If "The Witch in the Wood" is not a spurious book, I shall eat my hat or seek the Questing Beast therein mentioned. That thousands may read Mr. White's new book, as they did his previous "The Sword in the Stone" is possible. Many things are possible.
The book is definitely meant to be funny. It spares no efforts in that direction. It has a toodle-oo type of humor sometimes to be found in the Englishman who has been intellectually arrested on the threshold of the sixth form. Such a person is apt to be bashful in the presence of great literature and may think it best to treat such an uncomfortable matter lightly. So he cracks a tribal joke about the masterpiece, fingers his school-tie and fails completely to understand what is before him. Mr. White in revising the Arthurian material for popular consumption succeeds admirably in completely failing to understand either its spiritual significance or its aristocratic wit. He toodles-oo through material that inspired Tennyson (remember him?) and reaches a very high degree of banality. (pp. 121-22)
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