Modern Classics of Fantasy by Gardner R. Dozois

Author:Gardner R. Dozois [Dozois, Gardner R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantastic fiction; American, Science Fiction, General, Fantasy, Fantasy fiction; American, Fiction, Short Stories
ISBN: 9780312169312
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 1997-10-15T21:32:36+00:00

T. H. WHITE

The Troll

Born in 1906, the late T. H. White was perhaps the most talented and widely acclaimed creator of whimsical fantasy since Lewis Carroll, and probably did more to mold the popular image of King Arthur and Merlin than any other writer since Twain. Although he published other well-received fantasy novels such as Mistress Masham’s Repose and The Elephant and the Kangaroo, White’s major work—and the work on which almost all of his present-day reputation rests—was the massive Arthurian tetralogy, The Once and Future King. Begun in 1939 with the publication of the first volume, The Sword in the Stone (itself well known as an individual novel, and later made into a not-terribly-successful Disney animated film), the tetralogy was published in an omnibus volume in 1958, became a nationwide best-seller, inspired the musical Camelot, one of the most popular shows in the history of Broadway, and later was made into a big-budget (and quite dreadful) movie of the same name. Gloriously eccentric and impressively erudite, full of whimsy and delightful anachronism, hilarious and melancholy by turns, poetically written and peopled with psychologically complex and compassionately drawn characters, The Once and Future King is probably one of the two or three best fantasies of the last half of the twentieth century, and is surpassed for widespread impact only by J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. (As an example of its influence, most subsequent fantasy books and stories that handle Arthurian themes take for granted the idea that Merlin (or Merlyn, as White spelled it) is living his life backward through time—although that trope is not found in Mallory, Tennyson, or Twain, but only in White’s work. It has become part of the ongoing Merlin legend, with most subsequent writers not even realizing where they’ve picked it up from, and you can’t ask for a much better demonstration of influence than that!)

T. H. White died in 1964. The Book of Merlyn, a postscript to The Once and Future King, was published posthumously in 1980. White was not prolific at short lengths, and most of his stories are garnered in the collection The Maharajah, and Other Stories. White’s strengths as a writer did not desert him at shorter lengths, though, as you will see in the wry story that follows, which shows that, even in the carpeted, comfortable, and luxurious halls of a modern hotel, a leopard does not change its spots, nor a troll its nature …

* * * *

“My father,” said Mr. Marx, “used to say that an experience like the one I am about to relate was apt to shake one’s interest in mundane matters. Naturally he did not expect to be believed, and he did not mind whether he was or not. He did not himself believe in the supernatural, but the thing happened, and he proposed to tell it as simply as possible. It was stupid of him to say that it shook his faith in mundane matters, for it was just as mundane as anything else.

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