Once & Future Continent

AMERICA AT LAST by T. H. White. 250 pages. Putnam. $4.95.

Novelist T. H. White first saw America through the magic casements of Camelot. To his immense surprise, Englishman White fell in love with the ruddy country--or what he saw of it between tryouts of the Lerner-Loewe musical based on his tetralogy, The Once and Future King. He vowed to return, and his opportunity came in late 1963, when he was booked for a three-month lecture tour that was to take him all over the U.S.

Unlike so many English celebrities who descend on the U.S. for a few weeks and condescend forever after, White brought with him an open mind, sharp eyes and immense erudition. His journal, conscientiously pieced together between lecture engagements and airport departures, is largely a testament to the diversity of the U.S. Whether describing a loggerhead shrike in North Carolina or an egghead racist in New Orleans, wandering over Beverly Hills ("reminds you of the environs of Florence and Fiesole") or Washington, D.C. ("the chalk-white city half in love with Time"), White displayed even in this disjointed, unedited chronicle the wit and insight that made his novels classics in their author's lifetime.

White admitted that on such a tour he was bound to see "the best of America, the young, the enthusiastic, the idealistic, the hopeful to learn." He perceived nonetheless that Americans can be crass, narrow-minded and dismayingly conformist. Confined to a New Orleans hospital throughout the ordeal of President Kennedy's assassination and burial, he sensed that the whole nation shared something akin to "a schoolboy's innocent guilt." But White felt that the U.S. today is "something like a modern Elizabethan England" and concluded that "people who live in Renaissances are apt to live with violence." By the end of his three month visit, he had become "an addict to America--worse than alcohol."

His two addictions were his undoing. Worn out by his trip and weakened by whisky that he soaked up after--but never during--his lecture tour, he died a month after sailing from New York. He had intended to read dozens of volumes of Americana before publishing his journal. As it is, despite inaccuracies, repetitions and typographical errors that would have dismayed him, White's vision of this once and future continent should be read by every Englishman who visits the U.S.--particularly if he intends to write about it.

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