★★★★☆ The Chinese classic novel with WOMEN!

The Story of the Stone

Cao Xueqin

There are four widely-recognized classic Chinese novels. Seriously, do a web search for "classic Chinese novels" and you will find dozens of pages referring to "The Four Classic Novels of Chinese Literature". (Wikipedia lists six on its Classic Chinese Novels page" -- these include the usual four, plus two others.) The phrase "Four classic Chinese novels" also appears frequently in commentary on Chinese literature. The four are

Romance of the Three Kingdoms
The Water Margin
Journey to the West
The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber

Red Chamber is distinctly different from the first three. It is the only one that feels (to me) like a modern novel. For instance, there are WOMEN! And they are not mere objects or cardboard cut-outs, but real, complex characters who carry the plot. Cao intended Red Chamber to be a memorial to the women he knew in his youth. And there is a love story!

The protagonist, alas, is not a woman, but a young man, Jia Baoyu, probably somewhat autobiographical. Jia Baoyu belongs to a prominent family, now waning in importance. (Thus, Red Chamber is a sort of Chinese Buddenbrooks, although, given the dates, it would be more fair to say that Buddenbrooks is a sort of German Red Chamber.) The rise and fall of the Jia family forms one of the two main plot threads. The other is Jia Baoyu's love story -- a triangle of him and his two cousins, Lin Daiyu, his soulmate (a term I use intentionally), and Xue Baochai, the cousin whom he is expected to marry. Lin Daiyu is impulsive and artistic -- Xue Baochai is wise and more controlled. Despite the complex romantic entanglements, the three are all friends and admire each other.

In my memory the books consist largely of Jia Baoyu, Lin Daiyu, and Xue Baochai wandering around the Jia family's big garden, committing acts of artistry at each other. Most of this, alas, flew miles over my head -- I do not have the knowledge or talent to appreciate classic Chinese music, poetry, or graphic arts. (I suspect it is not entirely my fault -- these passages had all the earmarks of something untranslatable.)

Authorship is complicated -- although Red Chamber is attributed to Cao Xueqin, he only finished the first 80 chapters during his lifetime. The current "complete" versions are 120 chapters long, the last 40 having been added by the publishers of the first printed version, Gao E and Cheng Weiyuan, supposedly based on Cao's manuscripts. It's a huge and very complicated story.

It is great literature, but you should be aware going in that reading Red Chamber is a major project, especially in translation.

Amazon review

Goodreads review

Comments

★★★★☆ No Kings!

Men at Arms Terry Pratchett, Jon Culshaw (Narrator), Peter Serafinowicz (Narrator), Bill Nighy (Narrator) Men at Arms is only the second novel in Terry Pratchett 's City Watch subseries of the Discworld series, but I think I already discern their central message. It is that the good that is done in the world (be it Discworld or Earth) is accomplished not by Great Persons -- not by Kings and Geniuses and Modern Major Generals -- but by ordinary hard-working people who keep putting one foot in front of the other. It's fair to point out that it's a hackneyed message. On the other hand, it's a theme that I love and can never get too much of. Although Pratchett is not alone in extolling ordinary folk, his way of doing it is unique. No other writer lights off the sorts of linguistic fireworks that Pratchett pops off line after line, page after page, seemingly without effort. (I say "seemingly" because that appearance of e...

★★★★★ Finding a home

The Blue Sword Robin McKinley When I was growing up my father's job kept my family moving. Mom and Dad eventually settled down, but just when they did I became an itinerant academic, moving to study and work at various research institutions. I was a 27 year old grad student at Stanford when I first read The Blue Sword and the longest I had ever lived in one place was six years. (Understand, I am not complaining -- I was and am a Happy Nomad.) There's a peculiar type of homesickness experienced by rootless people. One usually thinks of homesickness as being away from and missing a very specific place -- the place one calls home. But I had no place to call home. And yet I sometimes felt homesick -- I felt the lack of a home -- all the more because there was no home where I longed to be. In the first few chapters of The Blue Sword I immediately recognized this feeling of rootless homesickness in Angharad (Harry) Crewe, the hero of the book. As the book begins Harry ...

★★★☆☆ The Great Geometer

The Impossible Man: Roger Penrose and the Cost of Genius Patchen Barss If I were asked to name the greatest physicists of the second half of the twentieth century, I would probably choose three: Richard Feynman , Steven Weinberg , and Roger Penrose . (I am a neuroscientist and a mathematician with a long interest in physics. I'm not the best person to choose great physicists, but I'm not the worst.) Thus when my local Theoretical Physics Institute (every town should have one!), the Perimeter Institute , announced a public presentation by Patchen Barss , a science journalist who has written this biography of Penrose , I immediately snagged a ticket. Barss wounded my confidence by emitting that cliché of the science popularizer: that you make science interesting by telling the "human story." Oh, please! I don't read a biography of Penrose for the sake of the human story. Why do science popularizers find it so hard to believe that there...

★★★★☆ Ramona Qimby meets a dragon

The Tears of a Dragon Intisar Khanani OK, that title is a lie. Intisar Khanani 's The Tears of a Dragon is not really about Beverly Cleary 's Ramona Quimby meeting a dragon. Or is it? The Tears of a Dragon is a novella in Khanani 's Dauntless Path series. It immediately follows The Bone Knife . Both stories concern a family in rural Menaiya. The father trains horses and has three daughters: Niya, Rae, and Bean. Bean, the putative Ramona of this family, is the youngest. In The Bone Knife the sisters helped a visiting Elf, Genno Stonmane, and he gave each of them a gift. Bean's gift was a small stone horse, which she wears on a thong around her neck. A troop of soldiers visits their village, and the gossip is that they have captured a baby dragon, whom they plan to use as bait to kill the mother. Bean is outraged and drags her sisters into a ill-planned raid to rescue the baby dragon. It's a good little story. S...

★★★★★ A brilliant mess

Long Live Evil Sarah Rees Brennan The publisher's blurb for Sarah Rees Brennan 's Long Live Evil makes it sound like a funny book about a real-world character who slips into a book and finds herself the villain. And it IS that! There were many laugh-out-loud moments, such as this one Books often described kisses as ‘searing’ which made Rae think of salmon, but characters seemed to enjoy the seared-salmon kisses. or this “You saw this horse born,” Marius reminded ... “I told you his bloodline could find their way anywhere. You named him.” “That was a joke,” ... Marius didn’t see what was humorous. He’d thought it was a nice name. ... “So this is my noble steed, Google Maps?” Rae, our heroine/villainess, is a fantasy book lover, who knows all the plot tropes, not to mention the movies and songs. Plugged into a fantasy novel (à la Inkworld or Thursday Next -- both are referenced in the Acknowledgments) Rae reacts like the thoroughly modern young wo...

★★☆☆☆ Song Jiang is no Robin Hood

Water Margin: Outlaws of the Marsh Shi Nai'an, Edwin Lowe (Foreword), J.H. Jackson (Translator) There are four widely-recognized classic Chinese novels. Seriously, do a web search for "classic Chinese novels" and you will find dozens of pages referring to "The Four Classic Novels of Chinese Literature". (Wikipedia lists six on its Classic Chinese Novels page" -- these include the usual four, plus two others.) The phrase "Four classic Chinese novels" also appears frequently in commentary on Chinese literature. The four are Romance of the Three Kingdoms The Water Margin Journey to the West Dream of the Red Chamber I begin by clarifying that in this review of Water Margin I am trying only to answer the question, "If an educated American who understands no Chinese and has only the most cursory knowledge of Chinese culture (that would be me) reads Water Margin , will they find it entertaining/rewarding?" I make no attempt to judge its li...

★★★★☆ Always funny, and occasionally (if cryptically) profound

archy and mehitabel Don Marquis I first read Archy and Mehitabel as a high-school student. My aunt from New York City, Aunt Althea, who always knew the hottest new books, recommended it to my family, and it went through us like a Covid outbreak, but with far more pleasing results. (I am not sure what brought A&M to Aunt Althea's attention, as it was published in 1916.) The premise of A&M is that Don Marquis hears the sound of typing from his office one night. He checks it out and finds that a cockroach is operating the typewriter by climbing up on the carriage and leaping head-first onto the keys. (By the way, I am old enough to have used mechanical typewriters, and I can tell you with absolute certainty, this would not work. So, I have the unpleasant duty of informing you that A&M is fiction.) A&M consists of these missives from the cockroach, who calls himself Archy. In addition, there are pen and ...

★★★☆☆ Least-favored child

Calling on Dragons Patricia C. Wrede In her Introduction to Calling on Dragons , Patricia C. Wrede comes very close to saying that it is her least favorite of the Enchanted Forest chronicles. She doesn't quite do that -- I gather that an author saying, "This is my least favorite book" is like a mother saying "You are my least favorite child" -- it is just not done. Calling was the last of the four written. Wrede wrote Talking to Dragons first. The illustrious Jane Yolen asked her for another children's book, and thus was Dealing with Dragons born. Dealing is set in the distant past of Talking . Thus Yolen asked for another novel to fill in the gap. There was a problem. Wrede *HATES* cliffhangers. But, not knowing that she was writing the final book in a series, she wrote herself into a trap when she wrote Talking . The beginning of T...

★★★★☆ HE HAS TEETH. SHE HAS A GUN. THEY ARE THE LAW.

Wild Country Anne Bishop Anne Bishop likes cops. I can say with certainty that she likes them as characters in her books. Wild Country is the seventh novel in the Others and the World of the Others series. Each of these seven novels features policemen prominently. Monty (Crispin James Montgomery) is one of the most important characters of the five Meg Corbyn novels. Lake Silence has Wayne Grimshaw. Furthermore, I suspect that Bishop likes cops in real life, too. They are not universally good guys in her books -- there are bad cops. But those who are main characters are presented sympathetically. Wild Country , however, is the first novel of Others that features a cop as protagonist. That would be Jana Paniccia. Jana fought hard to become a cop. The police academy in Hubbney had little use for women, and her classmates didn't think a woman could be a good cop. She emerged successful, and also with a giant chip ...

Search This Blog