a sudden disappointment in T. H. White
Nov. 13th, 2005 07:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunrabThe Once and Future King has always been one of my favorite books. For those of you who haven't read it, you probably *have* heard of the first volume of it, The Sword in the Stone. You know, the one where the boy Wart learns a bunch of lessons from talking animals so that he can draw on those lessons to pull a sword out of a stone, after which people start calling him Arthur... and the rest of The Once and Future King is the whole rest of the Arthurian legend, told in readable style. So I have always admired T.H.White for his writing. Unfortunately, that has just been ruined, because in a used bookstore I ran across The Elephant and the Kangaroo. The cover blurb says "The classic fantasy romp that answers the question: can an English writer in Ireland survive the second Flood?" I'm afraid that it's barely fantasy, it's certainly not a romp, and in fact, it is one of the nastiest, most bigoted books I've ever attempted to read. I gave up around page 70, just skimming ever additional 30 pages or so to see if it was still as bad, and it was, or worse. The entire book is one giant slur against the Irish - portraying every single one of them, of any social class, economic level, or religion, as illiterate, superstitious, dirty, thieving morons. It doesn't let up. White spends a few pages pretending that this is an affectionate joke, but ya know something? affectionate jokes don't go on with the slurs, insults, and ridicule for 237 pages. By the way, our protagonist in the story is also named White.
The book was written in 1947. But that's no excuse - 1947 is the modern world, definitely late enough that people should know better than to write crap like this; the only people writing things this ridiculous disguised as supposed novels in the latter half of the 20th century are assorted neo-Nazis and other self-published types. Why on earth did Signet choose to reprint this in 1989? I can't even faintly imagine what they were thinking. On the various end pages where they are advertising other releases, they tout "fun and fantasy" grouping this novel in with Esther Friesner's Elf Defense, Phyllis Eisenstein, Barry Longyear, and stuff like that. The E and K is not even faintly the same kind of book.
Now, it's not that I'm against all stories in dialect, or against humor. As most of you know, one of my favorite stories of all time is "Pigs is Pigs," first issued as a short book in 1906, written by Ellis Parker Butler. It's only a short story, but with illustrations, it came out as a small hardcover book. It features an Irish-American railway freight clerk, meeting up with a pair of guinea pigs. Although it uses dialect, and although the clerk is pictured as stubborn and a little dense, he is not stupid, nor greedy, nor does the humor in the book depend on him being ignorant and stupid. And the little bit of humor that is poked at his Irish ways is no more than the same small pokes at ivory-tower college professors, middle management in distant corporate offices, and so on. In short, it's a genuinely good-natured book, and probably reflects less anti-Irish-immigrant sentiment than the average person of the turn of the 20th century would have had.
Not at all like White's book, where after what should have been nearly half a century more of progress in regarding all people as human beings, White instead regresses to what seems to be the worst peaks of anti-Irish sentiment, as bad as anything at the turn of the 19th century. Damn. White was supposedly a satirist, but this isn't satire, it's hate.
As a side note, if you decide not to read White because of this, don't confuse T.H.White with E.B. White, who also wrote classic fantasy romps featuring talking animals, such as Stuart Little and Charlotte's Web, not to mention co-authoring Elements of Style. And definitely don't confuse him with W.H. Whyte, who wrote another one of my favorite books, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, about how parks make cities livable. That one's not fiction, by the way, if that wasn't obvious.
The book was written in 1947. But that's no excuse - 1947 is the modern world, definitely late enough that people should know better than to write crap like this; the only people writing things this ridiculous disguised as supposed novels in the latter half of the 20th century are assorted neo-Nazis and other self-published types. Why on earth did Signet choose to reprint this in 1989? I can't even faintly imagine what they were thinking. On the various end pages where they are advertising other releases, they tout "fun and fantasy" grouping this novel in with Esther Friesner's Elf Defense, Phyllis Eisenstein, Barry Longyear, and stuff like that. The E and K is not even faintly the same kind of book.
Now, it's not that I'm against all stories in dialect, or against humor. As most of you know, one of my favorite stories of all time is "Pigs is Pigs," first issued as a short book in 1906, written by Ellis Parker Butler. It's only a short story, but with illustrations, it came out as a small hardcover book. It features an Irish-American railway freight clerk, meeting up with a pair of guinea pigs. Although it uses dialect, and although the clerk is pictured as stubborn and a little dense, he is not stupid, nor greedy, nor does the humor in the book depend on him being ignorant and stupid. And the little bit of humor that is poked at his Irish ways is no more than the same small pokes at ivory-tower college professors, middle management in distant corporate offices, and so on. In short, it's a genuinely good-natured book, and probably reflects less anti-Irish-immigrant sentiment than the average person of the turn of the 20th century would have had.
Not at all like White's book, where after what should have been nearly half a century more of progress in regarding all people as human beings, White instead regresses to what seems to be the worst peaks of anti-Irish sentiment, as bad as anything at the turn of the 19th century. Damn. White was supposedly a satirist, but this isn't satire, it's hate.
As a side note, if you decide not to read White because of this, don't confuse T.H.White with E.B. White, who also wrote classic fantasy romps featuring talking animals, such as Stuart Little and Charlotte's Web, not to mention co-authoring Elements of Style. And definitely don't confuse him with W.H. Whyte, who wrote another one of my favorite books, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, about how parks make cities livable. That one's not fiction, by the way, if that wasn't obvious.
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no subject
Date: 2005-11-14 12:41 am (UTC)Not trying to excuse him, just to explain him a little.
While I understand your disappointment...
Date: 2005-11-14 12:59 am (UTC)It seems to me T.H. White isn't the first author I've heard of who wrote well-beloved stories, but had extreme and/or distasteful political or social views. Unfortunately, I can't recall any other names at the moment.
Re: While I understand your disappointment...
Date: 2005-11-14 01:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-14 01:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-14 01:29 am (UTC)*googles*
why hadn't I heard of BookCrossing before? What a magnificent idea! MUST JOIN!
Oh, I do. Even if he's being hateful and miserable, and I know he could be, I love White. I think I'd pay to read his laundry lists.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-14 01:34 am (UTC)