Editors: George W. Tuma, Professor of English, and Dinah Hazell, Independent Scholar
Hosted by the English Department, San Francisco State University

 

"The Pale and Perfect Measured Parade"

John Steinbeck’s First Draft of

The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights

Nancy Stork

With thanks to McIntosh and Otis and the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University, San Jose, California, for permission to quote from Steinbeck’s unpublished first draft, and the kindness of the staff in allowing me to use their facilities.

 

When John Steinbeck sent the first draft of his Acts of King Arthur to his literary agents Elizabeth Otis and Chase Horton in late April 1959, it was not very well received. 1 Steinbeck wrote back to them on May 13 and said,

Then your comments and Chase’s almost lack of comment on the section sent to you. I must think very carefully and not fall into obscurity in my answer. To indicate that I was not shocked would be untrue. I was. I wonder if the three thousand miles makes any difference. It is apparent that I did not communicate my intention. (Steinbeck, Acts 419)

In the course of this letter, Steinbeck gives perhaps his clearest statement about what he intended when he set out to write a book based on the Winchester manuscript of Malory’s Morte Darthur, The Death of Arthur. He couches his answer in the wounded tone of a man whose work has been insulted by idiots:

Perhaps I thought I had told you that I am presently trying not to bring up the whole cycle with its thousand ramifications, but to stick tight to Malory, who wrote in the fifteenth century. . . . I have no intention of putting it in twentieth-century vernacular any more than T[homas] M[alory] put it in fifteenth-century vernacular. . . . I wanted an English that was out of time and place as the legend is. (Steinbeck, Acts 419)

To further silence his agent critics, who are hopeful of selling his books and have no interest per se in an "English out of time and place," he says,

I want the remote feeling of the myth, not the intimate feeling of today’s man who in his daily thought may change tomorrow but who in his deeper perceptions, I am convinced, does not change at all. In a word I have not been trying to write a popular book but a permanent book. (Steinbeck, Acts 420)

And finally, he says quite bluntly, "It doesn’t sound like me because I don’t want it to" (Steinbeck, Acts 421).

Clearly, Horton and Otis wanted a book that sounded like Steinbeck and retold one of the great bestsellers of all time, the legend of King Arthur. One of the reasons for Otis and Horton’s lack of sympathy for this first draft may be that they did not share Steinbeck’s childhood love for Malory. Steinbeck regarded Caxton’s Malory with an almost religious devotion, recounting in his introduction how it was a children’s version of this book that inspired him to learn to read. His account appears at the beginning of the introduction as edited by Otis and Horton:

Some people there are who, being grown, forget the horrible task of learning to read. . . . I remember that words–written or printed–were devils, and books, because they gave me pain, were my enemies. . . . 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 Darthur of Thomas Malory. I loved the old spelling of the words. . . . The very strangeness of the language dyd me enchante, and vaulted me into an ancient scene. (Steinbeck, Acts 3-4)

For those who entered the world of reading by much more mundane gateways, Malory’s prose could seem strange and forbidding. Most likely, Otis and Horton had never fallen under the spell of Caxton’s Malory, so they came to it with no sentimental childhood associations to blur the differences between fifteenth-century and twentieth-century prose. No wonder their criticism came as a shock to Steinbeck, who retained a love of Malory into his adulthood and clearly hoped to share with others the strangeness and magic of Malory’s prose. In addition, Steinbeck was excited by the discovery in 1934 of the original Winchester manuscript of Malory, which promised to bring much more of Malory’s fifteenth-century prose to light. Steinbeck, as a bibliophile and writer with a scholarly bent, was very interested in this newly discovered manuscript of the writer who had so enchanted him as a boy. It was a grand and exciting new project. And, on a more practical note, Steinbeck had already spent some time producing at least a portion of the 576-page draft now at San Jose State. Who would not have been discouraged to have such an effort greeted with silence or tepid and guarded praise?

Yet is this alone what caused Steinbeck to leave behind his original intentions and start again? Was it also the enormity of the project? After all,Vinaver’s edition of the Winchester manuscript runs to 726 pages of small type. Was he finally worn down by the continued criticism of his editors? And why did those same editors decide to publish the second draft, the one they liked, and not Steinbeck’s original? Was there even a chance that they might have considered Steinbeck’s first draft of King Arthur to be closer to his true intentions, or a better piece of work? In order to answer these questions, we must first see what happened to Steinbeck’s version of the Arthur legend between the first and second drafts. But first we should clarify that previous scholarship on this issue has not addressed the question of changes made between the first and second draft because most scholars were not aware that there were two surviving drafts. Simmonds suggests that the publication of Keith Baines’ translation of Malory in 1961 may have discouraged Steinbeck (Unrealized Dream 41), while Sundermeier offers a more nuanced explanation and three possibilities: that Steinbeck’s creative powers were exhausted; that the Arthurian legend was too closely identified in his mind with his own life for him to explore such personal material; or that his artisitic vision was incoherent (35). There is even some confusion as to whether or not Steinbeck intended to do two different translations of Malory. Simmonds reports that Eugene Vinaver thought Steinbeck meant to produce both a translation of Malory and his own original Arthurian cycle. He also quotes Elizabeth Otis who stated "that to her certain knowledge Steineck did not contemplate writing two Arthurian books" (Unrealized Dream 35).

With both drafts now available for scrutiny, we can more accurately assess what happened as Steinbeck struggled with Malory. As Otis and Horton both noticed, the first draft does not sound like Steinbeck. Nor does it sound like the version published by Horton in 1976. It sounds quite a lot like Thomas Malory. Though modernized in many respects (spelling, word choice, sentence length), it retains much of the rhythm and vocabulary of the original. In fact, it is so close to Malory that it seems much more a translation than a modern version of the old tale. Any reader will notice the similarities instantly, and when Elaine Steinbeck sent the manuscript to San Jose State University, she wrote a note in which she calls this first draft a "translation." The note is brief enough to quote in its entirety:

To Whom it May Concern:

I really don’t know what I have here. Some kind of translation of King Arthur. A bit of it corrected by John. Elizabeth is not alive to tell me if it was used when we published the book, and I no longer remember. That was her project–I am tempted to go on and give these to Stanford and one of the Steinbeck Centers (San Jose or Ball State in Muncie, Ill. [sic] but I don’t want to stir up anything as long as Chase is alive. (Steinbeck, SJSU MS)

I am not sure what Elaine Steinbeck was worried about stirring up as long as Chase Horton was still alive, but she may well have known about the chilly reception he gave the first draft. Regarding Elaine Steinbeck’s uncertainty over whether this draft was used to prepare the published edition, it is clear that it was not. The differences are enormous. And yet this first draft is different enough from Malory that I think it does not deserve to be classified as "some kind of translation." At least not in the modern sense of the word "translation."

Translators today do not presume to add or subtract characters, alter dialogue or change events. A translator simply works for the benefit of those who lack the skill to read the original language. Yet translating Middle English to modern is not as well-defined a task as translating from say, Portugese to German or Spanish to Korean. Not quite a foreign language, Middle English is strange, but not completely inaccessible to a modern reader; this is particularly true at the end of the fifteenth century, when literary Middle English was becoming standardized and moving toward the Elizabethan English more familiar to modern readers. Steinbeck certainly saw this as part of his task; he wanted to render Malory in modern English, to make it accessible yet retain some of the wonder and strangeness of its forms. He is aware from the start that his version will be much more than a word-for-word, slavishly literal, translation. He says in an earlier letter to Otis (dated March 30, 1959):

I move along with my translation of the Morte but it is no more a translation than Malory’s was. I am keeping it all but it is mine as much as his was his. I told you I think that I am not afraid of Malory any more for I know that I can write better for my time than he could have, just as he wrote better for his time than anyone else. (Steinbeck, Acts 402)

Steinbeck is clear in his own mind that he is more than a mere translator. He has something of a didactic intent as well, when he says his

purpose will be to put it in a language which is understandable and acceptable to a modern-day reader. I think this is not only an important thing to do, but also a highly practical thing to do, since these stories form, with the New Testament, the basis of most modern English literature. (Steinbeck, Acts 377)

Steinbeck sounds a little like an English professor here, wanting his students to have the background for reading serious modern literature. And yet, at this point did he have a clear idea of what a modern version of Malory would entail? Why not just modernize the spelling and let clever modern readers work through the Winchester Malory as Steinbeck did with the Caxton? Malory’s language is not that difficult, and we have the evidence of Steinbeck as a boy using it to decode the mysteries of the alphabet. Did Steinbeck seek to render Malory in modern prose to help those less linguistically gifted than himself? He certainly wanted to transmit the stories as well as the language, but this poses fresh problems as well. Could he simply modernize the prose and leave the events, characters and plot unchanged? Steinbeck, early on, like most readers, bogs down in Arthur’s Roman war and leaves a good bit of it out. From this, he must know that at least some of the events will have to change. Steinbeck’s letters suggest a sympathy for Lancelot and a father’s perspective on his failure to achieve the Grail, where his son Galahad succeeds. This might have given an interesting perspective to a section of the legend that was probably transmitted to Malory via Cistercian monks (who can’t have had a lot of experience with the father’s perspective on father/son relationships). Might Steinbeck have left out some of the more bizarre elements of the Grail Legend? Or might he have successfully recreated the muddled character of Sir Dinadan whom even Malory did not succeed in transmitting intact from his French sources? From his letters we know that Steinbeck thought a great deal about these questions before he began his work of "translating." And yet, no matter how much he had thought about what he wanted to do in advance, he was still faced with putting pen to paper and deciding how to describe the Duke of Tintagel.

Perhaps a lack of clarity about his own motives and desires in writing the work is what led to Steinbeck’s failure to make this into a complete and coherent work. And this failure to clarify his own intentions may be illuminated by a fuller investigation into what the word "translation" really means. For, in a larger sense of the word, a translation is exactly what Steinbeck has achieved. The Latin word translatio means literally, "a carrying or removing from one place to another, a transporting, transferring," but the word also has a very particular meaning associated with the medieval cult of relics.

Though many early writers opposed the veneration of relics on the grounds that it was idolatrous, early in the Christian centuries there grew up a practice of venerating the relics of saints. This practice spread from Greek/Byzantine lands (which did not share the ancient Roman aversion to disinterring or mutilating corpses) into the Western Empire and was well-established when Roman opposition to the cult of relics was relaxed and numerous translations of relics were authorized by eighth- and ninth-century popes. Devotion grew so frenzied in France that the citizens of Poitiers and Tours fought a battle over the body of St. Martin. The practice grew, too, as the Germanic tribes were converted and missionaries desired to have physical relics to focus devotion and demonstrate the efficacy of faith. Relics could range from actual pieces of a saint’s body, to objects used during a saint’s lifetime, to pieces of cloth that had been placed in contact with the saint’s tomb. Sometimes the bodies travelled in one piece–the monks of Lindisfarne brought Cuthbert’s body intact with them when they fled the Norse attacks of the early ninth century–and sometimes they were split up and travelled as fragments. In either case, the process of moving the relics from one place to another for purposes of veneration is called the translatio or "translation" of relics.

In the course of this elaborate and varied process of translation, the bodies were often cut into small pieces which were placed in jewelled reliquaries, sometimes in the shape of miniature churches. These are often made of gold, silver and crystal and allow one to gaze on the relics, which might include fingers, hands, heads, teeth, nails and hair of saints and other relics such as the cloak, stool and milk of the Virgin Mary, the foreskin and tears of Jesus, thorns from the crown of thorns, pieces of the true cross, the spear, sponge and nails used in the Crucifixion, and other oddities like hairs from Noah’s beard, soot from the furnace where the three worthies were burnt, the candle lit by an angel in Christ’s tomb, feathers from the wings of the angel Gabriel, etc. Though the more fanciful of these are clearly fraudulent, others are generally thought to be quite real. Exactly how these miraculous translationes takes place is shrouded in a bit of mystery.

Given the fact that Horton chose the version he preferred when he published Steinbeck’s work posthumously and my expertise (or bias, if you prefer) as a medievalist, I hope I can bring a new perspective to the process of translation and the following questions: Is Steinbeck’s first draft a mere translation? Which of the two drafts is a better piece of work? Was it Steinbeck’s intention to venerate Malory and, in so doing, did he end up, figuratively speaking, placing bits and pieces of Malory into jewelled reliquaries?

In the printed edition of Steinbeck’s Arthur, Horton end Steinbeck’s introduction with a prayer:

For my own part, I can only ask that my readers include me in the request of Sir Thomas Malory when he says: "And I pray you all that redyth this tale to pray for him that this wrote that god sende hym good delyverance and sone and hastely–Amen. (Steinbeck, Acts 6)

In the first draft of the introduction this prayer is not at the end, but the beginning. Steinbeck quotes Malory fully in Middle English:

I praye you all ientyl men and ientyl wymmen that redeth this book of Arthur and his knyghtes from the begynning to the endyng pray for me whyle I am on Lyue that god sende me good delyuerance–whan I am deed I praye you all praye for my soule for this book was ended the ix yere of the reygne of king edward the fourth by sir Thomas Maleore knyght do Ihesu helpe hym by hys grete myght as he is the seruaunt of Ihesu bothe day and nyght.

Immediately after this, Steinbeck adds his own words:

So ended Malory’s retelling of the dear story and so may I with goode herte begin mine. All my remembering life, my mind, and, it feels, my bone and tissue have been saturated with this more than tale, so that I would be perplexed to tell where I leave off and the tone and color and texture of the knyghtely fellowship begins. (Steinbeck, SJSU MS I)

Steinbeck uses the Middle English spelling "goode herte" and expresses a corporeal, almost incarnate, identification between himself and the "subject of Britain." Steinbeck is clearly trying to break down any boundaries between himself and Malory, the medieval and the modern, the mythic and the historical. He continues:

We do not receive and welcome and relate to events outside our own experience. The Arthurian legend is not objective. The subject of Britain is subjective. It is not popular but private and personal. No matter how often told, it remains sharp and immediate, and delicate and I suspect that every man tailors it to fit himself, much as it may hurt him. There is power in it and a whip and a glory in it. Once you have it inside there’s no frightening it away like a nervous bird from a low built nest–once it fits. This has been to me a mystery and a puzzlement. Could it be that this story lances through to a deeper layer than we know? (Steinbeck, SJSU MS III)

And later:

Sir Thomas Malory was a very great writer. It was beyond his ability not to write greatly. I think he tried to reset the pale and perfect measured parade. And what crept in–not all at once, but gradually, was the shine of beauty and the agony of failure and the last desperate faith that blunts the edge of despair. (Steinbeck, SJSU MS XI)

These sections of the draft introduction reveal that at least part of Steinbeck’s desire to rewrite Malory’s Arthur was an act of identification with and veneration for a great writer. In this he follows a great medieval tradition. At the end of Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer thanks the authors who came before him and transmitted the ancient stories of Troy. For him, they were authors and authorities (the Middle English words auctores and auctoritates are much closer to each other in meaning than Modern English author and authority) and etymology as well as usage support the notion that medieval authors viewed their predecessors with reverence and respect. Chaucer tells his personified book not to be envious of other poets but to kiss their steps as they pass:

But litel book, no makyng thow n’envie,
But subgit be to alle poesye;
And kis the steppes where as thow seest pace
Virgile, Ovide, Omer, Lucan and Stace.
(Tr 5.1789-92)

This veneration for the past, so foreign to the American literary mind, is what got Steinbeck in trouble with Otis and Horton. Let us look at the prose of the first draft to see what Steinbeck might have done with Malory if he had not met his critics so early on in the project.

Following are four versions of the beginning of the Morte Darthur. The first is the Middle English version of Malory, as found in the Vinaver edition, the second is Steinbeck’s first draft (sent to Otis and Horton), the third is Steinbeck’s corrected first draft (corrections made presumably after he received Otis and Horton’s comments) and the last is the second Steinbeck version, as printed in 1976 by Horton.

I. MERLIN

Hit befel in the dayes of Uther Pendragon, when he was kynge of all Englond and so regned, that there was a myghty duke in Cornewaill that helde warre ageynste hym long tyme, and the duke was called the duke of Tyntagil. And so by meanes kynge Uther send for this duk, chargyng hym to brynge his wyf with hym, for she was called a fair lady and a passynge wyse, and her name was called Igrayne. (77 words)

ARTHUR

When Uther Pendragon was king of all England, there was a mighty duke in Cornwall who made war against him. This duke was called the Duke of Tintagil. After a long time, King Uther sent for the duke charging him to bring his wife with him, for she was known as a fair and a wise lady, and her name was Igraine. (62 words)

I

When Uther Pendragon was king of all England, a mighty duke in Cornwall, called the Duke of Tintagil, defied him. After a time, King Uther sent for the duke and charged him to bring his wife with him, for she was known as a fair and a wise lady, and her name was Igraine. (54 words)

When Uther Pendragon was king of England his vassal, the Duke of Cornwall, was reported to have committed acts of war against the land. Then Uther ordered the duke to attend his court and to bring with him his wife, Igraine, who was famed for her wisdom and beauty. (49 words)

I am not sure what Steinbeck meant exactly by the "pale and perfect measured parade," but there is a chance that he meant it to refer to Malory’s actual prose style, which one could argue is "perfect and measured" (I will discuss "pale" later). The first thing to note is that the text grows steadily smaller, this section diminishing from 77 to 62 to 54 to 49 words over the course of revision. Certainly Malory uses more words, and medieval vernacular prose in general has much longer sentences than modern English. This was a sign of high rhetorical style based on Latin models, in which amplificatio was one of the chief ornaments. The beautiful periodic sentences of Latin depend on numerous dependent clauses and a strong ending, usually on a verb. Malory is influenced by this style (as were his French sources), but he has more flexibility in English and can end strongly on either a noun or verb.

Note the way that Malory uses this stylistic strategy and puts names and places at the end of clauses, with emphasis on Pendragon, England, Cornwall, Tyntagil. In this way, he moves the reader into the local setting of Tyntagil by closing in on smaller and smaller places. He also contrasts the two opponents by saying Uther was king of all England, yet that there was a mighty duke in Cornwall. The syntax gives further strength to the opposition between the two men and the coming conflict. There is no value judgement implied, no right or wrong, no narrator who sits in judgement on these men. There is only the landscape, the names and the impending war.

We see as well that these clauses are linked not by subordinating conjunctions (such as although, because, notwithstanding) but by simpler expressions of sequence and time: hit befel, when, and, that, that, and, and, for, and. This easy parataxis allows one event to follow another, like ripples going over the brim of one of those optically illusive swimming pools that seem to have no edge. This style leads to a marvelous world of non-logic, and we see this as well in Malory when he says ". . . and the duke was called the duke of Tyntagil. And so by meanes kynge Uther send for this duk." It is as if the king sends for him because he is called the Duke of Tyntagil and not because he has held war against the king for a long time. This is the genius of the style of Malory: the subtle juxtapositions that are not explained by any conjunction, metaphor or simile. In shortening the sentences and refitting them to modern sensibilties, Steinbeck loses the paratactic quality of Malory.

Notice also Malory’s second sentence, which begins "And so by meanes kyng Uther send for this duk." Here is another difference between Malory and Steinbeck, medieval and modern, romance and novel. Consider this phrase: "And so by meanes." These "meanes," whatever they are, do not matter to Malory. They are simply not made a part of the narrative. King Uther may have sent a messenger or two or three or four; what does it matter? Uther may have sent messengers who made various stops along the way at inns and barnyards to terrorize or fraternize with the local folk, or who slept out beneath the trees and were caught out in a great rain storm, or one of whose horses threw a shoe and was lamed and sold at a great loss to a lout of a blacksmith. Or Uther may have sent a messenger who rode fast and hard through the night while trails of vaporous fog hung about him like the ghosts of ancient barrow wights. There are any number of possible "meanes" by which Uther sent for the duke of Tintagel, and none of them is in the least bit relevant for Malory. Yet this is the stuff of the novel, the stuff that Otis and Horton find lacking in Steinbeck’s first draft. It is the stuff they will, in my opinion, alas, convince him to put in.

The other archaisms that made Steinbeck sound too much like Malory are all gradually weeded out. The phrases "it befell that . . . king of all England . . . held war against him . . . charging him to bring his wife . . . passing wise . . . her name was called Igrayne" are replaced with their dutiful, modern counterparts: "when . . . king of England . . . was reported to have committed acts of war against the land . . . ordered the duke to attend his court . . . famed for her wisdom . . . and her name was Igraine." Thus was Steinbeck’s "medieval" prose "translation" dragged into the modern world. How did this same process occur on the level of the story itself?

The Marhalt Story: "A Pretty Piece of Medievalism"

(apologies to William Wordsworth and John Keats)

I would like to investigate the modernizing of Steinbeck’s content by looking specifically at descriptions of landscape. I have chosen two from the story of Marhalt, a knight who shares a quest with Gawain and Ewain in which each must choose one of three ladies: the oldest being sixty years of age, the middle thirty years of age, and the youngest fifteen. Here is Malory’s description of the valley where these three ladies await the three knights:

And so they rode and cam into a depe valey full of stonys, and thereby they sawe a fayre streme of watir. Aboven thereby was the hede of the streme, a fayre founteyne, and three damesels syttynge thereby. And than they rode to them and ayther salewed othir. (Malory 97)

The following is Steinbeck’s version from his first draft:

And so they rode and came into a deep valley, full of stones. And nearby they saw a fair stream of water, and a little above there was the head of the stream–a fountain–and three damsels were sitting by it. And the three knights rode to them and they saluted one another, and the eldest had a garland of gold about her head and she was threescore winters of age, or more, and her hair was white under the garland. The second damsel was of thirty winters of age, and she wore a circlet of gold about her head. And the third damsel was but fifteen years of age, and she had a garland of flowers about her head. And when these knights beheld them, they asked why they sat by the fountain. (Steinbeck, SJSU MS 273)

Here is the version printed by Horton:

It was a forest of oak and beech, laced with may and white thorn, tangled and guarded with briars. No opening showed on its dark frontier, so that they had to hack an entrance with their swords, but in a short time they came upon a path opened through the undergrowth by red deer and they followed the passage knowing it would lead to water and to pasturage, for deer must drink and graze. After a time they came to a valley of stone, square cut and tumbled about as though some ancient city had been pillaged and destroyed. Among the stones they saw a few hovels of piled stones like sheep cotes roofed with branches. A little stream of turbulent water gabbled down from the farther hill, and after they had refreshed their horses and themselves they followed the watercourse up the slope to the source, where it bubbled from a spring that opened from the mossy mountainside. Above the spring on a ferny shelf three ladies sat under a cluster of birch trees. When the knights were close enough to see, they drew up and regarded the strange trio. (Steinbeck, Acts 164-5)

Note the mythic, folklore elements added to this description: the presence of deer, and the thorns guarding the secret glade, a bit like the briars guarding Briar-Rose. Particularly interesting and actually quite modern is Steinbeck’s interpretation of the "stones" as some sort of Neolithic ruin. Given Malory’s spare descriptions of landscape, Steinbeck may well be right to expand his stones into something more than just a valley naturally strewn with rocks. This is a modern recreation of an idealized medieval landscape; it has the requisite medieval sounding plants–oak, beech, may, white thorn–and the hovels like sheep cotes suggest an impoverished medieval British world as well. Any hint of agricultural is quite lacking in Malory and a particularly apt addition by the author of The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, Of Mice and Men. With the possible exception of the "ferny shelf" (ferns not being common in medieval literature) he has captured our modern notion of the medieval landscape admirably. It is perhaps not quite as good as Steinbeck at his best on landscape (think of the openings of East of Eden and Grapes of Wrath), but it is a pleasing enough scene and it is based on Malory.

Now let’s look ahead a bit as Marhalt and his thirty-year old lady continue on their adventure and make an encampment at a sort of "lover’s bower":

In a little glade beside a spring of cold bubbling water he built a cunning little house of boughs hacked off with a sword, and bedded it deep with dried sweet-smelling ferns. Nearby he fitted stones in a structure to hold the little pot, and gathered a heap of dry wood cloven from the underside of a fallen tree, and he tethered his horse in nearby grass. His armor hung on the oak beside the bower and his shield and lance beside it. The damsel was not still. When he had robed himself she washed his underthings and hung them on a gooseberry bush to dry. She filled her little pot with gooseberries and watching and listening followed the flight of bees and brought wild honey from a hollow tree for sweetening. And in the bower she busied herself spreading wild thyme to perfume the couch, rolling sweet grasses in her tight-woven cloth to make a rich soft pillow, arranging her little store of needments in domestic order, and with her small strong knife she cut and notched saplings from which to hang her clothing. Her knight begged the golden pin that held her hair, and he pulled tail hair from his horse and braided a line, and he went toward the sound of water falling in a pool and gathered mayflies as he went. And shortly he returned with four fine speckled trout, straightened her hairpin, and gave her it. And then he wrapped the trout in a blanket of green fern and laid them by to place in hot ashes in the evening. (Steinbeck, Acts 195)

It should be stressed that this is entirely Steinbeck’s invention. The glade with its gooseberry bushes and bubbling spring is the lover’s paradise, the locus amoenus, the archetypal pleasant place. It has the requisite number of folkloric elements: the glade, spring, plants, thyme, honey, pillow, couch. This is the Forest of Arden, Book Nine of Paradise Lost, Spenser’s Bower of Bliss, Hester’s daughter Pearl across the stream, Act Two of Tristan und Isolde. The catching of the trout conjures up the Fisher King and the world of the Grail Castle. This is the peaceful refuge amidst the world of blood and weaponry; it is the world of the Grail and the rituals of the Eucharist transmuted into folk legend. This could be some Cistercian monk transmuting his own monastic existence into a love for the world.

Marhalt taking his damsel’s hairpin is another nice touch that draws on romance and folk tale elements. This is a familiar topos that belongs with other devices of romance, such as magical rings that turn up in the bellies of fishes or medallions cut in half that reveal the long lost twin brother to his twin sister. A hairpin carries enormous erotic significance if the love between the knight and damsel is forbidden. The weaving of the fish line out of the horsehair is another folklore element, though the scene could gain in intimacy if the knight were to use some of the lady’s hair, rather than the horse’s. But perhaps Steinbeck’s concern is to downplay the eroticism and focus on getting a fish on the fire. The fantasy elements give this landscape its "medieval" quality, yet realism in the form of the fish, gooseberry bush and underwear is threatening all the time to break in. This is our warning that this charming set piece is about to descend into joky dialogue, trite aphorism, clichéd archaism, false-sounding Anglicisms, and popular psychologizing about what makes giants so disagreeable:

He smiled and took his seat and smelled the gooseberries bubbling in honey at the fire. He stretched his limbs and raised his arms over his head. "Contentment requires so little and so much," he said. . . . She stirred the gooseberries with a twig, smiling with contentment and good humor. "As a damsel errant I am an old hand," she said. . . . "Ahead of us we have the giant I spoke of. How are you with giants, my lord?"

"I’ve had a go with a giant or so," he said. "I’ve always felt sorry for them. No one will have them about, and in their loneliness they turn angry and sometimes dangerous." (Steinbeck, Acts 196)

The whole thing comes to a rather lamentable conclusion in which the lady stretches "with ecstasy like a kitten in the grass" and says, "My lord . . . my dear lord." (Steinbeck, Acts 197)

Why does Steinbeck drown his recreation of Malory with such clumsy humor? Steinbeck never finds the tone he needs to recreate Arthur and please both himself and his critics. His first draft is neither humorous nor ironic. The humor that he adds to the second version is often misplaced or forced. There seems to be a fundamental incompatability between what Steinbeck wanted to do and what he was good at. His early critics, hostile to the perceived strangeness of his early draft’s prose style, forced him to turn his King Arthur into a novel. He does not see clearly just how non-ironic and non-humorous a genre romance is.

Both Malory’s Arthur and romance as a whole are not humorous or aggressively comic. There are very few overtly comic moments in all of Malory. One occurs when Sir Dinadan is on one of his endless quests; he has grown a bit weary of fighting and when an anonymous "errant knight" challenges him to another battle, Dinadan asks wearily if he wishes to joust for love or for hate (Malory 372). Another occurs when Lancelot is tricked into climbing a tree without his armor and he then snaps off a tree branch to use as a lance against his adversary. On the other hand, the humor of Tortilla Flat lies in the dramatic irony of placing chivalrous characters in the real world, as when Pilon agrees to rent Danny’s house:

Danny became a great man, having a house to rent, and Pilon went up the social scale by renting a house. It is impossible to say whether Danny expected any rent, or whether Pilon expected to pay any. If they did, both were disappointed. Danny never asked for it, and Pilon never offered it. (16)

Clearly, fiscal matters remain far outside the realm of romance. Don Quixote works in the same way that Tortilla Flat or Pippin IV works. Don Quixote wears the barber’s bowl as his helmet, Danny and his friends look for the Grail and find a US Geodetic Survey Marker, reading "+1915+ Elevation 6000 feet." Pippin IV rules over modern France, while the Princess Clothilde and her American boyfriend, Tod, son of the Egg King of Petaluma, fall in love on motorbikes. The campesinos are the knights of the Round Table. The humor is situational and the dramatic irony is there from the start. There may still be room for a Steinbeckian rendition of Malory that would capture the sweep, tragedy, and moral landscape of romance, but it is not found in either of the versions we have today.

Why was it not enough for Steinbeck to bring the language and landscape up to date? We can surmise that Otis and Horton felt there was something novelistic lacking from the first draft–metaphors, details, interaction between character and landscape, more personal, intimate dialogue, a realistic landscape–but why humor? Why not a serious modern prose rendition of Arthur? The description of the valley of stones above shows that it could have been done. What Steinbeck set out to do originally was a straightforward translation of Malory; it can be set in modern English with very few changes. When he starts to recast the characters, plot, setting and everything else is when he loses his way. Romance is not novelistic, nor is it dramatic. It can be comedic or tragic in theme and in the ultimate destiny of its characters, but these are not essential to its nature, to its style. Also, it also does not deal with the common folk; there are no Lennys, no Curlys, no Dannys, no campesinos. It is about the nobility, as Frye and others have noted:

The romance is nearest of all literary forms to the wish-fulfillment dream, and for that reason it has socially a curiously paradoxical role. In every age the ruling social or intellectual class tends to project its ideals in some form of romance, where the virtuous heroes and beautiful heroines represent the ideals and villains the threats to their ascendancy. (Frye 186)

And yet, this is not how Steinbeck saw it. He says in his introduction, referring to the "ancient scene" created by Malory’s language:

And in that scene were all the vices that ever were. And courage and sadness and frustration, but particularly gallantry–perhaps the only single quality of man that the West has invented. I think my sense of right and wrong, my feeling of noblesse oblige, and any thought I may have had against the oppressor and for the oppressed, came from this secret book. (Steinbeck, Acts 4)

Perhaps Steinbeck, with his emphasis on the scene created by the language itself, sees more clearly than Frye how medieval romance is understood today. Famed for his democratic spirit, Steinbeck has no natural affinity with the upper classes and one would think that his characters would be the "villains" above. Yet, Steinbeck readily accepts the medieval notion of a nobility of spirit that transcends social concerns. Nonetheless, he claims to have learned about oppression from Malory. It is only a small step for Steinbeck from the Grapes of Wrath to Malory. But, while the ideal of noblesse oblige appeals to Steinbeck’s modern western democratic spirit, the further elaborations of the Grail Legend may have proven difficult for him to translate into the modern world. By the time Malory’s knights arrive at the Grail Quest, the Arthurian ideals of chivalry and noblesse are so further layered over with Cistercian piety, humility and celibacy as to be entirely foreign to someone like Steinbeck.

Whether this alone would have deterred him we do not know, but Steinbeck’s critics don’t let him continue with his original vision of sticking close to Malory, and he ends up with a curious earnestness leavened with burlesque humor. He finishes by sounding like an earnest American trying to compete at satire with a British Member of Parliament. Pity the poor American writer who strays from his native earnestness and outrage and, without the benefit of a dramatically ironic conceit for a book, tries to achieve this satirical tone single-handedly.

With the shift in tone between his first and second draft, Steinbeck is off on a completely new project, the one that Otis and Horton encouraged him to write and liked well enough to publish after his death. Where Steinbeck saw in his first draft the "beauty and agony . . . and faith that blunts the edge of despair" (Steinbeck, SJSU MS XI), Otis and Horton saw fragments of fifteenth-century prose too faithfully rendered into modern English. In some sense, Otis and Horton were right. Reverence may not be the best tone to choose for a long narrative filled with adventure. Reverence belongs in psalms, sermons, lives of saints, hagiography. And this may be where Steinbeck fails to see clearly what Malory’s Morte Darthur is. The language, the lack of novelistic detail and the strangely empty, yet profoundly moral, landscape have misled more than one modern reader into feeling a sort of reverence for the material. Yet Thomas Malory wrote with no sense of reverence or irreverence for his characters or his French book. The moral judgements of romance are implicit in the tale and its setting and have nothing to do with authorial attitude. And this is why Steinbeck ends up with pieces of Malory, encased in the jewelled reliquaries of a modern prose style, psychology and attitude toward landscape. Where Steinbeck sees the miracle wrought by the relics of the saint (i.e. learning to read), Otis and Horton see a piece of a bony finger encased in a silver box.

Modern tellers of the Arthur legend need to have a quest of their own, and this is what Steinbeck fails to find between the Scylla of his critics and the Charybdis of the Winchester manuscript. He describes his frustration with searching for Arthur in his unpublished introduction:

One does not discover Arthur. One recognizes him, so that it is conceivable that we are Avalon and Arthur is here. It has taken many years of my life to come to this astonishing simplicity. I followed wildly and blindly this tale as though itself had been a questing beast, flushed it from the lost hills of Wales, glimpsed it in Ireland, in Somerset and Cornwall, and there it was in Brittany, in Provence, in Sicily, back to England of the tidy alliterative, back to the France of Chrétien. The questing which started with Thomas Malory came back to him and so ended. For I had thought that the more I could learn, the more I would know and I found myself in a howling wildernesss of books each one clamouring "Look at me! I am the one." And so I came back to Malory, rapist, stealer of sheep, breaker of church furniture, plotter against a duke’s life, twice escaped from prison, until he became knyght presoner and great master of the tale. It might have been better if I had never left. No, that’s not true. Malory becomes greater by comparison. (Steinbeck, SJSU MS IV-V)

Steinbeck never completes the quest he set out on and in the end, he has one clear desire: to recapture his own experience of learning to read. This ultimately turns out not to be a very compelling vision for a book. And I think Steinbeck knew this, even after all his long work. The whole thing could (should?) have been left unpublished. Many reviews intimated as much at the time: "A complete Arthurian cycle from Steinbeck would have been good to have. The present version remains an erratically charming curiosity" (Non-fiction 44), and the following, clearly in error about how many drafts there are but perfectly astute in assessing how unfinished the work remains: "Steinbeck died in New York in 1968. We are left with the first draft. This is not strange in itself (although strange in its achievement or lack of it) but frankly it is not good" (Kitely 540). 2

Steinbeck has tried to portray modern, novelistic relationships between men and women and fill in the conversations they might have had (and the domestic details, like underthings, gooseberries, pillows, etc.). This may work for some of the peripheral adventures but what is Lancelot going to say to Guenevere when he rescues her from the fire? How will Gawain react when his unarmed brothers are killed by Lancelot? Malory’s prose reaches its pinnacle of expression in the tragedy that will eventually engulf the kingdom. The understatement is devastating. We do not need to know whether Gawain tears his hair or clutches his sword in agony. The conversation is all. Now to be fair to Steinbeck, I don’t know what he would have done when he got to the fall of the kingdom, but I think he could see it coming. His critics had taken him down another path, and there was no way he was going to desecrate the tragedy of Arthur with this burlesque humor. What could Lancelot have said at the end? The shift in tone would have been too great. On the other hand, Steinbeck creates a compelling vernacular tragedy in Of Mice and Men, so he might have been the writer to succeed here as well. Yet he gave up the project after two good efforts and retreated to his writing studio, named Joyous Garde, on Long Island. Elaine Steinbeck, in her introduction to the 1995 edition of Tortilla Flat, says "This big, brawny western-style middle-aged man–he was Lancelot, wasn’t he?" And here we come back to Steinbeck’s bodily and mystical identification with the Arthurian myths.

Steinbeck describes Malory’s work as a "pale and perfect measured parade." Is it the parade of Arthurian characters, which makes them sound rather dread and otherworldly, a bit like Keats’ "knight-at-arms / Alone and palely loitering" (La Belle Dame sans Merci 1-2), or is he referring, as I suggest above, to the pale and measured parade of Malory’s language? Though the latter is more certain, he probably had both in mind. And somehow this pale and perfect measured parade was never properly brought to life as a Steinbeck novel. It remains pale, lifeless and measured, as if cut to fit the reliquary box that Malory’s prose became as Steinbeck rendered it into modern English. Romance requires characters to be unaware of their own motivations and states of mind, characters who don’t know themselves because there is no knower to know them, as if the matter of Britain simply told the story by itself. The novel needs an author and Steinbeck, in his veneration of Malory, was unable to wrest the story from Malory’s words and revivify it.

The Arthurian myths abound in Steinbeck’s world. Danny with his faithful knights and his fight against a nameless evil, Lenny as a giant or Beowulf-like figure with strength in his hands, Catherine Trask as a Morgan le Fay-type enchanter. George tragically destined to kill Lenny in the cause of justice, like Arthur who must condemn Guinevere and Lancelot, the Dust Bowl as the Wasteland, the blood feuds and dangerous women of East of Eden. Steinbeck wanted to recapture the golden world of Arthur, as did Malory. The story recedes from us infinitely; Arthur lived a thousand years before Malory told his tale. There has been forever the mismatch between this tale and the words to tell it. Steinbeck loved the language of fifteenth-century England and the legends of Arthur. If only he could have spoken Middle English as his native tongue, think of what wonders he might have wrought.

APPENDICES

These two appendices present Steinbeck’s versions of the first draft up to the point where he stopped editing. The third appendix is a description of the typescript.

Appendix A

This is the first version typed as found in the SJSU MS. Later pencil corrections are NOT included:

ARTHUR

When Uther Pendragon was king of all England, there was a mighty duke in Cornwall who made war against him. This duke was called the Duke of Tintagil. After a long time, King Uther sent for the duke charging him to bring his wife with him, for she was known as a fair and a wise lady, and her name was Igraine. When the duke and his wife came to the king, he gave them great honor and entertained them both. The king loved the Lady Igraine and he desired her. But she was a good woman and would not consent to the king. She told the duke her husband, "I suppose we were sent for that I should be dishonored; wherefore, my husband, let us depart and ride secretly into the night to our own castle." So they departed secretly.

When King Uther knew of their escape, he was angry. He called his privy council and told them what had happened. The council advised the king to order the duke and his wife to return. They said, "If he will not come at your summons, then you will have cause to make war upon him." The messengers rode and brought the answer back. The answer was that neither the duke nor his wife would come. Then the king was furious. He sent hard word again and told the duke to get ready to defend himself, for within forty days he would fetch him out of the biggest castle he had.

When the duke had this warning, he prepared two strong castles for defense, the castle of Tintagil and the Castle Terrabil. Igraine, he put in the Castle Tintigil, and himself went to defend the castle of Terrabil.

And King Uther marched with a great army and laid siege to the Castle Terrabil. He pitched his tents before it and attacked the walls so that many people on both sides were killed. Then from anger and for great love of Igraine, King Uther fell sick.

At this time, Sir Ulfius a noble knight, came to King Uther and asked him why he was sick.

"I shall tell you," said the king. "I am sick from rage and I am sick from love of the fair Igraine. And I may not be cured."

"Well my Lord," said Sir Ulfius, "I shall seek Merlin, the wizard. He will cure you and your heart will be happy."

So Sir Ulfius departed and by chance he met Merlin, dressed in beggar’s clothes. Merlin asked Ulfius whom he sought; and he would not tell him.

"Well," said Merlin, "I know whom you seek. You seek Merlin and therefore seek no farther for I am he. And if the king will reward me and will be sworn to fulfill what I wish, then shall he get what he wishes for I shall cause him to have all his desire."

"All of this I will undertake," said Sir Ulfius, "so long as there is nothing unreasonable in what you desire."

"Well," said Merlin, "I will grant him his desire; and therefore, ride on your way and I will follow you not far behind."

Then Sir Ulfius was glad and rode with great speed back to King Uther Pendragon and told him he had met Merlin.

"Where is he?" asked the king.

"Sir," said Ulfius, "he will come before long."

Then Sir Ulfius saw Merlin standing before the tent. Then King Uther saw him and welcomed him.

"Sir," said Merlin, "I know your heart and I know your wishes. If you will swear as a true king to fulfill my desire, you shall have your desire."

Then the king swore on the gospel that he would do so.

"Sir," said Merlin, "you shall lie with Igraine and she will have a child. And when the child is born, you must give it to me to take care of. I promise that this will be good for you and for the child."

"I promise," said the king.

"Now make you ready," said Merlin. "I shall put a spell on you this night and you shall lie with Igraine in the castle of Tintagil, for she will think you are her husband the duke. But do not speak with her nor with her men. Say only that you are not well and must go to rest. And so, hie you to bed and rise not on the morning until I come to you."

And so it was agreed.

But the Duke of Tintagil saw from the castle walls that the king rode away; and that night he charged out of the castle and attacked the king’s army. During the fight, the duke himself was killed; even before the king came to the castle of Tintigil and to Igraine.

King Uther, under Merlin’s spell looking like the the [sic] duke, lay with Igraine and she conceived the child Arthur.

In the morning, Merlin came to the king and bade him make ready. And so he kissed the Lady Igraine and departed in all haste. Then the lady heard the news that her husband was killed the night before, and she marvelled whom it might be that lay with her in the likeness of her lord. But she mourned alone and did not speak of it.

Then all the barons, by one voice, begged the king to make peace between himself and the Lady Igraine. And the king said that he would have it so for he wanted to keep peace with her. And he put his trust in Ulfius to beg a meeting between them.

"Consider," said Ulfius to Igraine, "That our king’s a lusty knight and wifeless, and my Lady Igraine is a passing fair lady. It would be a great joy to us all if it might please the king to make Igraine his queen." (NB This seems to be a slip in who is addressing whom.)

The barons were very much in favor of this and they begged the king to make her his queen, and Arthur [hard to read], like the good knight he was, he consented with good will. And so in all haste they were married in the morning with great mirth and joy all around.

And King Lot of Lothian and of Orkney, then wedded Margawse that was Gawain’s mother, and King Nentres of the Land of Garlot wedded Elaine. All this was done at the request of King Arthur. The third sister, Morganlefay [sic], was put to school in a nunnery where she learned so much that she became an expert in magic and later she was wedded to King Uryens of the Land of Gore, who was the brother of Sir Ewyans le Blanche Mains.

Then Igraine waxed great with child and after half a year, as King Uther lay beside his queen, he asked her by the faith she owed him, who was the father of her child and she was embarassed to answer him.

"Do not be dismayed," said the king, "but tell me the truth and I will love you the better for it, I promise."

"Sire," said she, "I shall tell you the truth. The same night that my lord was killed, at the same hour by the knight’s report, there came into my castle of Tintagil a man exactly like my lord in speech and face; and two knights with him in the likeness of his two knights, Barcias and Jordans. And so I went unto bed with him as I ought to do with my lord, and on the same night–as I shall answer to God–this child was conceived."

"That is the truth," said the king, "for it was myself who came to you."

And he told her how it was done with Merlin’s counsel and help.

Then the queen was glad when she knew who was the father of her child. Soon Merlin came to the king and said,

"Sire, you must provide for the care of you child."

"As you wish, so be it," said the king.

Appendix B

This is the second Steinbeck version, including all the pencilled changes found in the SJSU MS.

I

When Uther Pendragon was king of all England, a mighty duke in Cornwall, called the Duke of Tintagil, defied him. After a time, King Uther sent for the duke and charged him to bring his wife with him, for she was known as a fair and a wise lady, and her name was Igraine.

When the duke and his wife came to Uther, he gave them great honor and entertained them and the king loved the Lady Igraine and desired her, but she was a good woman and would not consent to the king.

She told the duke her husband, "I believe we were sent for that I should be dishonored; wherefore, my husband, let us depart in haste and ride in the night to our own castle." So they departed secretly.

When King Uther learned of their escape, he was angry. He called his privy council and told them what had happened. The council advised the king to order the duke and his wife to return.

They said, "If he will not come at your summons, then you will have cause to make war upon him." The messengers rode and brought the answer back that neither the duke nor his wife would come.

Then the king was furious. He sent an angry message telling the duke to get ready to defend himself, for within forty days the king would fetch him out of the biggest castle he had.

When the duke had this warning, he prepared two strong castles for defense, the castle of Tintagil and the Castle Terrabil. Igraine, he put in the Castle Tintagil, and himself went to defend the castle of Terrabil.

And King Uther marched with a great army and laid siege to the Castle Terrabil. He pitched his tents before it and attacked the walls so that many people on both sides were killed. Then from anger and from longing for Igraine, King Uther fell despondent.

At this time, Sir Ulfius a noble knight, came to King Uther and asked him about his sickness.

"I shall tell you," said the king. "I am sick from rage and I am sick from love of the fair Igraine. And I may not be cured."

"Well my Lord," said Sir Ulfius, "I shall seek Merlin, the wizard. He will cure you and make your heart be happy."

So Sir Ulfius departed and by chance he met Merlin, dressed as a beggar. Merlin asked Ulfius whom he sought; and he would not tell a beggar.

Merlin said, "I know whom you seek. You seek Merlin and therefore seek no farther for I am Merlin. And if the king will reward me and will swear to do what I wish, then shall he get what he wishes for I shall cause him to have all his desire."

"All of this I will undertake," said Sir Ulfius, "so long as there is nothing unreasonable in what you desire."

"Well," said Merlin, "I will grant him his desire; and therefore, ride back to the king, and I will follow you not far behind."

Then Sir Ulfius was glad and rode with great speed back to King Uther Pendragon and told him he had met Merlin.

"Where is he?" asked the king.

"Sir," said Ulfius, "he will come before long."

Then Sir Ulfius saw Merlin standing before the tent, and King Uther saw him and welcomed him.

"Sir," said Merlin, "I know your heart and I know your wishes. If you will swear as a true king to fulfill my desire, you shall have your desire."

Then the king swore on the gospel that he would do so.

"Sir," said Merlin, "you shall lie with Igraine and she will have a child. And when the child is born, you must give it to me to care for. I promise that this will be good for you and for the child."

"I promise," said the king.

"Then make you ready," said Merlin. "For you shall go to Igraine in the castle of Tintagil. I will put a spell on you so that she will think you are her husband the duke. But do not speak with her nor with her men. Say only that you are not well and must go to rest. Then get you to bed and rise not on the morning until I come to you."

And so it was agreed.

But the Duke ["castle walls" is not erased and makes no sense here] of Terrabil saw that the king rode away from his camp and that night he charged out of the castle and attacked the king’s army. During the fight, the duke himself was killed even before the king came to the castle of Tintigil [sic] and to Igraine.

King Uther, under Merlin’s spell seemed like the the [sic] duke and he lay with Igraine and she conceived the child Arthur.

In the morning, Merlin came for the king and bade him make ready. And so he kissed the Lady Igraine and departed in all haste. Soon the lady heard the news that her husband was killed the night before, and she marvelled whom it might be that lay with her in the likeness of her lord. But she mourned alone and did not speak of it.

Then all the barons, with one voice, begged the king to make peace between himself and the Lady Igraine. And the king agreed that he would have it so. He put his trust in Ulfius to arrange a meeting between them.

"Consider," said Ulfius to Igraine, "that our king is a lusty knight and wifeless, and my Lady Igraine is a passing fair lady. It would be a great joy to us all if it might please the king to make you his queen."

The barons were very much in favor of this. They begged the king to make her his queen, and, like the good knight he was, he consented gladly. And so in all haste they were married in the morning with great mirth and joy all around.

Then at the request of Uther Pendragon King Lot of Lothian and Orkney wedded Margawse that was Gawain’s mother, and King Nentres of the Land of Garlot wedded Elaine. The third sister, Morgan le Fay, was put to school in a nunnery where she learned so much that she became an expert in magic.

Igraine waxed great with child, and, after half a year, as King Uther lay beside his queen, he asked her by the loyalty she owed him, who was the father of her child. And Igraine was embarassed to answer him.

"Do not be dismayed," said the king, "Tell me the truth and I will love you the better for it, I promise."

"Sire," said she, "The same night that my lord was killed, at the same hour, there came into my castle of Tintagil a man exactly like my lord in speech and face; and two knights with him in the likeness of his two knights, Barcias and Jordans. I went to bed with him as I ought to do with my lord. And on that same night–as I shall answer to God–this child was conceived."

"That is the truth," said the king, "It was myself who came to you."

And he told her how it was done with Merlin’s counsel and magic and the queen was glad when she knew he was the father of her child.

Soon Merlin came to the king and said,

"Sire, you must provide for the care of your child."

"As you wish, so be it," said the king.

Appendix C

Description of the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies Typescript

The typescript of John Steinbeck’s Acts of King Arthur consists of an original typed, doubled-spaced text on 8-1/2 by 11" paper. A carbon copy of this typescript is found in the Steinbeck Collection of the Arthur Ransom Humanities Library, University of Texas at Austin. The Texas manuscript has 529 pages. The San Jose typescript has 576 pages and is divided into the following chapters:

Introduction (unfinished) I-XI

Arthur (title effaced) 1

Knight of the Two Swords 101

Torre and Pellinor 163

Death of Merlin and the War with the Five Kings 211

Arthur and Accolon 227

Gawain, Ewain and Marhalt 261

Sir Lancelot du Lacke 311

The Tale of Gareth of Orkney 386

one blank sheet after 419

The Book of Sir Tristram de Lyones Isode the Fair 540

Pages 1-8 contain numerous editorial changes in pencil. No other pages have any editing (except the Newgate comment on the introduction).

The manuscript is currently housed in a green, somewhat dilapidated Abercrombie and Fitch box, in which it was sent to San Jose State University by Elaine Steinbeck in the late 1990s. A handwritten letter on small notepaper in pencil is attached with an envelope to the outside of the box (see text of article for this letter printed in full).

A photocopy of the typescript of the second draft of Steinbeck’s Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights is found in the Steinbeck collection of the Bracken Library, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana. This was given to Ball State by Dr. Tetsumaro Hayashi, who received it from Elizabeth Otis in July 1976.

NOTES

1 The history of this text is somewhat complex. Steinbeck’s first draft was put away sometime after 1959, was never published and dropped from sight. He worked on a completely new draft some years later, and this second draft is the text that was published posthumously in an edition that included selected letters and journal entries relating to the entire writing process of his Acts. Though Otis and Horton were aware of the first draft, it was not consulted or used for the published version. Later commentators seem unaware of the existence of this earlier draft. As far as I can tell, this paper is the first to distinguish between the two drafts. See Appendix C for further details of these manuscripts. Return

2 With the discovery of the San Jose State manuscript, we know now that the reviewer here is referring to the second draft. Return

WORKS CITED

Chaucer, Geoffrey. Troilus and Criseyde. The Riverside Chaucer. 3rd ed. Ed. Larry D. Benson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.

Frye, Northrup. Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1957.

Hayashi, Tetsumaro, ed. Steinbeck and the Arthurian Theme. Steinbeck Monograph Series No. 5 (1975).

Hodges, Laura F., ed. John Steinbeck’s The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights, An Arthuriana/Camelot Project Bibliography. <www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/acpbibs/hodges.htm>

Keats, John. "La Belle Dame sans Merci." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M. H. Abrams et al. 4th ed. Vol. 2. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1979.

Kitely, John F. "Magnificent Obsession." Books and Bookmen (1978): 55-56. Rpt. in John Steinbeck: The Contemporary Reviews. Ed. Joseph R. McElrath, Jr., Jesse S. Crisler and Susan Shillinglaw. The American Critical Archives 8. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. 540.

Malory, Sir Thomas. Works. Ed. Eugène Vinaver. 2nd ed. London: Oxford UP, 1971.

"Non-fiction." Kirkus Reviews 44 (1 September 1976): 1025. Rpt. in John Steinbeck: The Contemporary Reviews. Ed. Joseph R. McElrath, Jr., Jesse S. Crisler and Susan Shillinglaw. The American Critical Archives 8. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996: 525.

Simmonds, Roy S. "A Note on Steinbeck’s Unpublished Arthurian Stories." Steinbeck and the Arthurian Theme. Ed. Tetsumaro Hayashi, Steinbeck Monograph Series No. 5 (1975): 25-29.

-----. "The Unrealized Dream: Steinbeck’s Modern Version of Malory." Steinbeck and the Arthurian Theme. Ed. Tetsumaro Hayashi. Steinbeck Monograph Series No. 5 (1975): 30-43.

Steinbeck, John. The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights. Ed. Chase Horton. New York: Ballantine, 1976. This edition includes an extensive appendix drawn from Steinbeck’s letters and journals, in which he discusses his trip to England and composition of the first draft.

-----. Manuscript of The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights. (First Draft typed and annotated in pencil.) Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA.

-----. Tortilla Flat. New York: Penguin USA, 1995.

Sundermeier, Michael. "Why Steinbeck Didn’t Finish His Arthur–The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights, 1976." Steinbeck’s Posthumous Work: Essays in Criticism. Ed. Tetsumaro Hayashi and Thomas J. Moore. Steinbeck Monograph Series No. 14 (1989): 34-42.

 

RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS



12/01/04