MYSELF AS WITNESS

by James Goldman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 11, 1979

King John of England, from 1212 to his death in 1216; no, not the badman of Robin Hood and Shakespeare, but a tortured semi-hero of national unity--as seen by the witty, learned Mr. Goldman (The Lion in Winter, The Man from Greek and Roman) through the wary eyes of scholar-cleric Giraldus Cambrensis, a bitter Welshman who's ordered to come out of retirement and chronicle the king's battles against enemies at home and abroad. ""He loves books and destroys a university; he studies law and lets two students hang. He's made of parts that will not fit, like his family. Damn these Plantagenets. They plague me. . . . "" So writes Giraldus in the diary that is the whole of this book, and the chief pleasure here is the dustless, contemporary Goldman/Giraldus approach to history--an unstilted, burly, aphoristic tone (""And the people: they have eyes like little stones and souls like raisins. France is too good for Frenchmen"") that only occasionally slips over into distracting anachronism or shallow phrasemaking (""peace is like fornication: there is no way one can manage it alone""). Unfortunately, however, Giraldus' wry narrative, though sometimes dotted with emotional involvement, always keeps us at a distance from the story--and that story, since Goldman sticks close to the facts, is a disjointed one, bouncing back and forth between two linked, ongoing crises: John's much-planned invasion of France; and his problems with rebellious barons at home, barons who hold the purse-strings and manpower needed for foreign wars. True, there are vivid, ironic vignettes along the way--the sneak-attack disemboweling of the French fleet, an appalling betrayal by John's French ally, John's stone-by-stone dismantling of a rebel baron's castle. And those baron problems culminate, of course, in the Magna Carta--which is thoroughly de-glorified here. ("" 'Free men?' . . . You see much harm in it? . . . Then put it in."") But the central unity-vs.-freedom dilemma never quite focuses; and neith≤r the glimpses of John's psycho-moods (paranoia at worst) nor the too-sketchy build-ups to domestic tragedy (the young Queen's secret affair with John's half-brother) provide enough grounding or momentum for the tangle of political/theological issues. History caught at oblique angles, then, stylish and thoughtful but rather slippery and uncentered--a limited treat, mostly for readers who share Goldman's rigorous passion for those rough, elusive Plantagenets.

Pub Date: Jan. 11, 1979

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979

Categories: FICTION