The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) Paperback – Deckle Edge, December 30, 2008

My first reaction to the book was utter surprise. I was reasonably aware of Steinbeck. I used to love hanging out in Cannery Row. But I had never heard of Steinbeck writing a King Arthur story. It wasn’t something that would be good for her to read, but possibly something I could read to my daughter (who was struggling to learn to read). I opened the book and began reading its introduction. These were Steinbeck’s very first words:“Some people there are who,being grown, forget the horribletask of learning to read. It isperhaps the greatest single effortthat the human undertakes, andhe must do it as a child.”His opening words floored me. I continued. These were the very next words:“An adult is rarely successful in the undertaking – the reduction of experience to a set of symbols. For a thousand thousand years these humans have existed and they have only learned this trick – this magic – in the final ten thousand of the thousand thousand.I do not know how usual my experience is, but I have seen in my children the appalled agony of trying to learn to read. They, at least, have my experience.I remember that words – written or printed – were devils, and books, because they gave me pain, were my enemies.“I remember thinking to myself, how could a Nobel Prize winner for writing have ever thought of written words as “devils” and “enemies” or as the cause of “appalled agony”? I kept reading the introduction. Steinbeck went on:“Some literature was in the air around me. The Bible I absorbed through my skin. My uncles exuded Shakespeare, and Pilgrim’s Progress was mixed with my mother’s milk. But these things came into my ears. They were sounds, rhythms, figures. Books were printed demons – the tongs and thumbscrews of outrageous persecution. And then one day, an aunt gave me a book and fatuously ignored my resentment. I stared at the black print with hatred, and then, gradually, the pages opened and let me in. The magic happened. The Bible and Shakespeare and Pilgrim’s Progress belonged to everyone. But this was mine. It was a cut version of the Caxton Morte d’ Arthur of Thomas Mallory.”I had chills. He was describing the vast gulf between learning by listening to words and learning to read written words. He was describing a kind of Helen Keller moment when learning a code suddenly opens up a new universe. He was calling written words (not oral ones), the “tongs and thumbscrews of outrageous persecution“.Steinbeck went on to share that the reason the book “clicked” was its orthography:“I loved the old spelling of words.““The very strangeness of the language dyd me enchante, and vaulted me into an ancient scene.”“Perhaps a passionate love for the English Language opened to me from this one book.”As I continued reading the introduction, I learned that it was this book’s old English spelling (like Helen Keller’s “water” code moment) that clicked with his mind and launched Steinbeck’s life as a reader and writer. Finally writing made sense to him and it opened him to all he became as a master of English. In the later stages of his life, when reminded of the “horrible task of reading” by his own children, he wrote this story, partly to honor the story that changed his life, and partly to leave for other kids a modern adaptation of the great story of King Arthur.This book was one of the triggers that led to the "children of the code" project.

Here is John Steinbeck's unfinished but beautifully told cycle of King Arthur, with letters to his researcher and editor. Whatever discouraged the great American author from finishing this work is not clear. He retells the stories of Arthur and the knights of the round table from Mallory's La Morte d'Arthur, but with the freshness and frankness that vintage Steinbeck, including his reverence for the stories and lives of the people. Perhaps this is what bothered Steinbeck during the process. He was hoping for something new, and yet began to feel (as we see in his letters to his editor) that he was just writing in the "same old way".John Steinbeck's correspondence with his researcher (Chase Horton) and with his literary agent (Elizabeth Otis), written between 1957 and 1959 for the most part, is an important feature of this volume. Here we understand the process and the method of this soon-to-be-nominiated Nobel Laureate. Of equal interest is the forward by the youthful Christopher Paolini, who sees Steinbeck's work as falling into the realm of fantasy literature, or the beginnings of it. I don't think social-activist author from Salinas Valley would have become a fantasy author, but he was ever a lover of folk culture and popular traditions (cf. "The Pearl", "The Virgin of Guadalupe"). His letters to his editor and researcher demonstrate his seriousness in honoring the traditions while bringing them to speak to new, American generations.Did Steinbeck find the task overwhelming? His letters hint of this. He worked seriously right through the Autumn of 1959 and into the start of 1960. What we don't see in the book (and which we have no way of substantiating) is that in 1960, when John F. Kennedy was elected President of the United States, the media and the White House compared the new presidency to a new Camelot (à la Lerner and Lowe musical hit). Could this have banalized or politicized the Arthurian legend in a way that Steinbeck did not want to touch it? I do not know... but knowing Steinbeck's work and works, I am willing to speculate that the glamour and glitter of the New Camelot will have been off-putting to the author of "Grapes of Wrath" and "East of Eden". America was changing, and he knew it. While the evidence of this books shows him in Somerset in 1959, we know very well that in 1960 John Steinbeck left his home and set off with is pet poodle Charlie to re-discover America (cf. "Travels with Charlie"). He was not happy with what he found, and maybe this new, glamorized, superficial America had something to do with his putting down his much cherished project on the Arthurian legends. American culture was degenerating, he felt, and he considered this a national tragedy (cf. "Winter of our Discontent").Steinbeck fan that I am, I am sorry that he did not complete his project to re-present the Arthurian legend, but I am very grateful that the editors have released his work for us to read and enjoy.