“Their very imagination was dead. When you can say that of a man he has struck bottom… there is no lower deep for him.”
Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
Being a life long New Englander, I felt it was only fitting that I read “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”. I like to read stories that have some personal nostalgia to them. Books are always more enjoyable when you can see yourself in a character or are familiar with certain places referenced. I grew up taking trips through Connecticut and passing the old Colt factory just off the highway with its blue dome and horse topper.
Unfortunately, the familiarity couldn’t push this book over the edge for me and I found it to be just ok.
Overview: Finding himself transported 1300 years in the past, Hank Morgan finds himself in the presence of non other than King Arthur himself. Getting off to a rough start, he then quickly learns to adapt and uses his knowledge of the future and engineering to earn a place in the King’s court. To the chagrin of Merlin he is quickly deemed the greatest sorcerer in the land.
Throughout the years, Hank continues to attempt to progress the kingdom and educate Arthur to the ways of the future. He makes a life for himself and even settles into marriage and family life.
However, everything cannot stay positive for long and Hank finds himself and Arthur in a precarious situation. He must deal with the consequences of his actions, and his mere presence, to save Arthur and the Kingdom.
My thoughts: I was a quarter of the way through this book when I realized that I didn’t even remember the main character’s name. I had to stop and look it up because I genuinely thought he was unnamed on purpose. After this, I realized that I probably wasn’t that invested in the story.
Right off the bat, the main character seems pretty annoying and instead of being in awe that he is back in time, he just whines about how people from that time period should act differently and quickly takes advantage of knowing more than others. This could easily be compared to Tom Sawyer’s manipulation tactics but with Hank it just doesn’t seem as playful. Perhaps this is due to his age, but it wasn’t a particularly attractive feature of the main character.
I did love the idea of Merlin being out frauded by someone. How I read Merlin was that he was fully aware that he had no supernatural powers and he was taking full advantage of his position in court. Hank having a background in engineering and being able to execute these fantastic feats for the time, challenged his idea of what was possible and made him lose his mind by the end of the book.
I will say that would be totally useless in this society. The main character’s knowledge of engineering makes him so valuable and creates progress in the kingdom quickly. I’d probably just cry in a corner and try to wake up back in my own timeline.
It was probably pretty tempting for Twain to make the main character a writer instead of an engineer. He probably thought the story could progress more with the latter profession but it is clear he sees himself as the protagonist. This is why i think he has him create a newspaper. Twain couldn’t help but get that similarity in.
I feel that this could have been accomplished more effectively as a short story. I don’t think it needed to be spread out as much. How many times can he pretend to be a wizard to upset Merlin? Once or twice would have made the point just fine.
Surprising, the passage that stuck with me the most was the chapter where Hank explains inflation to someone. So frustrating to listen to someone try to reason with a person who can’t see past their own ideas. The reason the passage was so long was because he explained the concept about four different ways before finally giving up. The chapter wasn’t exciting and didn’t move the plot along but it was for some reason more memorable that other chapters.
Overall, this is not a book that I would need to read again. In fact I don’t think it is a book that I needed to read once. You can pretty much read a synopses of the book and have all the working knowledge that you would need to have a conversation about it.
I also, stand by my statement that it was entirely too long and would have fared much better as a short story.
Rating: 2/5 stars
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