The Bright Sword - some comments

The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman is an excellent entry into the stories of the Arthurian legend. Like a lot of art, the reactions to it become a Rorschach test for the reviewer and critic. I've seen the opinion that "OMG it's woke Arthur!!1!1" and the more stodgy claim that it breaks with "tradition" or that it is ahistorical.

To me, it's easy to dismiss the non-traditional and ahistorical arguments. The legend of King Arthur has never really been based in any verifiable history. The chivalric trappings of some earlier tales almost entirely belong to a French notion of knightly honor that came into vogue much later than the time any "real" Arthur would have lived. The author even says as much in his epilogue that he has picked the elements he likes and omitted some he didn't. And as for non-traditional, myths & legends have always been able to handle updates and new spins. The Hunger Games wasn't really a rip-off of Battle Royale but rather a modern retelling and expansion of the old myth of Theseus & the Minotaur. Percy Jackson uses the Greek gods to tell new stories. So does Marvel with Thor & Loki. If you want even more formulaic books, go find The Magic Treehouse books that include Merlin and Morgan Le Fay. (But please don't - they are terrible.) The reason these myths & legends endure is because people can see themselves and their lives in them. In short, they have timeless themes.

And that's how it feels like Grossman uses the Arthurian legend here. I don't think many people would disagree that the US (and a lot of the world) feels like it is at the end of a historical period.

The book is set in the aftermath of the battle of Camlann in which almost all the knights of the round table - and certainly the most famous ones - are killed and Arthur is mortally wounded. Essentially, the old order has fallen. What comes next and who will create and decide what it looks like? I might argue that this is the point at which we find ourselves now politically in the US and arguably globally. The post-WW2 system is crumbling before our eyes. There is a good chance it is already dead and we just don't realize it yet.

So what comes next? Like it or not, our world is not entirely populated with knights like Gawain and Percival. So let's take a look at the "woke" objections.

Grossman tries to tell an entertaining story about the fight to decide what comes next. That this group is an unusual assortment of characters is incidental to the fact they are all trying to act honorably and restore some kind of order to the world. They just aren't sure of exactly what that new order should look like.

But I suspect the "woke Arthur" objectors are really focused on the fact there is a gay knight (Bedivere), a Muslim knight (Palomides) and - horror of horrors - a female knight?!?!! I suppose if you object to characters of these backgrounds at all, then there isn't much to discuss really.

Bedivere and Palomides are just stock issue characters - the loyal-to-the-death bodyguard/protector and the warrior scholar. Grossman just made one gay and other other a Muslim. Is the Muslim anachronistic? Yes. Does it matter in a story filled with magic cups & wizards? Not really. Part of what Palomides represents is an outsider perspective. Could he have been a Buddhist or Chinese? Sure. Would that satisfy the objectors? Likely not.

Similarly, does it really matter that Bedivere is gay? No. Could he have been written differently? Maybe. But I would argue that Bedivere's unrequited love is not much different than Palomides for Isolt except that Bedivere's takes the form of undying loyalty and suffering. It makes him more interesting and complex.

But the real opprobrium has been reserved for Sir Dinadan and it is here that I feel like people didn't really pay attention to the book. As with all the other main cast, Dinadan gets their own backstory. We learn that she was born a girl, felt like something was "off" and then lucks into meeting the fairies. She tries to get them to make her a boy but that is not within their power to grant. Instead, she chooses to learn to fight. Dinadan does not alter her body physically. Disguises it, yes. But never is a spell cast that turns her into a male. Dinadan is like Joan of Arc without the religious visions. She isn't really "trans" in the way the activists and reactionaries would argue about. She dresses like a man, fights as well as any man and commands the respect of other men. In short, Dinadan is a knight as understood by that period (such as it is). But she remains, in body, a woman by sex. I suppose if you are irredeemably sexist and find Joan of Arc or the Valkyries objectionable then you will also find Dinadan's existence in the book to be leftist propaganda. Honestly, it's kind of a surprise that trans activists haven't tried to cancel the book for keeping Dinadan a biological female. That seems very much their jam.

The other objection is about the mass migration which was, in fact, a historical thing that really happened. The why is probably due to several causes (Hun invasion, Roman withdrawal, etc.) but it's rather indisputable. Does that really need to be shoehorned in towards the end? Maybe not, but the mention does fit in with the epilogue tone of the final chapters and the mildly open ending.

Now if you want to make a more substantive objection of the length and flow, I will entertain that. The book does have the feel of the Avengers franchise where each character gets their own movie before they all get together to battle the big bad guy. Personally, I felt like each characters backstory added to the entire story but others may not have my patience and could feel those might have been better as stand-alone works or even more tightly integrated into the main narrative itself. I believe this would have been very difficult to pull off but that is a valid criticism. On the other hand, did anyone really need an Ant Man origin movie?

The one question I really have is how well does this book stand alone without having read Le Morte d'Arthur, Idylls of the King or even Steinbeck's whack at King Arthur? I can't answer that but if anyone is out there who has never read those but has read The Bright Sword, please comment!