★★☆☆☆ 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 literary merit or its place in the historical canon of Chinese literature -- I am not qualified. I am not even answering the question, "Should you read this?" One may have many reasons for reading a book, of which entertainment is only one. For instance, Mao Zedong enjoyed Water Margin and took it as a model for his revolution, in some degree. To my mind, that itself is a pretty good reason to read it.

As you have already guessed from my two-star rating, my answer to the entertainment question is "Probably not." The plot of Water Margin consists mostly of big dumb men wandering around China whacking each other with sticks. OK, that is not entirely accurate, but let me be more specific. Under sticks, of course, I understand cudgels, spears, swords, halberds, hooked poles, and even occasionally arrows. Not all the 108 heroes of Liangshan Marsh are big -- some are rather small, including Song Jiang, the Robin Hood of this band of Merry Men. About the "dumb" part, well, some of the heroes are intelligent. I know this because I was told by other heroes that these ones are intelligent. I don't know it from their own actions or words. For instance, I kept a careful tally of all the times when one of the heroes said something that made me think to myself, "Very clever!" or "Yeah, that's wise." Let me add them up: the grand total is 0. Yeah, that never happened. As for the "men" part, that regrettably, is almost entirely accurate. Of the 108 heroes of Liangshan Marsh, three are women. The portrayal of every other woman than these three is, in two words, "wildly offensive". I haven't the stomach to go into details, so I'll just leave it at that.

Song Jiang views himself as succoring the common people who oppose the officials of a corrupt and illegitimate empire. He frequently makes speeches proclaiming his virtue and the virtue of the heroes. So, he really is portrayed as the Robin Hood of China. But he is not Robin Hood. His actions don't conform to his words. Let me give an example. This example concerns the recruitment to the band of Zhu Tong, nicknamed "Beautiful Whiskers".

As our story begins, Zhu Tong has just arrived at Cangzhou Prefecture. The Prefect's Son (who admires Zhu Tong's beard) becomes friends with him, and the Prefect asks Zhu Tong to "look after his son and to play with him in future." One day two men from Liangshan Marsh show up and distract Zhu Tong. After they leave, the boy is no longer where Zhu Tong left him. Zhu Tong finds him dead with his skull cleft in two. The men from Liangshan explain this as follows:

They were on their way to request you to join them at Liangshan Marsh. As you refused to join them, Li Kui kidnapped the boy, and killed him, so that you could not return to the yamen and face his father.”
Just then Lei Heng and Wu Yong entered the room, and after saluting Zhu Tong they said, “Please forgive us for the crime committed. We did it only by order of our chief, Song Jiang. If you come with us to Liangshan Marsh all will be explained to you.”
“Your asking me to go to Liangshan Marsh was all right,” replied Zhu Tong, “but your method of inducing me to go was exceedingly cruel. I will go with you now, but I must first see Li Kui.”

Yeah, "exceedingly cruel" hardly covers it. Even by his own standards, Song Jiang is not an admirable character.

Finally, a word on this edition. The editor is Edwin H. Lowe of Macquarie University. He is careful to specify that this is not a new translation -- it is merely a polish and modernization of an earlier translation by J. H. Jackson. Lowe has prepended to the book an introduction that is truly fascinating -- much more interesting than the novel itself, in my opinion, describing the textual history and historical significance. I will quote here his dedication, which I found most interesting, to (I am guessing) his son

To little Harry,

25th Generation of the Liu clan of Zhongshan, Guangdong;
5th Generation of the Lowe family of Sydney, Australia;

67th generation descendant of Liu Bang,
The leader of the bandit rebellion who slew the snake near Mount Mangdan and who became Gaozu, the first Emperor of the Han Dynasty in 202 BCE;

with love.

I was reminded by this of Abraham Lincoln's words

I don't know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.

The contrast between Chinese and American cultures could hardly be greater.

Amazon review

Goodreads review

Comments

★★★★☆ What are these people?

Red Side Story Jasper Fforde When I reviewed Shades of Grey , the first novel in Jasper Fforde 's Shades of Grey series, I asked Although I referred to Eddie as a young man, it is not clear to me what the people of the Collective are. I think they are more-or-less human. ... However, in some ways they behave like automata. These are puzzles that I hope Jasper Fforde will clear up in subsequent novels in the Shades of Grey series. Now I'm patting myself on the back, because that is indeed what Red Side Story is about. Or so say I. You might think it is about other things -- a love story, a fight to survive, a battle for justice, a cycle race -- and you would not be wrong. Red Side Story contains multitudes. Shades of Grey ended in a flurry of revelations about the Collective. Eddie, Jane and Courtland Gamboge visited the abandoned town of High Saffron, where Jane revealed that all the people supposedly sent to Reboot were in fact sen...

★★★☆☆ A LOT of novel

Myriad Joshua David Bellin Once when I was a postdoc at MIT, I heard physicist Alan Guth speak in the Physics Colloquium. Guth was known for having invented the idea of Cosmic Inflation , that the universe exploded in size just BEFORE the Big Bang, setting the initial conditions for the Big Bang. (Versions of this idea are now mainstream physics.) In his Colloquium, he discussed the possibility that inflation could start anytime, anywhere, from quantum fluctuations. This, he showed us, would lead to the creation of a new universe. He then asked how we might see this. And he showed us that since the new universe would be entirely unattached to the one in which it began, there would be no observable consequence in the universe in which it originated. I was bemused. It felt to me as if he had walked down to the front of the room, pulled his hand out of his pocket and there unfolded an entire new universe. He then folded the new universe back up in his hand and...

★★★★☆ Madness and first-person pronouns

Live or Die: Poems Anne Sexton Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath are famous as founders of the Confessional Poetry movement of the mid-twentieth century. Plath began writing poetry in the 1950s and wrote until her suicide in 1963. That was not her first suicide attempt, only the first successful one. Sexton was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in 1955 to be treated for what we now call bipolar disorder. There one of her doctors encouraged her to write poetry to battle her melancholia. In 1974 she, too, committed suicide. Like Plath 's, her successful suicide was preceded by several unsuccessful attempts. One certainly gets the impression that "Confessional Poet" is a terribly hazardous career choice. (Yeah, yeah, correlation is not causation...) For a poetry writing class, I am required to read poems by Sexton and Plath . Live or Die is perhaps Sexton 's most celebrated book -- it won a Pulitzer...

★★★★★ A Cyberspace Cowboy

Count Zero William Gibson Count Zero was the first book in William Gibson 's Cyberspace trilogy I read. I picked it up in an airport bookstore, where it was on display, so it was probably pretty newly published -- let's say 1984. The Internet existed -- I had been using it to send email, although that was still pretty difficult and took some figgerin. It would be another ten years before Tim Berners-Lee 's World-Wide Web got off the ground as a thing that any academic could use, and thus a version of Gibson 's cyberspace became real. There were no eBooks back them (not really), which meant that a person like me, who must ALWAYS have a book to read, had to carry a backpack full of heavy paper books when I traveled. A quick glance in the bookstore made it clear that Count Zero was my kind of book. And it was. As it happens, the series works almost equally well in the order Count Zero , Neuromancer , Mona Lisa Overdrive ...

★★★★☆ We return to the world of the Others

Lake Silence Anne Bishop Lake Silence continues Anne Bishop 's series The Others , except it doesn't quite. The Others consists of five novels about blood prophet Meg Corbyn and the city of Lakeside, which is located where, on Earth, Buffalo, New York is. Lakeside and Meg, however, are on Namid, a world that is geographically much like Earth, but ruled mostly by beings that call themselves terra indigene , who regard humans as prey. In The Others a group of profoundly stupid and badly informed humans take on the Others (as they call the terra indigene ) and are very nearly wiped out. A few humans survive by learning to live with the terra indigene . The story of Meg finished, we now move on to a different part of Namid and other humans. Three such novels constitute the successor series the World of the Others . We don't actually move very far. Lake Silence takes place on the shores of Lake Silence, one of the ...

★★★☆☆ Wow! This felt familiar

Immortal Longings Chloe Gong Often I begin a review by looking at the publisher's blurb. I try to avoid spoilers, but my rule is that anything in the publisher's blurb has already been spoiled, and thus is free to mention in a review, without a spoiler tag. And this one! Well, they tell us right at the top that Immortal Longings (let me just get this out of the way -- I have no idea what the title " Immortal Longings " has to do with the contents of the book) was "inspired by Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra". In paragraphs three and four they introduce the two main characters, Princess Calla Tuoleimi and Anton Makusa. Calla and Anton, do those names sound familiar? Having given away who the main characters are and what their relationship is going to be like, the publishers proceed to reveal the plot. Every year, thousands in the kingdom of Talin will flock to its capital twin cities, San-Er, where the palace hosts a set of games. For those confident eno...

★★★★★ Witches and pain magic

Storm Cursed Patricia Briggs As I have noted elsewhere , the three pillars of magical society in Patricia Briggs 's Mercyverse , also Mercyverse , are werewolves, vampires, and fae. However, she also feels free to import any folkloric creatures that anyone has ever told stories about. Thus Mercy herself is descended from First Nation not-quite-a-god Coyote. Aside from the big three, most of these other magical beings are one-offs. And since Briggs is all about the politics and palace intrigue, they don't have the standing to become pillars of Mercyverse magical society. In fact, the first three books, Moon Called , Blood Bound , and Iron Kissed , served as introductions to werewolves, vampires, and fae, respectively. If there is a fourth, it is witches. Witches are important in the Mercy Thompson series and even more in the companion Mercyverse series Alpha and Omega . Columbia basin witch Elizaveta Arkadyevna has a...

★★★★★ Forensic anthropology fiction

Déjà Dead Kathy Reichs I discovered Kathy Reichs ' Temperance Brennan books when a young lady I was chatting with told me she wished to become a forensic anthropologist. That seemed oddly specific, and my curiosity was aroused. It took only a little investigation to discover Tempe Brennan. I have not read the entire series, but I have read at least through #16 Bones of the Lost . The great strength of the Tempe Brennan books is their authenticity. Tempe Brennan is a forensic anthropologist who lives and works in North Carolina and Montreal. It is obviously no coincidence that Kathy Reichs is a forensic anthropologist who divides her time between Charlotte, NC, and Montreal. She is also on the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. So, she knows this stuff cold. It shows. The Tempe Brennan novels are very technical -- so technical that I'm surprised anyone but me reads them. If you want a detailed description of the succession...

★★★★★ Bloom County slinks back to life

Outland Berkeley Breathed I read Outland ten years ago (03-Aug-2022). It stands in my memory as a sneaky revival of Bloom County , which was for ten years (1980-1989) one of the lights of my life. Bloom County gets every available star! Then, after ten years Berkeley Breathed walked away, but not before negotiating an unprecedented deal in which he asked for and won the rights to his own comics. (In the comics world those rights were usually retained by the publishers.) At that point Bloom County ended, right? Well, not quite. Soon after, Breathed began publishing a Sunday strip, Outland. It was not Bloom County, especially not at first. It wasn't really clear what it was about -- it was just sort of weird. But as the years rolled by old friends from Bloom County crept stealthily into the pages of Outland. It never became Bloom County, but it never became something wholly distinct from Bloom County, either. Amazon review Goodreads review

★★★☆☆ Advice I am not going to follow

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals Michael Pollan Michael Pollan is a person who cares deeply about food. I am not (which is a little strange, since I worked 31 years as a neuroscientist studying feeding behavior). “Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat.” ― Socrates I am definitely a person who eats to live. There are a few books in what I call the "history of substances" genre, for instance The True History of Chocolate , A Perfect Red , or A History of the World in 6 Glasses . I find these fascinating and would be happy to find more. I picked up The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World and The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals because I thought they were books in this vein, and The Omnivore's Dilemma was getting a lot of love from my friends. Well, my hopes were not completely disappointed. The Omnivore's Dilemma does indeed contain fascinating information a...

Search This Blog