The Waste Land by Simon Acland

The Waste Land: An Entertainment by Simon Acland
review copy provided by Beaufort Books in exchange for an honest review
Synopsis from publisher website:

The Waste Land chronicles the adventures of Hugh de Verdon, monk turned knight, during        the extraordinary historical events of the First rusade.  He journeys from the great Benedictine monastery of Cluny to Constantinople, Antioch, and Jerusalem.  He encounters the Assassins, endures a personal epiphany and discovers the “truth” behind the Holy Grail.
Hugh de Verdon’s tale is retold by a group of desperate Oxford professors, based on his autobiographical manuscript, discovered in their college library.  Their humorous – and murderous – story also provides a commentary on the eleventh-century events and shows that they are perhaps not all they seem.

My Take:
The Waste Land by Simon Acland was such a delight to read. I have struggled with exactly how to write about this book and my reactions to it without giving away too much of the plot. And really, this book needs to be discovered by the reader. The Prologue is enough of an introduction and build up to the story. The Prologue introduces the professors at St. Lazarus' College and their dilemma - they are in severe financial trouble and hope to obtain a large financial donation from a former student, the "Best-Selling Author", who wasn't a great student, but is their big hope. He is never called anything besides the Best-Selling Author and he too has a problem - no good ideas for his next novel. The Research Assistant - also never called anything else - has the solution: he has found a manuscript and thinks it would make a great novel. This is probably one of my favorite uses of the found manuscript plot device I've ever encountered. 

The book switches back and forth between the story of Hugh de Verdon, our monk turned knight, who is the hero of the found manuscript, and shorter interludes with the professors at St. Lazarus College. I found the sections involving the professors to be entertaining and insightful into the book as a whole. I thought it was cleverly and humorously done. The professors critique and complain and make observations about the manuscript - which is, of course, the book the reader is actually reading. Clever. Fun.

If you read the guest post by Simon Acland, you know that he is very knowledgeable about 12th and 13th Century Grail Romances, having studied them extensively at Oxford.  This knowledge of the Grail Romances is evident in the way Acland seamlessly blends the Grail legends and First Crusade history into his own tale of Hugh de Verdon and his adventures across the Holy Land. Simon Acland manages to be true to the Grail Romances while at the same time, putting a whole new spin on the legend and making it seem like it is history, not just a legend.

I really appreciated the fact that Acland didn't  try to make his story into a fanciful tale of chivalry; instead, he describes in gripping detail the brutal, violent, dirty, gross,  and frightening life that Hugh and the other knights encountered. This isn't a fairy tale version of the crusade. This is the portrayal of a violent crusade involving men who may not have had purely spiritual intentions when they signed up.

When I read The Waste Land, I read at a pretty fast pace for the story. I couldn't help myself. I tried to slow down and pick out various parts of the Grail legends, but would be swept up in the story. After I finished reading the book, I attempted to skim for specific references and for lines from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, but would find myself deeply involved in Acland's story yet again. I think that says quite a bit about his storytelling.

I don't think I have ever enjoyed an Epilogue to a book more than the one in The Waste Land. I thought it was terribly clever and funny and the perfect way to set up a sequel. 

My recommendation is that everyone should read this book and then come back and discuss it with me. I loved so many things about it, but I can't bring myself to give away some of the best bits.

Simon Acland worked as a venture capitalist for over 20 years and wrote several books on investing and leadership. The Waste Landis his first novel. For more information, visit his website at :http://www.simonacland.com/wasteland.htm

Guest Post by Simon Acland, author of The Waste Land

THE GRAIL LEGEND IN MEDIEVAL AND MODERN FICTION

By Simon Acland, author of The Waste Land

The opening conceit of my novel The Waste Land is that a group of desperate Oxford dons discover an ancient manuscript in their library. They resolve to rescue the finances of their bankrupt college by turning this manuscript into a best-selling thriller (think The Da Vinci Code). The manuscript contains the autobiographical story of Hugh de Verdon, a monk turned knight who goes on the First Crusade (1096-99) and “discovers the truth about the Holy Grail”. What is more, the manuscript appears to be the Urtext, the original source material, for the very first medieval Grail romance written by Chrétien de Troyes around 1180.

I studied French and German at Oxford in the 1970s. Back then, Oxford was more than a little old-fashioned, and I found myself studying 12^th and 13^th Century Grail Romances as my special subject (that is Modern Languages at Oxford for you). However, I found them fascinating and became a fully signed-up Holy Grail geek. Later I read with amusement the books which adapted the medieval legends – The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, which caused a storm in 1982 by suggesting that the Holy Grail – the San Graal in medieval French – was actually a cipher for the royal blood line of Jesus Christ – the Sang Real in modern French. This was the central idea which was then taken into The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. Not for nothing is Dan Brown’s villain called Sir Leigh Teabing.

My novel The Waste Land jokes that it all started with Hugh de Verdon’s story, but, in fact, it of course started with that fellow Chrétien de Troyes. Little is known about him, even though he was the Dan Brown of his day. He wrote several very popular chansons de geste, long poems with Arthurian themes about chivalry and damsels in distress, which in places were funny, and for medieval times, even erotic. Chrétien’s last work is called the Roman de Perceval.

In the Roman de Perceval, the knight of the title finds himself in a mysterious castle, and witnesses a strange procession, the centerpiece of which is a magical golden grail (in medieval French graal is a somewhat obscure word meaning a large serving dish, on which you might place a boar’s head or large salmon). Later on in the poem it transpires that the grail is used to feed and keep alive a wounded king, and it is at one point described as ‘tante sainte chose’ (‘such a holy thing’), but it is not linked specifically with Jesus Christ in any way. The land of this king (who happens to be Perceval’s uncle) is barren, laid waste, and Perceval missed the opportunity to lift the spell by asking questions of his host about the grail. The grail appears to be a cornucopia linked with Celtic legend more than a Christian object but it is never fully explained. So a great mystery is set up – what is the grail, why is the king wounded, what happens when the quest is fulfilled and the spell is lifted?

But Chrétien died before he could finish the story, leaving these questions unanswered. Imagine if Dan Brown had died before finishing The Da Vinci Code.

Such was Chrétien de Troyes’ popularity that several writers soon attempted to complete his story. The first of these to make a connection between the Grail and the vessel used by Jesus Christ at the Last Supper and to catch Jesus’ blood when he was taken down from the Cross was Robert de Boron. This version contains many of the familiar elements of the legend - Joseph of Arimathea, Merlin, King Arthur, the questing knights – but it too was followed by other medieval versions which adapted the story to the individual interests of the writers. One version, Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach, introduced a loose connection with the Templars. Then, with the passing of the Middle Ages and of the interest in questing knights, the Grail fades from view. It isn’t really until the rekindling of interest in things gothic in the 19^th Century that the Grail reappears as a cultural theme in Wagner’s opera Parsifal and the paintings of the pre-Raphaelites.

Sir James Frazer’s massive twelve-volume study of anthropology and folklore, The Golden Bough, published from 1890 to 1915, rekindled 20^th century interest in ancient myth and legend.  In 1919 Jessie Weston focussed in on the Grail myth in her influential work From Ritual to Romance, and tied its origins firmly back to Celtic fertility legends. Three years later TS Eliot seized on the imagery of the Grail for his poem The Waste Land. Eliot acknowledges his debt to both these writers in the controversial notes to his great poem. In my turn, in homage, I have seized on Eliot’s title for my book, used snippets of his poem for my chapter headings, and buried 23 direct quotations in my text for eagle-eyed Eliot enthusiasts.

There was a trickle of Holy Grail books through the mid-20^th Century, and some films, not least Monty Python and the Holy Grail (to which I have also paid a sort of homage by dressing up in Monty Pythones-que Crusader costume to do video interviews about my book).  You can watch the video here: http://www.meettheauthor.co.uk/bookbites/1915.html

 But it wasn’t really until the 1982 success of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail spawned a flood of imitation pseudo-histories and a torrent of similar fiction that the floodgates really opened. Given the size of the genre, I am not sure that I should have added to it, but I hope that you enjoy reading my lesser Waste Land if you have a chance to do so. For all its proud pedigree, it is a simple adventure story about a knight who falls in love and loses his beliefs, and firmly, as its sub-title suggests, intended as an Entertainment.

Simon Acland worked as a venture capitalist for over 20 years and wrote several books on investing and leadership. The Waste Land is his first novel. For more information, visit his website at :http://www.simonacland.com/wasteland.htm