Bickerstaff, Lancelot, Percival: A Term Paper, plus one gift (601 hits)
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Submitted by Oly (View user info) at 2009-06-15 16:55:45 EDT
This was written for my Arthurian Literature class. I turned in a page-long essay about the connections between Bickerstaff and Chretien de Troyes' story of Perceval (The Grail Story) just because I did not feel like doing any real work for class that day and Bickerstaff basically lays it all out for you, the intrepid reader. That essay basically became the intro (and which, I'll say here, I'm not so sure if I like what I did there). My professor, who is a martial arts enthusiast, pulled me aside after class and suggested she would love not to read another 15-page essay about Lancelot and Elaine, and that instead it would be fascinating if "somebody" were to try and relate contemporary fighting stories with the classics. Over the course of my research I found literally not a single piece of scholarly literature linking Arthuriana with MMA. Nobody has ever, to my knowledge, done this before.
So if it sucks, give me a break. I just thought there might maybe possibly be like one or two people who would be interested in this.
Red, White, and Zach
A Modern Retelling of the Stories of Percival and Lancelot
As the fight begins, and the two combatants begin their dance, Zach's mind wanders back to his therapist: "'You're like him,'" he says, "'you know, the boy knight, wandering through the wasteland.'" Zach agrees, and wonders if the wasteland was anything like Atlantic City, the site of tonight's battle. "My therapist says that Percival lost the Grail because he didn't recognize it for what it was, didn't see how important a thing he had, so he squandered it." And in the back of his mind are The Girl and The Grail. All through the fight, Zach is distracted by Percival, his mind drifting back to the story and farther away from the big Japanese grappler across from him. As he slips out of a submission move, Zach's mind moves back into medieval territory. "And I'm trying to figure it out: Percival I mean. He lost the Grail; he lost his faith and he wound up in the wasteland, and he wandered until he found it again." Zach's recitation, of course, does not go into the thousands of knights he's defeated along the way, but that part of the story is all too familiar to him. "But something about that ain't right, and I can't put my bloody, callused finger on it." The distractions are forcing Zach into a bad spot and he again gets put into another submission position, from which he cannot this time break free. He doesn't tap out, though, and still is distracted by Percival. He remembers that Percival only had to walk "down the road and to the left," that the Grail had just been sitting there, waiting for him. It was "not hidden, not guarded by dragons or Japanese knockdown fighters," but just right where he had left it. And in that moment, "as if to remind me to pay attention," Zach's hip pops out of place, he turns and delivers an elbow across the jaw of his opponent, knocking him out. And in that moment, coupled with searing pain, Zach has a moment of clarity: "Percival didn't have to fight anybody. He didn't have to climb a mountain or brave a churning sea; he just walked in and picked up the grail like it was his all along. And that's the trick, it WAS his all along, he just didn't know it." And on his stretcher, on the way out of the arena, he tells his manager, "'I know how he found it.'" His manager, JD, believing this was all just shock setting in, asks him in an amused voice, "'how'd he find it, Zach?' And it's so clear and simple that I want to laugh, I want to write it down so I won't lose it once my hip is back in and the shock goes away, like a dream upon waking. 'Easy,' I tell him, 'he just stopped looking'" (Bickerstaff, "Atlantic City").
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Isaac Bickerstaff's faux-autobiographic "Getting My Ass Kicked" stories are a rough, modern retelling of the stories of the Knights of the Round Table, particularly of Lancelot and Percival. Zach is a mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter with an embattled past that has left him unsure of anything in his life, except of his love for the Girl and his dominance in the ring. His greatest fear is that he is destroying any chance at a workable relationship with The Girl by doing the only thing he is good at, but he sees fighting as his only option for making a living, and even sometimes as a vehicle for winning the Girl's love. It is this dichotomous situation that Zach believes is kicking his ass and which drives the plot forward over the twelve separate installments.
Arthurian legend and in general the genre of warrior literature naturally can be redistributed in the form of MMA tales because it is the natural progression of man-to-man combat. In a civilized world, men can no longer fight one another with swords, and martial arts allow for the purity of battle men continually long for. Rodney King, author of the article "How Martial Arts Can Supercharge Your Man Spirit" and innovative teacher of martial arts, is renowned for helping men become reacquainted with their lost manliness through his programs. He says, first of all, that for men the warrior spirit is "hard-wired" into us. Our ancestors were warriors who were required to defend their family, their land, and their tribe by force in order to survive. While this is no longer the case in the comfy western world, our "fight or flight" instincts have not left us, though we no longer always deal with these instincts in a healthy way. In fact, he says, ninety percent of all violent crimes are perpetrated by men and seventy percent of the victims are also men.
He believes the problem with our culture anymore is that we no longer have a sense of brotherhood with one another. He uses the example of the hunter-gatherers going out together in search of food, and the camaraderie those men enjoyed as a band of brothers who would not hesitate to defend their tribe, much in the same way that Arthur's knights relied upon one another in times of need and would, if need be, fight for another's honor if he was at the moment incapable of doing so. In both cases, as King says, the men "expressed the positive masculine energies of valor, honor, and courage." But King says that in today's world, we've lost the expression of those energies behind visions of our "two Toyotas, kids, and wife," curious in the context of the story into which we will immerse ourselves shortly. Our "wild man" still screams at us to be let loose, but we are too distracted, only noticing it when we witness violence. "Martial arts," he says, "are a wonderful vehicle for the positive expression of masculinity and the warrior archetype...Martial arts training with an emphasis on playfulness, challenge, connection, and brotherhood are not too dissimilar to the rough and tumble play most boys experienced with their friends and siblings growing up. In a way, as little boys we were closer to our hunter-gatherer ancestors then than most of us are now as adults" (King).
Play-fighting as children builds in boys a sense of how to harness your aggression, and to fight without hurting. It teaches us to deal with the aggression of others, making us better debaters and helps us build tolerance for criticism and to build strong emotions. Boys who do not wrestle as children end up more likely to commit violent acts and to be socially detached.
But taking part in martial arts as adults again helps men to funnel their day-to-day frustrations into a socially acceptable arena. It helps us to understand that in order to succeed not only in martial arts but in anything else as well, we must be focused and centered. An exploration of our negative feelings through martial arts can be done not only without embarrassment or fear, but also in a way that might be applauded. In this Western world, we can't fight with swords anymore as they would they would have in Arthur's time, but in essence, martial arts and sword-fighting are incredibly similar. This is the draw of young men anymore to things like MMA - we can see ourselves getting involved and we can, for any slight amount of time, let our "wild man" out and express our masculinity in a way that is not destructive.
As readers we idolize characters like Isaac Bickerstaff, the warrior poet, for their ability to dominate in their arenas of battle and to still lead lives outside of those arenas. When we, as 21st-Century Westerners, visit a place such as Medieval Times, we witness sword-fights and shows of Courtly Love, but never the gritty details that would allow us to connect ourselves to the characters and truly empathize with them. Arthuriana allowed its readers to do that when swords and lances were the standard weapon of noble fights, but for a contemporary audience only the retellings of the stories are truly accessible on a visceral level, and in a circular fashion, these retellings help to make Arthuriana once again accessible to its modern reader.
It is interesting that King notes that as boys we are nearest to allowing that "wild man" to break free from its standstill, because in his parodical retelling of Sir Thomas Malory's Arthur legends, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Mark Twain's protagonist Hank Morgan notes about the Knights of the Court:
"Many a time I had seen a couple of boys, strangers, meet by chance, and say simultaneously, 'I can lick you,' and go at it on the spot; but I had always imagined, until now, that that sort of thing belonged to children only, and was a sign and mark of childhood; but here were these big boobies sticking to it and taking pride in it clear up into full age and beyond. Yet there was something very engaging about these great simple-hearted creatures, something very attractive and loveable. There did not seem to be brains enough in the entire nursery, so to speak, to bait a fish-hook with; but you didn't seem to mind that, after a little, because you soon saw that brains were not needed in a society like that, and, indeed would have marred it, hindered it, spoiled its symmetry—perhaps rendered its existence impossible" (Twain 23).
Twain noticed that the boyhood of the knights, or their will to battle one another for no other reason than to prove their physical superiority, is attractive to men because it is something we all experience. These boys exhibit the masculinity we had as children and have lost as we've become "too mature" for such engagements. Civilized society frowns on those who will express their masculinity in these ways, and Judith Halberstam in her essay on female masculinity, would go so far as to say that in today's world, it is not only are the "shapes and forms of modern masculinity best showcased in female masculinity," but also that it is more acceptable for females to exhibit that masculinity than for males to do the same (Halberstam, 936-938). It would follow, then, that this type of "childish" narrative, where men act like boys, would be attractive to men who have lost the ability but still wish to behave like children and, in effect, reacquaint themselves with their inner man. MMA fighters are, in fact, among only very few males for whom society is willing to accept this "reversion," The romantic legends of King Arthur's knights, roaming the countryside in search of danger and adventure, are the perfect vehicle by which to present masculinity in the most glorious of light.
Zach's story is not the romantic fantasy in which the Knights were birthed—his story is a heartbreaking tragedy fueled by Zach's Grail Quest: the attainment of a simple and quiet life of a family man who doesn't need to be an undefeated warrior to face an uncertain day.
In his final story, Bickerstaff retrospectively comes to grips with the fact that while he thought he was living a romance in the same fashion as the knights before him, he was living a tragedy. The recurring disregarded advice of his therapist serves as foreshadowing for the reader, but for Bickerstaff the revelation comes too late. He realizes, after his story has written itself, that if he would have stopped searching, like Percival eventually did, he might have found his Grail at little to no cost. In every effort to win the love of The Girl he worsened his situation. It is in the final story as we read the narrative, but in our analysis of this retelling, the establishment of a romantic illusion necessarily comes at the beginning because it is the most important aspect of the story as a whole.
The End deals with Zach's final fight of his career, and it is against Maldonado, the younger up-and-coming fighter who has served as the greatest foe in Bickerstaff's career. Zach enters the fight with a perfect career record, no blemishes but scar tissue, marred knuckles, and a broken heart after the death of The Girl. He asks us at the outset: "Why is disappointment the measure of hope? I mean seriously, why do we gauge our ambition by how lousy it feels when everything goes to hell; as if the success of a thing would somehow makes its attainment far less palatable?" His hope destroyed following the death of The Girl, Zach's disappointment and pain come to the forefront in this, his final battle. "At the end of that tunnel was the Girl, and her loss is my litmus" (Bickerstaff, "The End"). The illusion of romance has finally been destroyed; we know there is no happy ending for Zach all along, but he is at last complicit in that knowledge. "No matter how tragic and poetical, my brothers, no matter how valorous, it all ends up with you dead in a box and that's the part I can't reconcile, the whole dead bit."
In Christian's version, Percival finds redemption at the end of his story. For Zach, there is no redemption. There can't be, because story does not end happily. As if to throw it in our faces that the stories we wish for are not the stories we live, Zach points out that his romance, his Grail quest, was just a futile endeavor wrapped in the gaudy cloak of the purity of battle. In simpler times, when Percival and Lancelot fought these battles, physical conflict was something of a spiritual cleansing of the soul; if Zach was looking for purity in this battle, Maldonado was there to remind him of his mistake: "Maldanado's knee had put me right the fuck away and I am currently staring upward into the rock and roll lighting of the concert arena turned Coliseum; there's your Gods you witless romantic fuck, there's your salvation: spinning in mechanized halogen choreography."
For Zach, though, the fakeness of it all is just icing. His fight is with his will, his strength to go on in this fight which he is losing, badly: "I should have stayed home, man, seriously. All I get to take from here is a broken nose and a broken spirit, and truth be told, I could have done without either. His elbow finds my temple and for a second the Gods show up again, but I shoo those lazy bitches away and remind myself that it's just me and him and the story and the end." Without The Girl, Zach's reason for fighting has to be pride, but it's taken a back seat to his self-pity. He knows, somehow, that the story is for the first time his, that he is no longer a slave to the plot, but the shots raining down on his head from Maldonado are making it tough for him to remember who he is.
"'Aren't you Bickerstaff?'" JD, his trainer, asks the weathered warrior between rounds. JD lists off all the adversity he's faced and easily overcome: the two gold medals at the Olympics; the legendary fighters he defeated with ease; the acrobatic kicks nobody else had ever or has since duplicated. JD is drawing a parallel on Percival's prolific battle career between his departure from the path of the righteous and his spiritual rebirth. Zach is between those two points, his trainer recalling all his conquests, which to Zach prove to be ultimately meaningless; fights won by a different man. "I can't look at him. He's right, you know. I used to be Bickerstaff. I have a wallet full of old credit card slips that she signed. I used to be Bickerstaff." Bickerstaff, the undefeated champion, has fallen off his path. "How will the world appear through defeated eyes, I wonder, I've never looked through them; a whole different kind of loser." But because we know what happened to Percival, we know what will happen with Bickerstaff.
It takes a joke from the usually solemn and silent ringside trainer Taro about how, when he cuts open the swollen bag of pus hanging over his right eye, it will ruin his "modering caweah" to send Bickerstaff over the edge, but the laughter he and JD enjoy is pure, the purest thing Zach has had for a long time. In that moment, Isaac Bickerstaff finds his spiritual rebirth: the warrior's communion. And when JD asks again, "'Are you Bickerstaff?'" his response is, "'No. I'm worse.'" And just like Percival, all at once, in one stroke, Zach reacquaints with himself and finds his long-lost faith.
But this is also the point where Bickerstaff's story departs from that of Percival, and aligns with that of Lancelot. Zach's Grail Quest is over; he's already lost. Percival sticks to the story, plays the part that was designed for him. Zach's prerogative now is to brush against the grain. Zach dares to challenge the narrative that has already been determined. In this world of battle, where purity was once the standard, the ref has been paid off and, though in the next round, the battered Bickerstaff makes a stunning comeback and annihilates his opponent. But as he knows too well, "sometimes you get a Jap ref, or one that's merely been paid off."
Bickerstaff kneels in a way that neither Lancelot nor Percival ever would. Percival was pure, in thought and spirituality, and never could have found the Grail had he been impure. Bickerstaff and Lancelot, the story demands, are not pure, but Bickerstaff has some thoughts about courage: "Why is consequence the measure of courage? Why is my virtue measured in slain beasts or bedded women? Can't my courage come in smaller bits; in days survived and meals eaten without sobbing? Isn't the monstrous ache of the ticking minutes enough to prove my own warriorhood against? I've no more dragons to best, no more spectral armies to tear asunder, or jackass tough guys to school. The great medals of my courage will from here on out come in the form of getting out of bed in the morning and facing an uncertain day" (Bickerstaff, "The End").
These are questions Percival never had to face, but Lancelot had to after his loss Guinevere and the dissolution of the Round Table, and during his war against the King Arthur, who had before been his closest friend. But in a romance, the type Lancelot and Percival were subject to, they never would have stood in the center of the octagon, with throngs of cheering people on all sides, and tapped three times, exiting the ring for the first time on the losing end, for the first time taking ownership of the story. In every meaningful way, Bickerstaff's story is over, and he is free to do as he pleases, if that is to eat a meal without sobbing or begin a new life in a new place, free from the yoke of either romance or tragedy: the story of Getting his Ass Kicked at every turn, to which he had for so long been a slave; to enjoy the freedom from pre-destiny neither Lancelot nor Percival ever enjoyed.
There is ample evidence that, outside of the diversion from the stories of either Lancelot or Percival, that Getting My Ass Kicked is written as a parallel to the Arthurian tales, the first of which being the very manner in which it was written. Arthurian literature has long been taken partly as non-fiction despite overwhelming evidence that King Arthur himself never existed. Laurie A. Finke and Martin B. Shichtman cite Sir Winston Churchill as one notable "historian" who makes a persistent effort to treat the legends as grounded in fact. They believe that Arthuriana's historical treatment "lies in the gap between Churchill's indicative and subjunctive, between his claim that the glorious stories of Arthur are all true and his belief that they ought to be true because they represent what, for him, is best about the English nation" (Finke 2). They also cite Adolf Hitler as a leader who believes there is much to be gained from the stories, and in fact bases his justification for the Final Solution on Arthurian ideals: "A fascist aesthetic is the darkness at the heart of Arthurian history, especially as it celebrates aggressive hypermasculinity mobilized in the service of a persecuting society intent upon world conquest" (Finke 188-189). Even the 2004 film King Arthur cites the "true story" upon which the legends were based as its own foundation. Bickerstaff's own story cites itself as a true story in the first installment, though it is written under the pen name "Isaac Bickerstaff", originally the pseudonym of Jonathan Swift, and now the property of the public domain. There is no historical basis for the story, but as it is presented as a true story and told anonymously, there is no real litmus for its veracity. It is no coincidence that, like Arthuriana, while its literary origins can be traced and its author (in a way) named, there is no undeniable certainty that these stories are not part of literal history in some regard.
While the Getting My Ass Kicked directly cites the Percival legends as an inspirational source, it is also covertly derivative of Lancelot's tales. Importantly, in T.H. White's The Ill-Made Knight, Lancelot is offered a glimpse of the Grail while Percival and another knight, Bors, receive it, but is repelled when he tries to enter the room his companions are in. Bickerstaff, in very much the same way, is offered a glimpse of his Grail just before another of his fights, this against a heavily overmatched opponent they dub "Shortbus" in the story Heroes, Scum Bags, and My Very First Loss: Getting My Ass Kicked in Metropolis. This section of the story makes allusions to Lancelot through Superman, who can be seen as a contemporary Lancelot. Bickerstaff's therapist accuses him of having a "hero complex," like he's Superman. In Zach's eyes, this means that he is out looking for his own end, because Superman, to Zach, is always "looking for the guy who can shut him down, end his quest, slam the door on his suicidal need for ever-greater conquests. Cause that's what it is, kids, and don't be fucking fooled. The whole hero thing? It's a never-ending hunt for the one that can close the coffin on your tired ass; an obsessive pursuit of your own Kryptonite. And I found mine about a day ago, the very second the Girl told me that my new name was Dad" (Bickerstaff, "Metropolis").
Bickerstaff, here, finds out before the fight that The Girl is pregnant with his child, and for better or worse, this is what he has been waiting for, the final step in his pursuit of the Grail, of kids and a family and a quiet life at home. A child is Bickerstaff's Kryptonite, and though Shortbus cannot take Bickerstaff in a fight, a deal has been offered by the opposing manager involving "lots of zeroes" and Bickerstaff has ample reason all of a sudden to consider taking a fall and to close the book on his fighting career. It is the closest Bickerstaff has ever come to finding his Grail, and he accepts the offer and the money and his loss, but this tragic story isn't ready for Bickerstaff to lose.
Near the end of the fight, Bickerstaff allows Shortbus to put him in a weak submission hold, and in melodramatic fashion, just before he is ready to tap out and move on with his life, he witnesses JD outside the ring taking a phone call, and he knows it's The Girl on the other line with the results of her second doctor's opinion on her pregnancy. Bickerstaff watches JD "mouth the words "I'm sorry," into his phone and flip it closed; and in the half breath before my hand comes down, he looks me dead in the eyes and shakes his head. Negative, his face says, negative: no kid, no family, no new life, not pregnant, not pregnant. Negative" (Bickerstaff, "Metropolis"). The story, as it always does, writes itself as Bickerstaff takes out his sudden frustration on Shortbus and issues him a vicious beating. Negative, the tragedy says, no Grail, no escape from this life, the door is closed and Bickerstaff is not allowed to join Percival and Bors and the culmination of their struggles, joining Lancelot outside and confused.
Many of the minor characters in Getting My Ass Kicked also parallel characters in Christian's Story of the Grail and in several texts involving Lancelot. Most notably, Taro the trainer inhabits the role of Percival's hermit uncle, who appears only at the very end of Christian's telling of the story. In it, the uncle is the man who offers Percival's final enlightenment, instructing him to treat all women well and to act courteously toward them always. He then serves Percival communion and Percival, it is suggested, never strayed from the path of the righteous again (de Troyes, 417). Taro serves the same role, as the redeeming figure in Bickerstaff's life. It is Taro who, during fights, repairs the damage Zach does to himself on his own battlefield, and in a visceral way, acts as his healer after the fight. But more importantly, Taro's "modering caweah" quip is the one thing Zach needed to hear at his lowest moment; he is the facilitator of Zach's redemption. Also, in the Lancelot stories past Christian's, Merlin is continually by Lancelot's side instructing him and offering him glimpses of his future. Merlin's advice is often ignored, whether incomplete or extraordinarily accurate, and in White's version it is suggested that even were his advice heeded, fate (or the narrative fabric of the lives of our heroes, from which there is no escape) is a stronger force than their respective will to fight the outcome. Bickerstaff's therapist serves the same function in his story, reappearing constantly to offer perspective on Zach's Grail Quest: where he is going wrong, where he can fix things, how Zach's energy is being thrown at a cost that was lost before it began. The therapist and Merlin are the only figures in these stories who are functionally omniscient, but the warnings of both are largely ignored by all the would-be beneficiaries involved.
The Romance features another important staple in Courtly Love that also appears and is reversed in Getting My Ass Kicked. Courtly love was a type of courtship in which the male would set his sights on a female considered to be "above" him in the world. The male, understanding her place in relation to his own, will make shows of courtesy and gallantry in doing what she desires in order to win her heart. Lancelot does this extensively with Guinevere, and Percival wins Blanchefleur's heart when he rescues her from the castle at which she is held captive in Christian's Romances.
Courtly love in Getting My Ass Kicked is presented continually, but in a backwards way from the traditional romances. For Zach the love survives despite his failure, in his eyes, to be worth the love of The Girl. In the very first installment, Kung Fu, Transvestites, and 12 Year Old Whores: Getting My Ass Kicked in Thailand, he's left without notice for Bangkok to fight. Zach offers as an explanation that any time he is not there, "not, you know, THERE, with the girl I mean," he is hiding, but is therapist believes he is, as usual, "sabotaging any chance at a workable relationship by being on the road and emotionally unavailable all the time" (Bickerstaff, "Thailand"). This trend continues throughout the saga, even at the point Bickerstaff believes he is out to help her further her career.
Bickerstaff's most overt plan to win the affection of The Girl with a Christmas gift, his lone effort to play the part of the troubadour, to star in his own romance, his "Bold Plan", is doomed to failure from the start because it involves leaving town to fight an amateur martial artist. He blames the necessity of the Plan on the Medici family, "you know, dying rich and influential and all, and leaving a tomb that had to get opened at some point." The Girl was working as a journalist for the Rolling Stone and hated it, and was offered a position as a researcher, but could not, on her own, afford a plane ticket to Florence to take part in the excavation of the tomb. Bickerstaff, in secret, planned to win the fight and earn enough money so that she might afford to take the trip. Bickerstaff would have to cross state lines, however, in violation of his parole that would assuredly cost him 60 days in jail, but in his mind "the five cool K, just enough to send the Girl to Italy to help crack open the Medici tomb; it's completely worth the 60 days I would have to serve." In a romance, the sort of story in which Lancelot and Percival and the other knights played their parts, the plan would have worked because pure love has that power, but in Bickerstaff's reality, all he can do is his best. "'Do my best,' man. 'Do my best' is almost always step one in a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions in my life." Bickerstaff of course wins the fight, claims the five thousand dollar prize, buys the non-refundable plane tickets, and earns his 60 days in jail. He does his best, but because this is a tragedy and not Percival's romantic adventures where the Grail was his all along, there is one catch: The Girl has signed a one-year contract extension with The Stone. To add further pain to the situation, as a signing bonus, her bosses agreed to sign Zach as a guest reporter to cover the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, which would allow him to leave his life of amateur fighting—this was Lancelot's glimpse of the grail, before it was snatched away. He would have been able to have the quiet life he's wanted all along; to find his Grail, fulfilling his Quest. The Olympics, however, would occur in February, well within his jail sentence, destroying any hope for a happy ending, and temporarily destroying the illusion that Zach is in control of his story. Once again, he plays victim to the plot (Bickerstaff, "Oz").
It makes no difference, in the end, that The Girl has always loved Zach, and that he never needed to attempt to execute the ideals of Courtly Love, because the stories to which those ideals apply are not the same type to which Zach belongs. In the end, he finally gets it, but it's too late:
"Why is sorrow the measure of love? Like what are we thinking that we judge the worth of a relationship by how wrecked we are when it's over; unable the whole fucking time to simply understand that we're coming apart at the seams by how savagely, ferociously in love we are? I remember her frustration more than anything, I guess: the cruelty and casualties of the barbarous words that got so callously strewn about when she was too angry to realize that leaving me was the best thing she could ever do for herself. And no matter what you do, regardless of how monumentally you fuck up, her sorrow serves as a perfect reminder of the immensity of her love: and after a while, you don't have any choice but to believe her when she says it" (Bickerstaff, "The End").
And this, finally, is what makes the story a tragedy. In a romance, if Courtly Love were in effect, The Girl's love for Bickerstaff would never exist because he knew all along he did not deserve her, and the story stepped in the way each and every time he made an effort to take the strides necessary to fulfill his Grail Quest. Lancelot in the same way did not deserve Guinevere, because there was nothing he could do to ever fulfill his genuinely amorous desire for her. No matter the purity of the love nor the earnestness with which love's pursuits were chased, the world is not driven by wishes, and the story is certainly not subject to our will. The story must to come to an end before it can be changed.
Works Cited
Bickerstaff, Isaac. "Heroes, Scum Bags, and My Very First Loss: Getting My Ass Kicked in Metropolis." Weblog post. Ubersite. 31 Mar. 2005. 30 Apr. 2009 <http://www.ubersite.com/m/63070>.
Bickerstaff, Isaac. "Kung Fu, Transvestites, and 12 Year Old Whores: Getting My Ass Kicked in Thailand." Weblog post. Ubersite. 8 Dec. 2004. 30 Apr. 2009 <http://www.ubersite.com/m/53824>.
Bickerstaff, Isaac. "Latex Kittens, Pseduo Tough Guys, and Johnny Walker Black: Getting My Ass Kicked in the Land of Oz." Weblog post. Ubersite. 5 Jan. 2005. 30 Apr. 2009 <http://www.ubersite.com/m/55890>.
Bickerstaff, Isaac. "The Girl, The Grail, The End." Weblog post. Ubersite. 10 July 2007. 30 Apr. 2009 <http://www.ubersite.com/m/109998>.
Finke, Laurie. King Arthur and the myth of history. Gainesville: University P of Florida, 2004.
Halberstam, Judith. "Female Masculinity." Literary Theory: An Anthology. Comp. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998. 935-57.
Staines, David. The Complete Romances of Chretien De Troyes. New York: Indiana UP, 1993.
Twain, Mark. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998.
White, T.H. The Once and Future King. New York, NY: Penguin, 1996.
dont forget the gift
User Reviews
Submitted by Tigre (user info) at 2009-06-28 20:34:50 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Fuckin' A mate.
Wanna buy some shrooms? Just bought an oz
Submitted by sicosemen (user info) at 2009-06-18 12:27:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Will read later, but +2 strictly on assumption.
Submitted by AsshOly (user info) at 2009-06-17 11:45:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Tuts, I disagree.
Maybe it's the fact that I make no effort to sound scholarly that makes you believe this isnt degree worthy. That could be the issue. Or you could be pissed off that you work harder than I do for the same results. That also may be true.
Time out. I'm sitting on my back porch right now and two birds are fucking each other on the canopy above me. Also my puppy has diarrhea and just shit in mid-trot without apparently noticing. Time in.
There was a lot working against me in this course grade-wise. It was a 400-level course, I had absolutely zero background knowledge on Arthurian lit while several other students were grad students who wrote their theses on Arhturiana, I almost never had my work completed on time, I missed the maximum amount of days possible while still earning a passing grade, and I wrote my research essay on an obscure blog post. I also was one of seven out of 23 people who got a B or better in the course. One grad student who showed up every day and participated and wrote her thesis the year before and her paper for this class on the femme fatale character got a C.
So yes, it's degree worthy. It's not a philosophy essay, so it doesnt sound like one. It's not a thesis, so it doesnt sound like one. It's a fun paper about men beating the shit out of each other, so that's what it sounds like. It is written appropriately for the subject matter. The other kid's essay happens to also be written appropriately, but differently. Either way, my professor probably has a better opinion on the matter than you do, and since this is what it all comes down to, your opinion means dick.
But since I'm clearly so smitten with you that I give a shit about your e-opinion (or people like you bug the shit out of me IRL), I checked your post history and noticed that you like to bitch about the work you've got to do for class. I imagine you to be cut the same as all the other cookies who've majored in English, which is to say you probably think literary theory is an interesting and useful thing to read. You probably make an effort to write like Foucault or Derrida or any number of other French "intellectuals" who believe it is the job of overeducated snobs to, as one Stanford professor put it, "think for the every day man." Never mind the fact that the majority of what people like you write is non-sensical garbage, as long as you write painstaking articles on shit like non-contradiction or something, and as long as it sounds like youre *really fucking smart* then you will earn an A. You probably then wonder why you struggle to maintain a GPA that will allow you to stay in the honors program, and you probably detest people like me who come to Monday classes hung over and sleepy and get better grades than you.
Keep your chin up, though. I'm sure being a bitch on the internet will work wonders for your future.
Submitted by TuTs (user info) at 2009-06-17 02:12:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I'm not bitter, I just know that this writing isn't degree worthy. Where I go to school the language you used and your formatting would result in maybe a pass if the tutor was nice.
Compared to the other essay posted this is childish.
And btw, +0 is worth reading, it was good just not degree worthy.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2009-06-17 01:06:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
well, at least you cited your work
Submitted by monkeyswithguns (user info) at 2009-06-16 09:11:38 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by EmissionImpossible (user info) at 2009-06-16 08:17:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
i dont read posts like this
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Also, the cocaine goes up your nose, not in your hair. I think that may explain your dissappointed look in the picture.
Submitted by i_can_get_you_a_toe (user info) at 2009-06-16 08:43:21 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This is so horribly formatted you'd have to be half demon to even read it, it's like it's in another language with all the "annoying speech marks" every two lines.
However, it's you, so I will try and read this later when i'm moderately sober.
Submitted by EmissionImpossible (user info) at 2009-06-16 08:17:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
i dont read posts like this
Submitted by JoeyG (user info) at 2009-06-16 07:27:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Well put. I'm not a critic, so I'll say no more.
Submitted by Ballare (user info) at 2009-06-16 02:34:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
skimmed it, +2 bickerstaff'd it
Submitted by Wildman (user info) at 2009-06-16 00:43:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
It's just not like it used to be, and that makes me sad, especially at night.
Submitted by Ebenezer_Spooge (user info) at 2009-06-16 00:02:22 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Ah, a bit of the ol' collegiate debauchery. Surely you mustn't... Hello? I'll be sure to examine this later, my friend!
Submitted by rob_berg (user info) at 2009-06-15 22:29:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Poop jokes are totally degree worthy.
Submitted by AsshOly (user info) at 2009-06-15 21:51:22 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Next I'll post the poem "My Dog Flicka, Who Farts In Her Sleep," and renowned literary critics from all over will descend upon Ubersite to tell me poop jokes aren't degree-worthy.
Submitted by AsshOly (user info) at 2009-06-15 21:41:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by TuTs (user info) at 2009-06-15 20:23:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
In comparison to the other essay posted, this is like a childrens book compared to one of the classics. Sorry but this is a degree worthy essay?
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Are you kidding me? I wrote about Ubersite for a class that meant nothing to me and the other dude posted his thesis, which dealt with epistemological theory. I spent six hours working on this, and he probably spent six weeks. I didn't even bother to proofread, so of course the other one is going to be better. I found three grammatical errors just when I was breaking up the paragraphs in the submit box. Who gives a shit?
Listen toots, it wasn't because I was under the impression that this is the world's finest writing that I posted this essay. I posted it because it's about Bickerstaff and there are a lot of people here who enjoy his writing, and maybe they'd enjoy a different sort of take on the story. You clearly didn't enjoy the different take, so why read it, you dolt?
Are you bitter or something? Not happy with your life?
Submitted by moopy4u (user info) at 2009-06-15 21:38:25 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
What site di you copy and paste that from. Geez =/
Submitted by bustedcompass (user info) at 2009-06-15 21:17:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 on sheer weight alone.
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2009-06-15 20:25:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I read every word. Shlongy, send an extra buck to doggie rescue in my name.
Submitted by TuTs (user info) at 2009-06-15 20:23:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
In comparison to the other essay posted, this is like a childrens book compared to one of the classics. Sorry but this is a degree worthy essay?
Submitted by Bickerstaff (user info) at 2009-06-15 19:55:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Shlongy owes me a buck...
Submitted by Shlongy (user info) at 2009-06-15 19:26:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
NOT EVEN FOR A DOLLAR? IN THIS TOUGH ECONOMY???
Submitted by rob_berg (user info) at 2009-06-15 19:03:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Holy shit. That's a lotta wordy type things.
I think the crotchety gremlin's money is safe.
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2009-06-15 19:02:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
wtf, i'm not reading all that.
Submitted by AsshOly (user info) at 2009-06-15 17:41:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I havent read it.
Everybody is a fan of Shlongy.
Submitted by Shlongy (user info) at 2009-06-15 17:25:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I will pay a dollar to every person who successfuilly reads Oly's entire term paper...without dozing off.
Using Bickerstaff in it was a nice touch, though. Did you know he's a huge fan of Shlongy?
Submitted by pen_name (user info) at 2009-06-15 17:22:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 long-ass shit.