C is for Camelot

I just finished reading The Bright Sword, a new novel by Lev Grossman. Grossman wrote my favorite YA novel (other than the one I wrote..) The Silver Arrow which I’ve read three times; it’s that good and that thoughtful. 

The Bright Sword retells the tale of King Arthur and Camelot - and it’s fantastic. It’s also 700 pages long. I had to ignore what page I was on and just live in what was happening at the moment. Kind of like life itself. 

It starts with 17-year old Collum who grew up rough though along the way he learned to fight as a knight. He’s running away from abuse while outfitted in a clinking mess of secondhand armor. (My kind of knights always get their armor at Goodwill.) But he grew up hearing stories of the glory, power, and shining justice of far-off Camelot. When Collum realizes he has to leave, he rides a leaky boat from his back-of-nowhere island off the coast of Scotland and then walks all the way to southern England where Camelot is centered. 

“All Collum wanted was a cause that was not lost.”  Tell me about people walk through the Darien Gap to try to escape violence and hopelessness. Tell me about people who cross the Mediterranean on rubber rafts. Tell me why my great grandmother left Sweden by herself before she was twenty.

What Collum finds when he finally gets to Camelot is a nearly deserted castle. King Arthur’s gone and no one knows if he’s alive or dead. Most of the knights that Collum heard about in his bleak childhood, and whose stories lifted him up and kept him going, those knights are also dead or missing. 

Only a few second-tier knights are left. I won’t tell you who they are, but as the story unrolls you will recognize each one of them from the best people in your lives. These are great souls who came through hard stuff. They did not start as shining heroes; they have scars and tales, valor and kindness. They also have secrets that could get them kicked out of any top tier American golf club. You will come to know, respect, and love each one of them. 

So that’s all I’m going to tell you about the book though I’ll include some of Grossman’s lines because he’s a fantastic writer. 

…

Camelot is not a concept I’ve thought much about in my life. I was a kid when 'The Once and Future King' was on Broadway. I know Kennedy’s administration was sometimes called Camelot but that never impressed me. Old European myths are, well, old. But I like Grossman so I borrowed the book from the library. (I appreciate library books because they come with that motivational due date.) 

Most of us care deeply about the culture around us. Do ‘news junkies’ obsess because they are bored? Some are, no doubt, and sometimes a sofa just holds one down at the end of a long day. But most adults who pay strong attention to local political, national and world news are, I think, people who care about their families, grandkids, friends, neighbors, and the folks with needs who are in the world around them. 

What is this paying incessant attention to the news other than keeping track of Camelot? Do we have some peace and security going on? Can we EVER make changes so society will grow better and kinder? What is the sentiment about “back when society was decent, etc.” but a longing for a Camelot? No matter what story we tell about our olden days, and what hopes we have for our future, we are always talking about Camelot. 

Most people in elected offices – the ones I agree with and the ones I don’t – have an internal sense of Camelot. They think they know what we all need to live peaceful decent lives. We have wildly different ideas of how to get there but most folks think they know how to build or defend Camelot.

This is interesting. Camelot is our starting point. It’s what we have in common. A yearning for a place that never existed. A sense that society could welcome and shine. Leaders who inspire. Knights who wear Goodwill or shining armor and it makes no difference because valor is in character. 

Camelot is when and where we care strongly about all of us. Camelot is a 5^th century political story and we are all still in it. 

…

Lines (and the pages where I found them) from Lev Grossman’s The Bright Sword.

All he wanted was a cause that was not lost. 199

Hope was all well and good but when you only had a little of it, a tiny fragment, it nagged at you like a splinter. 202

Do you know what happens when you make a child pretend to love? Oh, they’ll do it-you can make children do anything-but it has a cost, and the cost is that everything else becomes pretend. Nothing you feel or know or say or do feels real anymore. … Except for hate. That you can keep. 229

Merlin would betray anyone and anything for a little more money and a little more power.  231

Everyone has secrets. Of course they do. But you want to be particular about which secrets you keep, right? Because they require a lot of care and feeding. In my experience it’s almost never worth it. 298

Dagonet was amazed once again at how unfailingly the world taxed people with the very thing that would try them most. 357

The quest for the holy grail which had begun in such a spirit of adventure, with such high hopes and good fellowship, had become something very much tougher and darker. 357

And was not that the point of a marriage, to love another person more than they can love themselves? 421

We’re not the heroes, we’re the odd ones out. The losers. But did you ever think that might be why we’ve lived so long? Losing makes you tough. 437. 

He didn’t know if he had passed or failed the tests but at least he had told the truth. 485

To be as confident as ‘a child dancing with its father.’ 494

Despair is the peace of lost hope. 507

Scipio (Roman bureaucrat) was pure creature of empire, the quintessence of the Roman military machine. He ate Barbarians, with pepper and fish sauce, and shat law and order. 512

When you were inside them adventures happened slowly, but the aftermath of a failed adventure was even slower. 531

Complicated was not the same as broken. 626

These people aren’t invaders, they’re refugees. They have nowhere else to go. (Watching the Saxon refugees flood ashore.) I thought it was us, I thought we were the change. I thought I was the change! But it was them all along, 664-665

The past was never wholly lost, and the future was never quite found. We wander forever in a pathless forest, dropping with weariness, as home draws us back, and the grail draws us on, and we never arrive, and the quest never ends.” 667