grave mistake

oops, in my comment to Rise, king arthur earlier, i said the first book in THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING ends with arthur pulling out Excalibur. in fact, that's just the sword he pulls out of the stone to prove his inheritance. i just remembered Excalibur is pulled out from a lake. am into the 3rd book now and strangely no mention of excalibur even though arthur is already married.

anyway, it's been quite a delightful read so far. i think knowing the tragedy that lies ahead makes the 1st book alot more poignant. here, the boy arthur's lessons mainly take the form of being changed into animals to learn about their way of life - lots of political undertones here. quite funny too - you meet the ants which function under an absolutely communistic and totalitarian system, birds whose speech allude to shakespeare's hamlet, some very bizarre fish and a very learned badger with a very funny evolution theory . they also go on an exploit with robin hood who's really called robin wood. there's also a very funny subplot involving king pellinore and the questing beast (which will later be infatuated with a sir palomides). anyway, here's one passage i like:

" 'You know what i mean,' said the Wart. 'What have you done with the old man with no nose?'
'He has cured him,'said Kay.
'Well,' said Merlyn, 'you might call it that, and then again you might not. Of course, when one has lived in the world as long as I have, and backwards at that, one does learn to know a thing or two about pathology. The wonders of analytical psychology and plastic surgery are, I am afraid, to this generation but a closed book.'
'What did you do to him?'
'Oh, I just psycho-analysed him,' replied the magician grandly. 'That, and of course I sewed on a new nose on both of them.' "

later on towards the end of book 2, merlyn suggests to sir palomides to psycho-analyse the questing beast, tell her about the facts of life but not too much freud. and you'll see sir palomides trying to explain about the stamens and pollens while his friend sir grummore tries to talk about the hen and the egg.