{"id":1458521,"date":"2022-04-29T18:59:36","date_gmt":"2022-04-29T22:59:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1458521"},"modified":"2022-04-29T18:59:40","modified_gmt":"2022-04-29T22:59:40","slug":"ben-shapiros-guide-to-the-once-and-future-king","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/ben-shapiros-guide-to-the-once-and-future-king\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben Shapiro\u2019s Guide To The Once And Future King"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fben-shapiros-guide-to-the-once-and-future-king%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1458521&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2022\/04\/Readers-Pass-Shaprio-Bens-Guide-to-Once-and-Future-King16x9.jpg?w=1200&#038;h=800&#038;ixlib=react-9.3.0\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p><em>The following is an excerpt from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/show\/third-thursday-book-club\">Ben Shapiro\u2019s Third Thursday Book Club<\/a> guide to The Once and Future King.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><span>T.H. White\u2019s <\/span><i><span>The Once and Future King<\/span><\/i> <span>is widely considered the most influential fantasy novel ever written. Drawn from Thomas Malory\u2019s <\/span><i><span>Le Morte d\u2019Arthur<\/span><\/i><span>, <\/span><i><span>The Once and Future King<\/span><\/i><span>\u2019s retelling of the Arthurian legend has been an inspiration for authors ranging from J.K. Rowling (the <\/span><i><span>Harry Potter <\/span><\/i><span>series) to Lev Grossman (<\/span><i><span>The Magicians<\/span><\/i><span>) to Neil Gaiman (<\/span><i><span>American Gods<\/span><\/i><span>). T.H. White wrote only one great book: <\/span><i><span>The Once and Future King<\/span><\/i><span>. But that book was written over the course of decades, and really encompasses several smaller novels, fitted together with master craftsmanship. It is a funny novel, a political novel, a novel of romance and adventure \u2014 but most of all, it is a novel about the relationships between human beings, and how they reconcile those relationships with eternal, meaningful values \u2026 or whether the struggle and failure to do so is both the great human tragedy, and the source of man\u2019s inherent dignity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>A SHORT BIOGRAPHY\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span>T.H. White was born on May 29, 1906, in British-occupied India; his father worked with the Indian police, and his mother was allegedly \u201cpsychopathic,\u201d according to biographer Sylvia Townsend Warner. <\/span><span>He attended Cheltenham College in England and then Queen\u2019s College at Cambridge University, where he graduated with first-class honors, having written extensively on Malory. He wrote novels during summer vacations, but it wasn\u2019t until 1936 that he re-embraced the Malory legend. He wrote in his notes, \u201cThe whole Arthurian story is a regular Greek doom, comparable to that of Orestes.\u201d He began work on the book that would become <\/span><i><span>The Sword in the Stone<\/span><\/i><span>. That book was chosen in 1939 for the Book-of-the-Month Club, making him an overnight success.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>As World War II approached, he wrote the second book, <\/span><i><span>The Witch in the Wood <\/span><\/i><span>\u2014 which would later be re-edited and retitled <\/span><i><span>The Queen of Air and Darkness<\/span><\/i><span>, and then <\/span><i><span>The Ill-Made Knight<\/span><\/i><span>. Finally, in 1939, he completed <\/span><i><span>The Candle In The Wind<\/span><\/i><span>. He did write a fifth volume, <\/span><i><span>The Book of Merlyn<\/span><\/i><span>, but his publisher essentially rejected it; some editions of <\/span><i><span>The Once and <\/span><\/i><i><span>Future King <\/span><\/i><span>now include it. In 1958, for the first time, the compendium known as <\/span><i><span>The Once and Future King<\/span><\/i><span>, which includes all volumes but <\/span><i><span>The Book of Merlyn<\/span><\/i><span>, was published. <\/span><span>Two years later, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, creators of <\/span><i><span>My Fair Lady<\/span><\/i><span>, tried to turn the last three books into <\/span><i><span>Camelot<\/span><\/i><span>, a musical that contains a multiplicity of beautiful songs (<\/span><i><span>How to Handle a Woman <\/span><\/i><span>and <\/span><i><span>If Ever I Would Leave You <\/span><\/i><span>among them) but little of the magic of the book.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>White was widely characterized as peculiar. He lived alone, pursued hobbies including hunting and fishing with alacrity, and was rumored to be a homosexual and a sado-masochist in his personal life. He devoted himself to learning what Warner called \u201ctechniques,\u201d adding <\/span><span>\u201cit was part of his theory about the Renaissance or polytechnic man who could shoot and hunt a hare in the morning, fell a tree in the afternoon, and write a sonnet in the evening. If he saw an implement\u2014plough or paintbrush\u2014he wanted to use it; if he watched a skill, to practice it, and having got what he wanted, went on to something else.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>He died at the age of 57, with <\/span><i><span>The New York Times <\/span><\/i><span>obituary quoting one reviewer who called White \u201ca modern exile in time longing for the past. If he had lived in his beloved past, he might well have been hanged as a warlock.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>THE SWORD IN THE STONE: LEARNING TO BE HUMAN\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><i><span>The Sword in the Stone<\/span><\/i><span>, which brought White to international prominence, has little connection to Malory; Malory\u2019s epic does not cover Arthur\u2019s youth. <\/span><i><span>The Sword In The Stone <\/span><\/i><span>posits Merlyn as a guide for a young bastard named Wart, treated well by his guardian, Sir Ector, but increasingly badly by his quasi-adopted brother Kay. Merlyn takes Wart under his wing and teaches him what he will need to know to become King of England, and the hero of legend. Merlyn doesn\u2019t bother versing Wart in religion or politics directly; he understands that the best teacher is experience \u2014 and he understands that children must be allowed to take risks so that they may grow. Merlyn is no helicopter parent. \u201cI will come,\u201d he tells Wart on his first foray into the natural world. \u201cBut in future you will have to go by yourself. Education is experience, and the essence of experience is self-reliance.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>White describes the process of Wart\u2019s education in romantic, exciting terms: \u201cThe Wart did not know what Merlyn was talking about, but he liked him to talk. He did not like the grown ups who talked down to him, but the ones who went on talking in their usual way, leaving him to leap along in their wake, jumping at meanings, guessing, clutching at known words, and chuckling at complicated jokes as they suddenly dawned. He had the glee of the porpoise then, pouring and leaping through strange seas.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>As part of his education, Merlyn turns Wart into various types of animals and then allows Wart to learn of the benefits and drawbacks of each. He first turns him into a fish; Wart is <\/span><span>confronted with the grave threat of absolute monarchy by the pike: \u201cThe great body, shadowy and almost invisible among the stems, ended in a face which had been ravaged by all the passions of an absolute monarch \u2014 by cruelty, sorrow, age, pride, selfishness, loneliness and thoughts too strong for individual brains.\u201d The King of the Moat speaks only a few words:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><i><span>There is nothing \u2026 except the power which you pretend to seek: power to grind and power to digest, power to seek and power to find, power to await and power to claim, all power and pitilessness springing from the nape of the neck \u2026 Love is a trick paid on us by the\u00a0 forces of evolution. Pleasure is the bit laid down by the same. There is only power. Power is of the individual mind, but the mind\u2019s power is not enough. Power of the body decides everything in the end, and only Might is Right<\/span><\/i><span>.<\/span><span>8<\/span><span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span>The pike\u2019s slogan, of course, will become everything Wart fights as King Arthur.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>Become a Daily Wire member today to receive the rest of Ben\u2019s notes for The Once and Future King. Head over to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\">dailywire.com\/subscribe<\/a> and use code BOOKCLUB at checkout to ensure you receive the complete study guide. To be able to join Ben for a live discussion on the third Thursday of the month, be sure to join as an All Access member.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The following is an excerpt from Ben Shapiro\u2019s Third Thursday Book Club guide to The Once and Future King.\u00a0T.H. White\u2019s The Once and Future King is widely considered the most<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":161,"featured_media":1481048,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1458521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1458521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1458521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1458521\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1481048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1458521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1458521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1458521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}