Thomas Berger might be called the Green Knight of American fiction: a mysterious, protean outsider whose pose of destructiveness masks a fierce reverence for form and meaning….

Arthur Rex, a massive retelling of the Camelot legend, may be Berger's most ambitious book, at least in size and literary scale…. [Despite his] careful scholarship, despite a prose style which borders on genius, despite many funny moments and a few painfully sad ones, Arthur Rex, in the end, remains less than the sum of its parts. (p. 34)

Arthur Rex is not a spoof. Much of its narrative—the adulterous love of Launcelot and Guinevere, the parallel tragedy of Tristram, Isold, and Mark, Sir Gawaine's rise from lechery and fall into vengeance—is seriously intended and often quite moving. The central tragedy in the book is that of Arthur, who attempts to found his table on pure virtue. The book's subtitle...