T.H. White: A Biography (Sylvia Townsend Warner)

[cahn]

4/5. I thought this was a very good book, and I had an extremely hard time with it. I read the first several chapters, set it down, and it languished around the house for eight weeks. The library, you see, will let one renew books for nine weeks as long as there's no one else who wants it, and on week nine I finally sat down and dug into it.

The thing is, T. H. White is exactly the sort of person you would expect from reading The Once and Future King. He's kind of every character in that book rolled up in one: you can see that he must have been ferociously intelligent, quirky, compassionate, and unhappy, because that's what the characters in TOFK are like. And that really comes through in this biography. And at the same time, I almost didn't want to know the details of how he was that way. I'm glad I read it, now, but there were definitely times going through when I wasn't sure if I would be glad I'd read it, even though I was sure all the way going through that it was a very good book. If that makes any sense.

Anyway, go read skygiants's review, which convinced me to read this, because she says it all a lot better than I do, and she talks about White's grand passionate love affair with his dog. (No, really, the one great love in his life was his dog Brownie. Go read it.)

Comments

[thistleingrey]

Interesting that it's Warner! I had no idea she'd written his biography.

Have you seen this?

[cahn]

Yeah, Warner has been on my to-read list for a while, and when I found out she was the author of this bio, well, it went right up to the top of my to-read list. She really does do an excellent job.

Yes, I did see that, thanks! (skygiants references it in her review; apparently rushthatspeaks recommended starting with the Warner before moving on to Goshawk.) I'm not sure I can take it, actually, after my experience with the Warner, but it does sound quite excellent, and I may give it a go one of these days.