This interview was originally published on Audible.com.
Note: This text has been edited and does not match audio exactly.
Melissa Bendixen: Hello, listeners. This is Melissa Bendixen, an editor here at Audible. And I'm here with Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians Trilogy and two novels for children. He's turned his attention to the legend of Arthur in his new epic fantasy novel, The Bright Sword. Welcome, welcome, Lev.
Lev Grossman: Thank you. It's good to be here.
MB: Now, your story of King Arthur starts at the end. After Arthur has died, nobody really knows what to do. Camelot's in shambles. A lot of the knights of the Round Table are gone. There's just a few stragglers left. It's interesting to me that, after writing The Magicians Trilogy, which concerns itself with the fantasy genre as a whole and our desires for magic to be real, you've decided to write a fictional story about a legend that's so old that it blurs the line between fiction and reality. Why did you desire to put your touch upon the legend of King Arthur?
LG: That's an interesting way of framing it, which I hadn't thought about before. For a long time, I thought that Arthur was perfect. I was really a big fan of Arthur growing up. I've read The Once and Future King more times than I even want to think about. Rosemary Sutcliff and Mists of Avalon, and then later Bernard Cornwell. For a very long time, I thought that Arthur was perfect and did not require my touch in any way, because his story was just there, it was whole, it was finished, and there didn't need to be anything more said about him.
But there came a time, and I guess it was after I'd finished The Magicians and was thinking about what would be good to do next, when I guess I began to be aware the Arthur story was feeling, I don't know, there was something a little dusty about it. When I read something like Game of Thrones, which, obviously, it's set in a medieval-like world. But there's something very contemporary-feeling about it. So, the brokenness of that world feels very grounded in our moment and the modern world. I didn't think Arthur felt that way, and I wondered if there was something, some way to do with Arthur what George [R.R. Martin] had done with the Tolkien tradition, basically to take it and reimagine it in that way that made it feel more about our world that we live in now. That was sort of the challenge that I set myself. I think it was particularly because Arthur didn't feel like he was relevant right now and urgent. That was what, paradoxically, drew me to it.
One of the hallmarks of Arthur's story, and I think why it has endured for so long, it was older—it's very old—older than I even realized before I started digging into the tradition. It goes back probably to the sixth century. It's probably 14-, 1,500 years old. It has this weird quality where it's both very, very central to our culture, it's a very fundamental piece of mythology, and also continuously transforms itself and takes on new forms as the centuries go by. And I guess I just felt that it had been a little while since Arthur had transformed.
And then on another level, I was looking to write something I guess with sort of a broader reach than The Magicians. The Magicians belongs to this sort of branch of fantasy which is so precious to me, the Narnia branch, the Harry Potter branch, that's slightly cozy, that deals with relatively small groups of people. And, of course, the fate of the world is on the line, but you don't tend to have that many pitched battles in those books. And it was interesting to me to try to take on something more in the epic line, and you don't get much more epic than Arthur.
MB: Truly, yeah. So, when researching for The Bright Sword, there must've been just a giant pile of material and reading you could've fallen into. How did you decide to pick and choose your star knights, let's say, and which parts of the legends you wanted to incorporate into the story?
LG: First things I realized, and it took me a little while to figure this out, was that if you want to look at the period after Arthur dies, my first question was, “What pieces are left on the chess board after Arthur dies?” And the answer was, “Not that many.” After the last battle, which Arthur falls, almost everybody dies at that battle, and there's really very few left and they are not the great famous heroes. Gawain is gone, Galahad is gone, Gareth, Tristam. There aren't too many left. Lancelot is alive. Lancelot immediately retires in shame to a monastery. At first I thought, “Well, this isn't going to work, because there's no players left to form the story.
Then it occurred to me that this was a great opportunity to take some people who are usually on the margins of the story, and now that the center is empty, to bring them in from the margins and place them at the center of the story and tell their stories in a way that maybe haven't been done so much before. I had the opportunity to take some guys like Palamedes, like Sir Dagonet, Sir Bedivere, who are usually, at best, secondary characters, and make them heroes. And that was a very exciting thing to do.
"One of the hallmarks of Arthur's story...it's a very fundamental piece of mythology, and also continuously transforms itself and takes on new forms as the centuries go by. And I guess I just felt that it had been a little while since Arthur had transformed."
That's an answer to part of your question. And then there was a lot of research because I am not a historian or a medievalist. Even to the extent that I have an academic background, that is not where my background is. One thing I quickly realized is that when you're doing Arthur, you basically have to choose, do you want history Arthur who lives more or less in the sixth century, to the extent that we know what that was like? And that's Bernard Cornwell and it's Mary Stewart. It's very cold and wet, and you don't have the plate armor and the soaring castles and the tournaments and everything else. And it's all very real and grounded. And there has been a lot of that lately, basically. And you're never going to beat Mary Stewart or Bernard Cornwell at that game.
I felt conscious that there hadn't been so much of the romantic Arthur of late. When Aaron Sorkin readapted Camelot for Broadway, one thing he did was he took out all the magic. And I sort of thought, “What if we just lean all the way the other way and we have the shining armor and the castles and the tournaments and the fairies and Morgan le Fay and the enchantresses and everything else?” That's the high-medieval tradition of Arthur. It's not the Dark Ages version, which spared me a lot of research about how the Dark Ages worked. Although not all the research. I still had to dig into what they call sub-Roman Britain quite a lot. But yes, that was the path I chose. I'm not used to doing research at all. For The Magicians, I simply made everything up, so having to look things up was a new challenge as a writer, which is what we look for as writers, even though it was incredibly time-consuming and hard.
MB: Yeah, I imagine [laughs]. So, when you were creating, researching, building your knight characters as you wanted them to be, did you end up having a favorite?
LG: Oh, that's such a cruel question [laughs]. And I refuse to answer it on principle. I'm very fond of Sir Dagonet. Probably he was the first one I seized on, as we need to understand where he comes from, because he's always there around the fringes. He is the fool knight. He is the court jester who Arthur then takes and knights and puts on the Round Table, because it's funny. And the other knights are so mean to him, and he rarely gets to say anything. You just have to think, “What's going on in this guy's head?” as the other knights are kind of making a big game out of beating him up. It seemed important to me that Dagonet finally speak and tell his story. But I'm not saying he's my favorite. I just like him a lot.
MB: That's fair. Our poor, depressed Dagonet.
LG: I know, he's a sad clown. He's a sad clown.
MB: The saddest, yeah. What would be your knightly name if you were to be a knight of the Round Table?
LG: Wow. That's a really hardball question. Knights' names are another rabbit hole, because I sort of assumed that when they call somebody Lancelot, that's because there were a lot of Lancelots running around at the time and that was just a name that people had. That's not a name. That's a fantasy name that they made up at the time. Just the way that fantasy authors make them up now. Dinadan is a nonsense name. Galahad. Most of them are made up. When I was setting up a Substack, I almost called it The Leveret, because that was a stupid pun and a leveret is a slightly archaic name for a rabbit. And then I thought, “Sir Leveret would be a good knight name.” So, I'm going to go with Sir Leveret. And then I would have an obvious coat of arms, then I could put a rabbit or maybe a hare on my shield. There it is. I've answered your question.
MB: That's great. Yeah, for listeners, there's this wonderful moment when we go into Sir Dinadan's story, when Sir Dinadan's like, "I'm going to be a knight and I'm going to make up a name for myself. And knights can make any names, like fa-la-la and fe-de-de. And I'm going to be Dinadan," or something.
LG: I mean, that was like one of those things that you put in a song when you were not singing words, was Dinadan. That's literally where it comes from. And it's a cool name.
MB: So fun. Yeah.
LG: But it also was extremely silly.
MB: Yeah, it was really funny. I love the way that you incorporated Christianity into the story. It feels very mythological, with God and his will interacting with the world directly. In fact, God's angels and druid fairies even battle it out at some point. Can you talk about how you landed on your tone and treatment of Christianity in your version of King Arthur?
LG: It was one of the points I found quite intimidating about taking on Arthur, and one of the, I guess, advantages of setting it in the Dark Ages is that Christianity does not loom quite so large. Whereas when you get to someone like Thomas Malory, God is a character in the story and Jesus is a character, and angels. And God is always sticking his oar in. If two knights are having a fight and God has something to say about it, he'll just light their shields on fire or something. He's always very, very present, very close. He's not a distant God. And I love that about him. It was intimidating. I'm not a Christian and I wanted to treat that mythology, on the one hand, absolutely respectfully. And on the other hand, as mythology, because it is an amazing, powerful mythology, and so much a part of the Arthur story. There was no way to leave it out.
"I wanted to be a writer from when I was a teenager. That was my dream, that was my Camelot."
The last thing I'll say about it is, and you touched on this, one of the great things about the King Arthur world is that there are two kinds of supernatural power in it. There is the divine and then there is the magical. I think it's quite rare in fantasy worlds to have those two things kind of co-present. In the Arthurian tradition, they tend to stay out of each other's way. The fairies will come on, they'll go off, and then the angels will come on. They rarely get into it one-on-one. And that was something that I wanted to see.
MB: So, let's talk about Collum, the unfortunate young lad who begins our story by turning up at Camelot at exactly the wrong moment, or exactly the right moment, depending on how you look at it. Collum has these dreams of greatness that immediately get dashed when he learns that Arthur's gone. In fact, it's kind of like everyone in the Great Hall’s dreams have been dashed when we arrive on stage. I've noticed this is kind of a theme in your stories, characters struggling with lost hopes, despondency, a sense of meaninglessness. What appeals to you about kind of driving these characters through these darker existential moments?
LG: You're bringing something up for me that, amazingly, I never really thought about, which is in some ways, it's very much like the Quinton story [in The Magicians]. Quinton is a big fantasy fan. I always thought that if schools for magic were real, then a lot of fantasy nerds would go there. And it always slightly bothered me about Harry Potter that he didn't seem to read fantasy. But Quinton's obsessed with fantasy. And so when he goes to a real school for magic, he has to confront the vast gulf that separates fiction from reality. And Collum has to do that, too, to some extent, because he has heard a lot of tales of the Round Table and he's a big Camelot fanboy. Then he turns up, I mean, it's a shame that Arthur is dead. In some ways, his hopes aren't as dashed maybe as Quinton's, in that the knights are really, they're incredible fighters and Camelot is really beautiful. But it's true, there is some dashing of hopes, and disillusionment. And it is a theme of mine, it's true, that I can't seem to get away from.
I think Collum deals with it rather better than Quinton does. One of the things that I aspired to in this book was to try to have a hero who's more mentally healthy than maybe some of the magicians were. Collum is definitely traumatized, but on some level, he's a robust character, which is good because he gets a lot of challenges ahead of him.
MB: Yeah, he feels like a little bit more of a traditional [character]. You kind of fit him into the classical story, because Quinton has all these modern sad boy problems, and Collum still is a dreamer at heart.
LG: Yeah. And it's a nod to the tradition, because this is always happening in Malory. I think as people remark in the book, young men are always turning up at Camelot in search of glory. Collum is sort of just one more. He's a complete hick. He's from the absolute edges of the kingdom, the out aisles, which are often referred to in the books, and which I identify with the Hebrides, although that's not necessarily canonical. He comes from the rim of the known world, and has a lot to learn. We get to watch him learn it. And he's also very talented, as it turns out. He really is quite a talented fighter. So, he's got that going for him.
MB: Yeah. Similarly, another theme that keeps popping up, losing the dream or achieving the dream and then ultimately seeing that achieving the dream does not mean achieving happiness, and then figuring out what to do next after that. Do you think you've found an answer to these kinds of greater questions by writing about them? Or do you think you're closer to an answer after thinking about them?
LG: That feels like a personal question. I'll answer it in a personal way. I wanted to be a writer from when I was a teenager. That was my dream, that was my Camelot. And it was very slow in coming. I wrote two novels, which you very graciously did not allude to in your introduction, that came before The Magicians. I almost never allude to them, because they weren't very successful and I actually don't think they're terrifically good. They were sort of apprentice pieces. The Magicians was my first success and that came out when I was 40. So, that was my dream. And it actually came to me because The Magicians were a success and that was what I had wanted. It hasn't been that disillusioning of an experience. Getting to quit my day job, which I finally did, and write fiction full-time, that was the dream. And I have to say it hasn't been that disillusioning. It's been really quite wonderful. So, that's an important lesson for me. Maybe that's something for my next book, somebody achieves their dreams and are happy forever.
MB: Well, that's really good to hear. I mean, The Bright Sword is more hopeful, so I think maybe that rubs off a little bit.
LG: One of the things about the arc of the story that was really important for me to try to revise was, it always ends with Arthur's death. It's about Arthur's death. It says it right on the tin, Le Morte d'Arthur—the death of Arthur. I think it's a tragedy and we then feel really sad that the age of Camelot is over. Then the story ends. And, of course, that's not how things actually work. Arthur's gone, but there are lots of people left who have to live in that world that he left behind, which is much more like our world. The Bright Sword, in a way, is supposed to be a little bit about this transition from the age of legends, the age of Arthur, to the world that we live in. The surviving characters, they have to face up to that. Tragically, they're actually going to live into middle age and old age. And they have to figure out how to feel about it, and they do. I feel like that's a heroic triumph of a different kind, living on in the world once the adventures are over.
MB: Yeah. Also a recurring theme for you. So, your narrator is Nicholas Guy Smith, who has a wonderful classical British storyteller vibe. What did you want your narrator to achieve in the performance here, and how did the voices and accents for each knight get decided?
LG: This is a really good question. First of all, I wanted the narrator to achieve something that I have never achieved, which is to do a British accent. My mom, in whose house I am right now, grew up in London and she has an English accent. I have many cousins and relatives who have English accents. And I'm stuck with this very plain American accent. And I thought whoever was going to read it aloud was going to do it in a British accent.
But also this book is very much about diversity, which is not a word that we very strongly associate with Arthur and the Round Table. I wanted it to be clear that within the Round Table, there were people of very different backgrounds, from all over Britain, and from farther afield. The Round Table was a bit of a melting pot, which sounds like a very modern thing to say, but it wouldn't have been the case at all. Britain in the Dark Ages was a complete patchwork of Celts and Romans and probably North Africans that the Romans left behind. There were Picts, there were Scoti, obviously there were Saxons. There were Gauls. Britain was not a united place at all. It was very, very much a patchwork. A lot of the tribes that were there when the Romans came didn't even speak the same language. When the Romans left, those fault lines were still there.
"The Bright Sword, in a way, is supposed to be a little bit about this transition from the age of legends, the age of Arthur, to the world that we live in. The survivor characters, they have to face up to that...I feel like that's a heroic triumph of a different kind, living on in the world once the adventures are over."
So, I wanted there to be a sense that these knights didn't all come from the same place. And also, socially, some of them were higher born than others. So, I was very particular about the accents. Constantine of Cornwall, he comes from Cornwall. He's from the south. Collum is from the north. There's a huge gulf between those two places. Dagonet is from the Fenlands, which don't exist anymore. But this vast marsh that existed in the east of England, which had its own kind of whole society. I wanted to put across a little bit of that in the audiobook.
MB: I imagine Nicholas Guy Smith probably also had to like fabricate the historical idea of some of these accents too.
LG: I sent him so many notes and I feel bad about it. But the producer really egged me on, and so I did. There's a lot of difficult Welsh words in the book. I personally cannot pronounce them, but I feel confident that they're there in the audiobook.
MB: As an American, I was astounded to listen to so many different types of British accents in this story. So, now that you've tackled one of the classic tales that you love so much, does it make you want to go and rewrite some of your other favorite stories?
LG: That's a good question. I'm an incorrigible rewriter. When I did The Magicians, in many ways I was rewriting Narnia and rewriting Harry Potter. And now I've rewritten King Arthur. I'm looking a lot at mythology right now. I'm a big Percy Jackson fan. And again, as with Arthur, I read those books and sort of thought, “Well, Rick Riordan's done it all.” And then I started to think, you know, “Are there bits of mythology or ways of coming at mythology that he hasn't tried?” I'm interested in that. And I'm interested in some far-flung mythologies. Aztec mythology is really incredibly interesting and complex. So, I'm casting about for stories in mythology that might be exciting to rewrite. But King Arthur took me 10 years, give or take. I'm taking a little rest before I get into anything else.
MB: Yeah, it's kind of a big one to tackle. But you did it.
LG: I hope so, I hope so.
MB: You mentioned earlier that you're in your mom's house.
LG: It's true.
MB: Well, one of the things that I found fascinating when doing some research for this interview is that you have a very literary family. You talked about how both your parents are English professors, and they essentially raised you on the literary canon. And your dad made a mistake once when he read you The Hobbit and you were a goner for fantasy after that. I'm curious, have your parents made peace with you and your brother's professions as fantasy authors? And in your brother's case, a game designer as well.
LG: It's true, in some ways we jumped the other way. I really make a point of being scrupulously honest in interviews, and I will say, my dad, who passed away a few years ago, I think it always irritated him that we wrote genre fiction. And that was part of the point, was to irritate my dad, and we succeeded in that. I don't know [laughs] that he ever truly reconciled himself to it. My mom was much more open-minded about that kind of thing. She went to Oxford long enough ago that she met C.S. Lewis, and I think took classes not from Tolkien, but from Christopher Tolkien, his son. It's a very living tradition for her. And hopefully my brother and I are continuing it.
MB: Wow, that's crazy. Last question: Is there anything we haven't talked about today that you want to say to listeners about The Bright Sword or anything else?
LG: One, I'll say it is set in the chaos after Arthur's death, but there's a lot of Arthur in there. It was very important to me that a good deal of the book take place—it's a post-apocalyptic book, really, and the disaster is Arthur's death. But I took a lot of inspiration from Station Eleven, which hops back and forth pre- and post-apocalypse. We spend a lot of time in Arthur's world. Each of the knights, we get the whole backstory of what they were up to in Arthur's time, and Arthur himself appears quite a lot.
So, there's a lot of Arthur in this book, even though, it in some ways is post-Arthurian. And the other thing I should say is that you don't have to know anything about King Arthur to pick up the book. Another one of my goals was to get to just about all the big moments in Arthur's life as much as I could. Any exposition you need is in there somewhere or other. You'll find it.
And the last thing I'll say is, I was shocked when I received my first printed copy of The Bright Sword, at how thick it is [laughs]. It is a very thick book and I got very self-conscious about how long it was. It's a Game of Thrones-length book. Many of the Game of Thrones books are longer than The Bright Sword by a good margin, and hopefully it moves quickly. It was very important to me that it not be baggy. It used to be a lot longer and we cut out a great deal just to make sure that the narrative doesn't flag. So, I think it goes quite quickly for a long book.
MB: Well, here at Audible, The Bright Sword is what we like to call a credit-worthy listen. You get a lot of bang for your buck. And fantasy listeners should not shy away from a 23-hour book. In fact, we'd probably find it exciting because it means you get a longer story.
LG: I hope so. Personally, in my Audible world, I'm in the middle of War and Peace, which I never read, and talk about getting bang for your credit. It's been a good investment.
MB: I'm glad. Well, Lev, thank you so much for your time today. I learned so much about the legend of King Arthur with your story, and I had fun doing it too.
LG: Thank you, Melissa. It's been a great pleasure to chat.
MB: Listeners, you can get The Bright Sword and Lev Grossman's other works on Audible now.
