Book 49: Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory

While the title of this book is in French, it is actually written in English.  In fact, it is one of the oldest known pieces of literature in English.  Written around 1500, Malory compiles here many of the French and English Arthurian romances.  It has since become, probably, the foremost reference for Arthurian legend and has become source material for newer works.  I know a bit of Arthurian legend from The Sword in the Stone, the movie Excalibur and Monty Python and the Holy Grail (more accurate than you'd think), but I'm interested to see some of the stories that I don't know.

It's in two volumes and I could break it up into two parts, but I'm going to read both.  Volume 1 is 468 pages and Volume 2 is 533 pages, giving 1001 pages or 143 pages per day.  Ouch.


REVIEW:

This was a very interesting read to me.  I've always been interested in Arthurian legends, but have gotten most of my knowledge of Arthur and his knights from much more modern sources:  The Sword in the Stone, Excalibur and Monty Python.  This book was written around 1500 and is one of the oldest known pieces of literature in English, though the title is in French.  This book and other books like it served to really begin the idea of chivalry, a concept that didn't really exist outside of literature.

Possibly due to it's age, the book reminded me most of Gargantua and Pantagruel.  It was a collection of short adventures loosely structured into a narrative.  There were some events that were covered from more than one point of view and a couple of conflicting stories.  Overall, however, it serves as a very comprehensive collection of almost all of the stories of Arthur and his knights.  From the marriage of King Arthur to Gwenyvere to the tales of Arthur's greatest knights: Launcelot, Tristram and Gareth, to the Search for the Holy Grail to the death of Arthur himself, it's all here.

The book was huge, in fact it was two books.  I probably should have broken them up into two entries here, but I really wanted to do it all in one go.  I'm rather glad that I did as the stories kept me interested and carried me along through the end.  I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in exploring King Arthur, chivalry or knights and adventures as well as history in general and England in particular.  It could probably do with some modern editing, but I'd be afraid that they'd cut out something interesting in order to make it move faster.

8 out of 10.

Book 38: The Epic of Gilgamesh by Anonymous

This will be the oldest book that I've read so far.  It was first written in ancient Mesopotamia sometime between 2000 and 1800 BC.  That makes it around 4,000 years old.  It was written in cuneiform script on clay tablets, some of which have been badly damaged in the intervening years.  Through painstaking efforts the tablets have been pieced together, cross-referenced with other tablets telling the same story, transliterated, translated and made mostly whole.  I've seen references to this epic in several other pieces of literature and I'm quite interested to read it first hand.

REVIEW:  I find that I still love reading classic literature.  Anything that transcends the ages comes across as deeply human.  I also find them very entertaining.  People get the idea that the Classics are all very prim and proper, but anything older than the Victorian era is really very far from proper.  There is a lot of sex, drinking and violence in any of the ancient works and this one is no exception.

The story follows the adventures of Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu as the cause trouble throughout ancient Mesopotamia.  Enkidu was originally a wild-man who lived with the animals until he was seduced by a prostitute.  They had sex for 7 days and then she told him that he should enter the world of men.  Enticed by his new friend and the other luxuries of the ancient world, beer, bread, etc. Enkidu begins living as a human being.  He meets Gilgamesh for the first time as his future friend is intending on enforcing his right of prima nocta at a village wedding.  Enkidu prevents him and fights him.  After the fight they become fast friends and set off together on many adventures.

One of the bigger surprises to me was the story of the Deluge late in the narrative.  This story is a direct ancestor of Noah's flood from the Judeo-Christian mythologies.  In the Gilgamesh Deluge a man named Utnapishtim is ordered by the gods to built a boat.  On that boat he is told to load his family and the "seeds of all the animals".  After this is done great rains build up and flood the world.  He is afloat for 6 days and then lands at the peak of Mt. Nisir.  Utnapishtim then sends out birds to see if the flood is receding.  The first few fails to find land and return to the ark but, eventually, he sends out a raven who does not return, implying that it has found land elsewhere.  The similarities, I assume, are obvious.  Considering that ancient Mesopotamia contained the same lands as the middle-east today, I suppose it's not surprising that there would be similar myths from both traditions.

The Epic of Gilgamesh was a very entertaining read and I would highly recommend it to anyone.  The version that I read was translated from the original tablets by the author and included a lot of information about how it was put together and where missing information was found and added.  I really can't think of any negative aspect of the book except, maybe, that some of the passages were somewhat repetitive.  Though, honestly, I felt that the repetitions added a mystical quality to the narrative, so I didn't mind it.

10 out of 10.

Book 27: The Oedipus Cycle by Sophocles

It's time to get back to the classics.  I've read a lot of old Greek and Roman classics, including Oedipus Rex, but I don't remember reading all three pieces.  I actually enjoy reading ancient Greek works.  I like how the characters are still very relatable, very human.  From what I remember of Oedipus, it's more like a Shakespeare play than something by Plato or Aristotle and was very gripping throughout.

My copy is 216 pages, which gives a very easy 31 pages per day.  I may finish this one early.

REVIEW: As you may or may not know, I’m a big fan of Ancient Greek literature.  Therefore, it should come as no surprise that I really enjoyed this book.  To me, the fact that an author can successfully convey emotion though he’s writing in a different country and culture, 2,500 years ago, shows something definingly human.  Anything that can cross that divide must be universal amongst all people.

The Oedipus Trilogy consists of three plays, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone.  The first play portrays the events that Oedipus is famous for: the killing of his father and marrying and having children with his mother.  Though most people are familiar with this plot, I have to wonder how many have actually read the story and realized it’s subtleness.  On the surface, taken literally, Oedipus’ acts are unthinkable, even villainous.  But Oedipus didn’t realize what he was doing at the time.  He didn’t know that it was his father he killed (in self-defense, no less) and he didn’t know that it was his mother he was marrying when he freed Thebes and took her for his queen.  Informed by prophecy, Oedipus goes looking for the wretch who would commit such sins only to find that it is himself.

The second play, Oedipus at Colonus, shows Oedipus as he arrives at Athens.  He is now blinded and beggared led and assisted by his daughters Antigone and Ismene.  Oedipus is befriend by the king of Athens, Theseus and taken under his protection.  Confronted by his son, Polyneices who is at war with his brother Eteocles, Oedipus refuses to return to Thebes and, after a rescue from Theseus, he dies at Colonus, just outside Athens.

The third play follows Oedipus’ daughter, Antigone after she has returned to Thebes.  Her brothers have killed each other and Thebes is now ruled by Creon, her uncle.  Because of the war that Polyneices waged against Thebes, Creon has declared him a traitor and refused him burial rites.  Antigone, as Polyneices’ sister, performs the rites anyway and is arrested.  The whole trilogy basically tells of the downfall of Oedipus and his relations.

The series as a whole inspire a wide range of feeling, from disbelief to revulsion to compassion.  Oedipus falls from a King to a blind beggar, but regains some of his power through justice and prophecy.  I think that anyone who takes the time to read through the myth of Oedipus will find him a far more sympathetic character and far from the deviate implied by a cursory reading of the main plot.  In this, as in most literature, the details make the story.

9 out of 10

Book 18: Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

Well, I'm finally finished with the first four Song of Fire and Ice books.  I'll continue with the series whenever I pick up the fifth book but, until then, I'm moving on to other things.  First in line, another classic novel, a collection of five novels, actually.

Gargantua and Pantagruel was written in the mid-1500s and tells the stories of two giants: Pantagruel and his father Gargantua.  It's often cited as one of the best in world literature though, honestly, I'd never heard of it before I started this project.

So, here goes!  841 pages, which is less than my last 4 books and it has bigger type, woohoo!  120 pages a day or so should get me through the book in one week.

HUGE REVIEW:  It’s difficult to describe Gargantua and Pantagruel.  It’s like a combination of The Odyssey, Gulliver’s Travels and Don Quixote all mixed into one.  It’s an extremely crude book book by any standard, filled with drinking, sex, violence and… well… scatological humor.

Between the poop jokes, however, Rabelais actually has a lot to say.  The book is, essentially, very bawdy satire.  As such, it has biting commentary and even outright contempt for politics (with gluttonous, incompetent kings), religious orders (with monks that won’t defend themselves until their vineyard is under attack), the current state of education (with pedantic academics spouting overly-complicated nonsense words) and lawyers (with one judge who decides cases by throwing the dice). 

Rabelais doesn’t just criticize these institutions however.  He also adds his own ideas as to how they should behave.  As a product of the Renaissance, Rabelais believes that one should live fully and follow your instincts.  He preaches pleasure for the body as well as intellectual curiosity and study for the mind.  He was sincerely religious but skeptical of the excessive discipline and asceticism of the monasticism of his time.  It's really quite philosophical.

I would have attempted the French version of this book, but since it’s 500 years old, I didn’t have the confidence in my Old French as in my Modern French.  I can see though that, even through translation, Rabelais has a rare mastery of language.  He writes equally well from the perspective of the crude peasant as from that of the learned intellectual.  I’m sure the puns and plays on language in the book are that much better in the original.  The only real problem that I had was that my edition didn’t translate the many phrases of non-French: Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, German, Italian, Basque, etc.  My knowledge of some of these languages helped quite a bit, but I was thrown by phrases such as:  “Omnis bella bellabilis, in bellerio bellando, bellans bellativo bellare bellantes.  Parisius habet bellas.”  All I got was the ending, “In Paris there are bells.”

There are several chapters in the books that are essentially lists or catalogues  of various items, from insults to methods of fortune telling to lists of books in a library.  These can be quite tedious to get through, though they typically have quite a few wry comments interspersed throughout them and one of them, the list of books, produced my favorite title, “Of the Gentle Art of Farting in Company.”

All in all, Gargantua and Pantagruel is great social satire disguised as the adventures of two very crude giants and their associates.  Laugh out loud funny in parts, thought provoking in others.  9 of 10.

Book 4: "Robinson Crusoe" by Daniel Defoe

I needed another "easy" book to help get back on schedule after vacation threw me so far off.  I was originally scheduled to finish this book on August 13th and I'm now 3 days overdue.  At 282 pages, I need to get through 40 pages a day to finish in a week.  More if I want to catch up a bit more.

Update: Finished on August 18th, still 4 days behind.  Great book though.  I was looking for something exactly like this: someone marooned has to recreate civilization from scratch.  The concept is interesting and the execution here is quite good.  You kinda forget that it's fiction and not an account of someone's life.  The other thing that I liked was that, being 300 years old, there were some parts that were a little uncomfortable, dealing with slavery and treatment of native peoples... and, surprisingly, Defoe also seemed uncomfortable with these issues.  Rather progressive for someone writing around 1700.  Anyway, the book holds up to its many years and I highly recommend it to anyone.