26. John Steinbeck - The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights

I had been looking for a readable rendition of Malory's Morte d'Arthur and my husband suggested reading Steinbeck's version. Yes, the same Steinbeck as in the Grapes of Wrath. At the time, I honestly didn't even know that Steinbeck had written a "translation" of the original Malory text. From what is explained in the introduction, Steinbeck not only used the Winchester Manuscripts of Malory's works but also a number of other sources as well in creating this modern rendition of the book. What was nice is that he kept a lot of it in the same type of structure as the original Malory and just updated some of the words and sentence structures to help make it more enjoyable for the 20th century reader.

I truly did enjoy Steinbecks version and it looks like he kept not only the spirit of Malory alive and well but also made it much easier and enjoyable to read (I tried reading the Malory version...god...I wanted to bang my head on the table). Unfortunately, though, this isn't a complete reworking of Malory's work. He covers the early stories of Arthur, Merlin, Lancelot and the earlier knights, but doesn't cover the Grail Quest nor the death of Arthur. Steinbeck just never completed the work and nobody knows why. What he did finish was published in this version. I wish Steinbeck did finish the tale because he did a fantastic job.