The Lost Book of the Grail

The gifts of God are rarely what we expect.

Jane Austen never married,” he said in frustration. “She entered the male-dominated field of novel writing and her female heroines are strong, independent characters. Just what do you imagine a feminist in a rural English village in the late eighteenth century looks like?

King Arthur's Knights had been the first book Arthur had read late at night under the covers with a torch...it was he supposed, thinking back on it, the first book that had showed him what reading was really all about.

What this committee needs, what this media center needs, is a good dose of Jeeves." "I'm sorry," said Mr. Peabody, a mathematics lecturer who sat hunched at the far end of the table taking the minutes. "How do you spell that?" "Is it possible," said Arthur, raising both his shoulders and his voice, "that we are working in a university where lecturers are not aware of the identity of one Reginald Jeeves, the gentleman's personal gentleman and the personal gentleman's gentleman? What has happened to cultural literacy, my fellow members of the Advisory Committee for the Media Center? This sort of ignorance is exactly what needs addressing. What I mean, Mr. Peabody, when I say that we need a dose of Jeeves, is that we need quiet and reasoned wisdom that leads to prompt and directed action.

Just because I don't believe in God doesn't mean that I don't want to. And it doesn't mean I can't find comfort in routine and in connecting myself through those words and this space to a hundred generations who have come before me here.

And don't kid yourself—he's not building this museum to convince people to believe. He's building it so that people who already do believe can feel even more self-righteous. If he tells people they're looking at the apple core from the Garden of Eden, they'll buy it.

It is the best truth I can recall—but what is recollection and what is exaggeration that has merged with recollection over the years? What is my own memory, and what do I trust to the memory of others? How accurate is my mind, and how accurate those of so many who have told these stories? These are questions I cannot answer, any more than you can answer whether God is a god of war or peace.

When he picked up a manuscript, he knew he was the only person in the world reading that particular book at that specific moment.

Oh, my Lord in heaven.” “Please don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, Arthur.” “I didn’t take his name in vain—only his address.

No age lives entirely alone; every civilization is formed not merely by its own achievements but by what it has inherited from the past. If these things are destroyed, we have lost a part of our past, and we shall be the poorer for it. —MAJOR RONALD BALFOUR

for Communion—it was the only rite that made Arthur self-conscious about his unbelief. He could not, in good conscience, partake, but not to do so seemed a much too public declaration of his lack of faith. So, as the sermon droned on (it was the precentor this morning) and as the congregants waited their turn at the Communion rail, Arthur read the rest of his manuscript, making occasional marks with the red pen, keenly aware of those two keys staring up at him from his table.

the voices of the choir ringing off the ancient stones of the cathedral—did not make Arthur believe in God, but it did make him want to believe. The service had been sung

was the first book that took him completely out of himself, his room, his home, and his hometown to a place that seemed both mythical and real, a place where magic was ordinary and heroes were plenteous. It was, he supposed, thinking back on it, the first book that showed him what reading was really all about. At first Arthur had been drawn to the adventure in

He didn’t feel God in the library, but he felt something beyond himself.

Students didn't even read books anymore, thought Arthur. They dispensed with design and layout and cover art and illustrations and reduced reading to nothing but a stream of text in whatever font and size they chose. Reading without books, thought Arthur, was like playing cricket without dressing in white. It could be done, but why?