), but Richards seems a little more interesting (perhaps because he’s 28 and not just 21) even as his situation seems a little less plausible.  This isn’t a book for the faint of heart or the easily upset.  This feels like a book that a non-reading teenager (I mean this as nicely as possible) would really like--there’s blood, the main character kicks ass, and a couple important issues are mentioned.  It isn’t boring, it isn’t slow, and it doesn’t stop in the middle for a complicated political discussion (ahem, 1984).


-Benvolia


Also read this week:
Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits, by Robin McKinley and Peter Dickinson (23 June 2011)
The Blue Sword, by Robin McKinley (27 June 2011)

Dystopian Books: "Logan's Run"

Title: Logan's Run
Authors: William Nolan and George Clayton Johnson
133 pages (Hardcover)
Copy: UC Davis library
Read: early June
Spoilers: several itty-bitty ones

Because I saw the film before I read Logan's Run, I had exceedingly low expectations.  The movie, while intriguing in some respects, has such bad acting that the film is nearly unwatchable--the female lead is particularly annoying--and the special effects are limited by technology.  I picked the book up with trepidation but a feeling of duty (I'm reading dystopian literature this summer in preparation for my Senior Honors Thesis).  I was surprised by the book and its intriguing view of the future.

This is a dystopia that explores the cult of youth so beloved by our modern society.  In this world, people are killed at 21 because society has decided that life after 21 is too horrible to contemplate.  Thus, the "ages of man" are skewed--a 16 year old, for instance, is considered a consenting adult.  Drugs and sex figure predominately in the early part of the book (rather similarly to Brave New World) and while people seem to have jobs, it is hard to know exactly what these jobs are.  The only clearly defined occupation is Logan's job as a Sandman, a sort of special policeman who pursues "runners," people who run away on their death day rather than submitting quietly.  The life stage of a member of this society is determined by a "flower" (some sort of jewel implanted in the hand) that changes color as part of its 21 year decomposition.

The book is slim and seems to be cut short.  The entire piece has the feel of a fairly detailed outline.  The action moves at an extraordinary pace and the time seems impossible (think compression along the lines of The Da Vinci Code).  Plus, injuries are fleeting which makes the novel seem more like an action TV series.  I have the feeling, though, that if the novel had been expanded any it would have become absolutely unbearable.  And, really, why bother to demand realism in a book of this nature?  Obviously the authors are caricaturing one aspect of culture and it seems that the fast, unrealistic pace could be part of the book's main philosophic thrust--face paced lives and a fast paced book.  It works fairly well.

I read the book to see how it depicts the environment.  I have to say, the characters in the novel have an interesting relationship to the natural world.  Nature is the way to freedom, but it is also out to kill them.  The novel depicts traveling through a cave-system with creepy success, elaborating on the claustrophobia of the characters and the disgusting creatures that live in the caves.  A sense of death pervades the scene, in a more or less realistic way.  The vague realism of the cave scene, however, is overwhelmed by later, more unrealistic scenes.  Later in the novel, Logan has a prolonged fight with a tiger.  The scene strikes me as incredibly odd.  The tiger hunts Logan and carries a grudge, finally attacking him in a decidedly abnormal fashion.  The scene is more anthropomorphic than real.  Ultimately, the final scene presents a firm denial of Earth, in a scene that is unexpected and out-of-place.  On the whole, the book seems to find nature dangerous and most likely lethal, and seems to think we'd all be better off without it.

Of course, the depiction isn't all that surprising.  Science fiction, in many ways, denies the value of Earth and upholds the value of technology.  There are science fiction novels that deal exclusively with nature, but they are a more recent development.  Still, if Logan's Run is placed alongside Fahrenheit 451, for instance, this extremely negative natural depiction becomes more striking.  I wonder if this negatively viewed environment is part of youth (perhaps the environment can't be seen or understood until one is older than 21) or merely a symptom of a societal separation from nature.  At any rate, it's a curious depiction.

I'd recommend this novel to anyone interested in the intense glorification of youth because Logan's Run has much to say about age and maturity.  I'll warn that there is sex, but not too detailed, and there is drug use.  There are also violent scenes (and sexually violent scenes) and questionable depictions of women.  Nevertheless, Logan's Run is an interesting dystopia, fast paced and intriguing.  It's definitely a product of its era, but it's still fairly relevant.  And it's way better than the movie, so don't be turned off from the novel if all you know about it is the film.  The book is more interesting and the film leaves a lot of the most thought-provoking parts out.

-Benvolia

Books for Summer: "Practical Magic"

Title: Practical Magic
Author: Alice Hoffman
244 pages (Hardcover)
Copy: Keene Public Library (Although, I have a copy somewhere in my parents' house.)
Read on: 15 June 2011 (I think I first read it in May or June of 2008, sitting out on the lawn, eating countless pastrami sandwiches. My aunt provided both the book and the pastrami and owned the lawn. It was the right kind of New England summer for it, too, just as it is through most of the book.)
Spoilers: 4ish

Every June, somewhere around solstice, I get the urge to read Practical Magic. Alice Hoffman has a very distinctive voice, one that feels very similar to mine. (No, this is not wholly hubris, people have remarked on the similarity, especially in regards to her work Ice Queen) It is a voice that combines the simplicity of a fairy tale with something much more complex, adult, and ultimately realistic. Practical Magic showcases this voice in the story of the Owens sisters, who encounter almost every kind of love.


I'm usually a little bitter about books about sisters. Sisterhood is much more complicated than books make it seem, especially the books that feature "friends so close they are like sisters". (I have a lot of very dear friends, but I would never wish on them the extremely mixed blessing of being my sister.) Equally as aggravating and inaccurate are the books that take the other direction and feature books about sisters that destroy each others' lives (see, for example, the first three parts of In Her Shoes, by Jennifer Weiner, now a major motion picture! as of five years ago). 

But Hoffman maintains a lovely balance and each set of sisters in the novel is believable as sisters. Three generations of Owens sisters, all of then with varying degrees of magical powers, all learn from themselves and from their family how to love. They learn to love each other as sisters, as nieces, as daughters, and mothers, and aunts. With the exception of the elder aunts, who are content in remembering their lost loves, they learn to love the men who wander precipitously into their lives. Almost missing from the novel is fatherly love. Sally and Gillian--the main set of Owens sisters--are orphans. Sally's husband dies early in the novel and in their relationship, leaving the novel without a true father figure. 

Despite this minor flaw, this remains one of my favorite summer reads. I'd recommend it for anyone with sisters. Or anyone in a long term relationship. Or anyone between long term relationships. It is a novel that inspires love, second chances. The last phrase of the novel says it all: "Fall in love as often as possible". Fall in love with the book, if not anything else. 


-Mercutia