At one stray moment in "Acts Of King Arthur And His Noble Knights", a lazy knight named Sir Lyonel is pressured to join his uncle Lancelot on a quest. In casual conversation, he catches a glimpse of Lancelot's heroic nature, staring unblinking in the face of doom.

"...suddenly Sir Lyonel knew why Lancelot would gallop down the centuries, spear in rest, gathering men's hearts on his lance head like tilting rings."

In "Acts Of King Arthur", written in the 1950s but unpublished until 1976, John Steinbeck tries to do the same for us, explaining the world of Arthurian legend so as to make us understand its singular appeal in an age of TV cowboys and atomic bombs.

Steinbeck largely succeeds, though not without difficulty. His "Acts" is a scattershot collection of stories that gathers steam only after leaving behind Arthur himself and most of the best-known elements of his storyline to delve into the marrow of lesser tales. There, Steinbeck grasps the opportunity to marry his own modern sensibilities to the centuries-old legends he retells.

In the book's final and finest chapter, Lancelot is confronted by a jealous knight who catches him up in a tree without his sword. Building a fire, he tells Lancelot to come down and get what's coming to him. Lancelot asks how the knight can scruple to slay an unarmed foe.

"I will recover from my shame before you grow a new head, my friend," the caitiff knight replies.

Lancelot manages to get out of this hazard, only to discover another kind when old friend Sir Kay, managing Camelot's larder and tasked with feeding every passing knight, tells him how miserable the job has made him, worn down by "the nibbling of numbers."

It's a dynamic way to read of Camelot's glory, dealing with such out-of-time concerns in a recognizably Arthurian way, but it took time for Steinbeck to reach this level of fluency. As an appendix of Steinbeck's correspondence during this project reveals, he found it hard work recrafting the stories of his middle-English sources without losing the beauty of its poetry, which had attracted him as a young boy.

Only the chapter on Lancelot, and the one before it featuring three quests carried out by Sir Gawain, Sir Ewain, and Sir Marhalt, manage to pull this off completely. On their own the two chapters provide brilliant reading of pure fantasy and escape, not to mention more than half of the book's sizable page count.

Elsewhere, a seemingly more tentative Steinbeck plows through the story of the Sword and the Stone, rushes the wizard Merlin to his untimely doom, and barely pauses long enough to allow his title character to pick up his fabled sword Excalibur. It's decent storytelling, just not that enthralling. Arthur is seen as a bumbler and, in one instance, quite brutal, something Steinbeck had in his source texts and was determined to keep in. It's hard at times to think why Steinbeck would think such a character would carry our enthusiasm, a problem he deals with by shuffling Arthur to the sidelines for most of the book.

Yet as "Acts" moves along to its two closing chapters, it, like Sir Lyonel, finds that enthusiasm, prying out the child in many an older, cynical reader and transporting him or her to a place of wide-eyed wonder and enchantment. It's a shame Steinbeck never finished what he started, but what he creates here is no less special for its unpolished beauty.

Now, I have never read the original King Arthur stories or any other attempts to re-tell it. So, I do not know how I would compare them. That however may not be really important, for this book can stand on its own. It starts with very terse language and becomes more and more colorful as stories progress. Indeed it reaches its apogee in the last tale of Sir Lancelot, which should really be thought as one of the best fantasy stories. It has a sad and ominous feel as story seem to move to its fateful and resigned end prophesied by Merlin, which it never truly reaches, since the book was left unfinished. Despite the fact of been incomplete, it does transcend the simple story telling of knightly deeds and seem to project certain futility of knighthood. As any fairy tale suppose to be, it has plenty of gore and head chopping and yet unlike many of other modern fantasy stories it does not use them for their shock value, but rather to accent the human virtues in face of his vices. This book is a gem and I could only wish if Steinback finished this book, and in the same key as last tale. There is a lot to learn for a young reader from this book.

I read this book as a teen and loved it and forgot about it until I came across it again recently. I forgot what a little jewel it is. Steinbeck, with his own inimitable style, has taken the ancient stories and retold them with his own wry, wise perspective of live and of human frailty.

I am particularly partial to the story of Sir Marhalt, an under-appreciated knight in the romantic pantheon. Marhalt is a fierce warrior and a great knight but he is very independent and doesn't want to be part of the Round Table. He goes adventuring with a "damsel" he meets in the forest and the results are both comic and exciting. When he is forced to do battle with the Lord of the South Border and his six sons, his damsel worries but Marhalt does not. Finally he tells her that he would rather fight seven men than one beecause if any one of the seven thought he was any good, he wouldn't need the other six.

A knight after my own heart.

I've read Tennyson's "Idylls of the King" several times and Malory's "Le Morte D'Arthur"
too. The other more modern classic is T. H. White's two books " The Once and Future King" and
" The Book of Merlin". John Steinbeck is an unexpected scholar here:
he has translated the classic so that they make sense in modern prose.
It is hard to say if he "got it right" as there are several versions of these tales historically
in everything from Welsh folk tales to classic literature.
I do know that he has brought his feel for story telling
and understanding of people to a place where it was needed.
Comparing his narrative to one I just read by Andrew Lang
makes me appreciate his work more.

Working from original sources such as the Winchester manuscript and the famous book by Thomas Malory, Steinbeck recreates the essential mythical stories of Britain's literature and history. They are seven interconnected but independent stories, which unfortunately form an unfinished book, that ends just at the beginning of the fatidic romance between Lancelot and Guinevere. Steinbeck modernizes dialogues without, apparently, interfering with the plots, and along the way he introduces a sense of humor, British style, which makes the stories all the more enjoyable. It is a world of wonders, the realm of dreams and the magical, populated by errant knights, princesses in distress and danger, childish giants, wizards, as well as terrifying witches, especially the beautiful but sinister witch-queen Morgan Le Fay, King Arthur's half-sister. Arthur, by the way, is far from being a perfect or hieratic hero. He is a young man astonished by his peculiar destiny, who ages bitterly among betrayals and misadventures. The several knights also constitute different kinds of types. There is the arrogant and scheming Gawain; the experienced and gentleman Marhalt; the young and hard-working Ewain. Also the heroic, ironic and tragic -and very tired- Lancelot, the one with the tragic fate. Several female figures are remarkable, especially the three guides of the tale "Gawain, Ewain and Marhalt": the capricious teenager; the solicit and ultimately annoying mature woman; and the strict old woman who trains Ewain, a true military monster who takes a timid, insecure young man and turns him into a war machine. Of course another distinguished character is Merlin the wizard, who is also political consultant and military strategist.

It is a pity that death surprised Steinbeck before finishing this masterful reinterpretation of very old myths, a great homage to his childhood and to the origins of his vocation as a reader. These are very entertaining tales, full of insightful reflections on the art of chivalry, women, war, and the concepts of honor, virility and dignity.