John Steinbeck, �The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights�
What the hell is it about people releasing stuff by authors who died? The posthumous Douglas Adams was fine, but that was mainly a collection of magazine articles that had been published, and hence Adams had a chance to work out the kinks.
That�s kind of important. For instance, when the publishers-that-be released Amerika by Kafka not only was it a first draft, but it wasn�t even finished! It�s like going to a Tarantino movie and finding out it�s only half a movie! Who the hell would do something like that?
This is more self-contained than Steinbeck, but as they included his letters to his editor, this was certainly NOT finished, and it shows. There are actually a lot of problems with this book.
First, this was the last thing he worked on, long after he had run out of ideas that he was passionate about, probably since he wrote for at least four to six hours six days a week. Stuck in the habit of writing, transcribing the Arthurian legends was probably nothing more than busywork.
Second, Steinbeck�s forte dealt with The West in American dealing with agricultural living, and the Knights of the Round Table didn�t do a whole lot of farming.
Knights did, apparently, a lot of challenging and jousting, as these types of scenes play over and over. John�s out of his element here. He does not write action sequences well. Perhaps we would have found a proper voice if he had time to edit, but as these were taken from the original transcripts from Malory, can you really hope to find your own voice when you�re just repeating what somebody else wrote?
This book was slow and painful. So slow and painful in fact, that I started daydreaming while reading, and that�s where I thought of a plan that is pure genius. If Steinbeck thought it was such a hot idea to update Malory�s manuscripts of King Arthur, I should update The Grapes of Wrath for the dot-com generation.
The people in Seattle, forced out of their condos because of a lack of positions at Microsoft, get e-mails that there is work available for them in Silicon Valley. Thousands of �Slopies� descend on California in their BMW�s looking for work. They show up at places like Excite and Netcom, but are told nothing is available.
�But we got these e-mails,� the migrants protest.
�You know how many of those e-mails they send out?� says the foreman, �More than they ever need, all promising work as designers or webmasters. Pretty soon there�s so many people begging for work that they can afford to pay them nothing at all.�
But the heroes push on and get brought aboard by a porn chat-room industry, hired on as content censors. Things seem good until they hit up the neighborhood store (a Starbucks), and discover their triple mocha latte costs more than they�ll make for the day. Despite their desire to own a piece of �above the bottomland� (meaning a condo above a storefront), they can�t possibly afford the rents here, and are forced into fourplex shantytown apartments on the eastside.
There is talk about forming unions, angering the Google and Yahoo shareholders who then form nefarious plans to start a mild argument at their coffee bar. The hero, TomTom, breaks one of the ringleaders cell phones and goes into hiding, and begins his soliloquy.
�Whenever a there�s a fight between the FCC and music sharing file servers, I�ll be there,� TomTom says. �Wherever a university wants to expel a student for swapping Lord of the Rings previews, I�ll be there. Whenever a person�s computer crashes and they find themselves on hold with technical support for two hours, I�ll be there.�
Pure literary gold. So if you�ll excuse me, I need to get started on writing this out.
As soon as I finish the final draft on my book.
And there�s that Daredevil script I wanted to do.
And that Mia Zapata short story.
Plus I need to write my application letters for the colleges.
Ah, fuck it, you can publish it after I�m dead.
Oh, one more thing. Despite this being updated so as not forcing the reader to try and make sense from the Old English of Malory�s manuscripts, the chapter titles hold the history behind the words. So I read something like this:
�Now turn we back to yonge Syr Gagerts who rode into the manor of Syr Tarquin slayne by Lancelot. And there he found a yoman porter kepyng many keyes. Than sir Gaherys threw the porter unto the grounde and toke the keyes frome hym; and hastely he opynde the preson dore, and there he lette all the presoners oute, and every man lowsed other of their bondys.�
So it�s not that all these other bloggers are bad spellers, they�re just medieval!
