Who does the Grail Serve?

[bibliogramma]

To the Chapel Perilous, Naomi Mitchison

Just getting to read this book was the fulfilment of a quest. In a comment on my discussion, many months ago, of Naomi Mitchison’s Memoirs of a Spacewoman, wolfinthewood recommended this book, Mitchison’s take on the Matter of Britain. There was no question about it, I knew I had to read this book.

But a quick search revealed that it is out of print, although there had been a recent edition released by Green Knight Publishing, and copies were available via used booksellers and Ebay. My partner looked about in the local used bookstores without success, so we ordered a copy online from a bookseller in Canada; it was shipped and supposedly delivered by the post office, but vanished before we saw it. We tried again, ordering the book from a US bookstore to be delivered to an American friend of ours. It never arrived.

The third time was the charm, and my long-awaited copy arrived just before Christmas.

And by all the gods and goddesses, it was worth it.

The book is a marvel. The premise – what if journalists, much like those of modern times, had been covering the events of the Grail Quest – allows Mitchison to present a story that is deeply satisfying on many levels. It is at once an exploration of the nature of reality, a satire on the influence of the media over public knowledge, and the influence of the rich and powerful over the media, a feminist interpretation of the Arthurian legend that positions women as independent agents, an Arthurian scholar’s delight in its incorporation of multiple source materials and variations, and a damned good romance in its own right.

By sending her main characters – reporters for rival newspapers – on a journalistic quest to uncover the true Grail among all the reports of a completed quest, Mitchison is able to retell the multiple versions of the Grail quest in the various sources that precede what is now generally considered the definitive version of the tale, found in Malory’s Morte D’Arthur.

The journalistic process of investigation, interview, writing, editing, high-level editorial intervention and political influence described in the novel, which winnows many credible Grail stories down to a single media interpretation parallels the evolutionary process through which the definitive story – Galahad’s successful Quest – was established in the real-world development of the Grail material. We see through the eyes of the journalists and the various knights all the shapes and powers that the Grail has assumed in all the literary and mythic threads and traditions that were woven over time into the final widely-known version.

And we learn some great truths – that the Quest is open to all and anyone can follow the Grail that is truly meant for them, and that the story decided on by the rich and powerful to further their own purposes, often bears little resemblance to the realities that may be determined by each person for themselves.