Book Description
For more than a century and a half, Dream of the Red Chamber has been recognized in China as the greatest of its novels, a Chinese Romeo-and-Juliet love story and a portrait of one of the world's great civilizations. Chi-chen Wang's translation is skillful, accurate and fascinating.
Customer Reviews:
Completion of worldly duty and seeing through dust-stained world.......2005-11-22
The much anticipated concluding volume of the epic (if readers have persevered and made this far) settles the fate of our protagonist Jia Baoyu and expounds the nature of passion and illusion. The decadence of the Jia household thus concludes the Dream of the Golden Days. Following the death of the enamored Lin Daiyu, Baoyu weaves his way through a series of tragic events that plunge the Jia further into disgrace. Mourning bells incessantly resonate throughout the Rong-guo and Ning-guo houses as the financially stricken family prepare to encoffin the Old Lady Jia, Wang Xifeng, and a senior maid who demonstrates the purest essence of virtue and loyalty by following her mistress's footstep to death. There is a Chinese idiom that says "mishap does not occur singly." On top of the Jia's crumbling household and tremendous deficit in the occasion of mourning, robbers break into the Rong mansion and burglarizes all of the Old Lady's belongings the sale of which the family depends upon to pay for the funerals. Majestic police raid the Ning mansion and confiscates property of Baoyu's uncle. Xifeng's loaning out of the Jia's money at exorbitant interests shamefully unveils as the officers find property deeds and notes bearing illegal interest rate, as well as garments and skirts restricted for palace use. Upon the closure of the Ning mansion, Jia She and his son are sentenced to penal servitude in remote region, leaving their women folks in inconsolable grief and desperate grip to seek financial security.
It is in the midst of the poignant havoc, against this multifarious backdrop that Jia Baoyu slowly comes to his realization about the illusion of passion and resolves to sever the ties with the material world. One by one events come to pass that was riddlingly foretold in the first volume. It seems sad but with expectation that the Twelve Jinling (twelve females who are close to Baoyu) all end up dying or in small circumstances. At the fulfillment of these prophecies, Baoyu weaves through these events like a somnambulist and finally through a dream-vision is awakened to the realization that life itself is but a dream. His grief for Daiyu and his general state of gloom are compounded as he perceives that Daiyu is no ordinary mortal (but a visitor from some immortal realm). Since his life has consisted for the most part of peaceful and pleasant pursuits and he had been protected from too close an acquaintance with real suffering, sudden loss of family fortune and Daiyu make him succumb to despair. Seeing through the human suffering and breaking from the lust-stained passion enlighten him.
While the Jias still cares for the enjoyment of splendor and concerned with the show of grandeur that is at best vanity, Baoyu realizes the predestined attachments of human heart are all of them mere illusions, which are obstacles blocking the spiritual path to joy. This inner change draws him to an unprecedented direction has proceeded insipiently unnoticed until he maintains a detached composure and makes no attempt to offer any solace to the tragic occurrences around the house. The karma has obviously completed its work as Baoyu has attained a clear perception of destiny. After all, THE DREAM OF THE RED CHAMBER is about rising above all life's vices: all our lives we sink deeper and deeper into the quagmire of greed, hatred, folly, and passion. The only way out of suffering, according to the working of the karma, is to escape the net of mortal life.
Historical, Cultural, and Dramatic!.......2005-10-14
I love this book. People compare it to Romeo and Juliet but I say that it is far better as far as the storyline goes. Great book!
It is not the books fault..........2005-04-12
The story is great
The book is wonderful offering a glimpse into a world that people in the west can hardly understand anymore ect, ect. All of this has been said already and I do not want to take away from the importance of a classic.
However this translation leaves much to desired. As a previous reviewer said that are better translations of this book out there. These translations tend to make some sense and you do not need a rolodex to keep track of all of the names of the characters. I read this version and I didn't like it then I went and read another version that wasn't condensed for time.
It's not about Romeo and Juliet.......2005-03-26
It's sad to know that most western readers regard this novel as a Chinese Romeo and Juliet story. This over-simplified conclusion misleads people and kills the greatness of the book. A most fascinating and complicated story about almost everything in life from the uglist to the most beautiful, unfortunately is mistaken as "two girls competing for a boy".
The wisdom in the book is so vast that even if I've been reading the book since I was a teenager, each time the book entertains and educates me in new ways. I know that I won't be able to completely understand the book in my entire life time. Let's just say that no matter where you are from, how much you know about China, the book has something for everyone.
Marvelous.......2005-01-11
This is a truly wonderful book. This is truly a universal story, on one level, the story of undying love, a real soap opera with two girls competing for one boy. The fascinating part comes from the wealth of detail re the daily life of a wealthy family in the China of several hundred years ago. This is a worthwhile book and I recommend it to anyone with the patience to read it.
Average customer rating:
- When the magic stone met the crimson pearl flower...
- Best Chinese novel of all time!
- A good translation, but...
- A Remarkable Achievement
- Translation is great for English Readers
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The Golden Days (The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber, Volume 1)
Cao Xueqin ,
Hsueh-Chin Tsao ,
David Hawkes ,
O Kao ,
John Minford , and
Hsueh-Ch'in Ts'ao
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Customer Reviews:
When the magic stone met the crimson pearl flower..........2005-10-24
The Dream of the Red Chamber (The Story of the Stone) starts off as an immensely long inscription on a miraculous stone which was copied out by a visiting man and taken down into the world for publication. Volume 1 gives the account of the magic stone's origin, renders the discourse redolent of a supernatural, mystical overtone. Once upon a time a piece of stone that was unworthy to be used for repairing the sky possessed magic power and ended up in the mortal world. The unhappy stone incarnated and lived out the life of a man before finally attaining nirvana and returning to what Buddhist refers as the "other shore."
Jai Baoyu is the incarnation of the stone. The name "bao-yu" means "treasured jewel" and was named after the wonderful incident that the only surviving son of the Jia household was born with a piece of spotless jade in his mouth. Lin Daiyu, Baoyu's teary cousin with a superior intelligence, is the incarnation of the Crimson Pearl Flower, which the unhappy stone once conceived a fancy that he took to watering everyday so the flower was able to shed the form of a plant and became a girl. The consciousness that she owed the stone ensued her to repay him with the tears shed during the whole of a mortal lifetime if they were ever to be reborn as humans in the world beneath. It was no wonder when Daiyu first saw her cousin, who had tyrannized the household, hated studies, and spent most of his time in women's quarters, it was as though she had seen him somewhere before, like a déjà vu.
Aside from the ethereal origin, the first volume of The Dream of the Red Chamber depicts a fairly eventual record of a great Manchu household (Qing Dynasty) under the tutelage of the Imperial family in early 18th century China. It's the picture of daily routines in the life that emerge most vividly from its discourse. The Jia household is genuinely disguised as some highborn aristocrats whose ancestors were ennobled for their military powers. This first installment of five parts, titled Golden Days, captures the Jias at the hi-time in which members of the Rong-guo mansion and the Ning-guo mansion dressed in silk, ate delicately, pampered by a domestic hierarchy of servants and maids, when they were still nested in the protecting shadow of the ancestors and the readily accessible wealth. The family's decline and fall constitute the general background of the novel.
With over 500 characters, thousands of one-hit appearances and a skein of household members and their distant relations of the clan, reading of The Dream of the Red Chamber will be more pleasurable and rewarding with the family genealogy handy. The book has a general flow of daily happenings and inter-family drama, with an emphasis on the relationship between Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu. Household activities, domestic anecdotes, subbing rivalries, seditious schemes, love affairs, contention between concubines, political intrigues, black magic, witchcraft, and even murder constitute to the pages of this Chinese epic that evokes Remembrance of Things Past and One Hundred Years of Solitude. The heart of the novel is the pre-destined relationship between a semi-ethereal entity and magic stone under the context of the Buddhist understanding that earthly existence is an illusion. This meeting, though is meant to be, is in vain, one that is full of tears.
When the fairy led Baoyu into the land of illusion and showed him his fate, he could scarcely make out of what he saw. Nature might have endowed him an eccentric obtuseness of a simpleton. How does one expect a 13-year-old (scholars deem him to be 13 throughout most of the book) to recognize and seize his destiny? The fairy showed him not only his life cycle but also the romantic passions, love debts, heartbreaks of dust-stained human world. Baoyu was destined to mingle with girls around him. The ancestors thought Baoyu had inherited a perverse, intractable nature that rendered him eccentric and emotionally unstable. Exposure to the worldly illusions of decay might hopefully succeed in enlightening, awakening, and transforming him.
Daiyu seems to know Baoyu more thoroughly than anyone does. She is able to nail his problem despite her occasional tiff with him over trivial matters. Baoyu always complained about people's getting angry with whatever he did, but he never realized how much he had provoked them at the first place. Couplets, poems, and verses in the novel hint at his friendlessness in the mortal world and the incessant debate over the depth of his relation with Daiyu. The roaming back and forth, sink and soar between sorrow and elation between the two incarnated cousins constitute to the understanding that earthly existence is indeed a transience but karma determines the shape of one's life and the life after. This idea of life being a dream from which one eventually awakes is a Buddhist tenet, but the incorporation of it into the novel becomes a poetic gesture to demonstrate that the main character (Baoyu) is indicative to the author.
The Dream of the Red Chamber in Chinese has the connotation of being rich and grand. The title can refer to a dream of the vanished splendor and opulence. The frequent use of dream imagery implies the possibility that the luxurious world of the author's youth, which he attempted to reconstruct, had vanished so utterly at the time of writing. The story of the Jias closely accorded with fortunes of Cao's own family, which attained its height under the reign of Kangxi. But the exact relationship existing between characters of the novel and members of Cao family is uncertain and discreet. Baoyu is assured to be author's self-portrait, whose struggle towards emotional maturity was delineated with an affluence of nuance. Other characters could be compsite of several family members over different generations for the purpose of disguising facts.
Best Chinese novel of all time!.......2003-11-17
Well, in my opinion anyway. David Hawkes has done an amazing job translating this brilliant 18th-century novel into colloquial modern English. I have read all the translations-- this is my favorite novel, and this is by far the best version for an English speaker who just wants a good book. I can imagine that a Chinese reader could pick holes in this translation, as I could nitpick at a translation of Shakespeare-- the wealth of the original is impossible to transfer whole into another language and culture. If you want a word-for-word translation so you can use this as a study guide while you read the Chinese, maybe the wooden Beijing Languages version could help you! But I have a hard time imagining any new translation being more vivid and fun to read than this one. Yes, it is littered with sometimes annoying Britishisms. That is the price of a colloquial translation! It's true that Hawkes does not explain all the references-- that would be another book in itself. And I am sure he made mistakes-- I help a French translator occasionally and even though he is very well-versed in English, it is so easy for him to miss something that only a cultured native speaker could pick up. But this translation is ALIVE. Until that perfect translation comes along one day, Hawkes's is still better than all the others. Be grateful to him! (2003)
A good translation, but..........2003-02-02
The attractions of this translation are numerous -- which is fortunate for a book that, in total, weigns in at 2500 pages. Most people will enjoy the stylish prose and exquisite interjections of poetry, but you is urged to read sample pages before investing the full measure of your time. While entertaining and quite appealing, this translatoin has its flaws -- and they have been pointed out by several native Chinese translators. The prose is here littered wtih Briticisms that seem almost anarchronistic at times. Xueqin's cultural and literary references, which profoundly enrich the book, are passed over without even a footnote (though the introduction is illuminating). The careful reader may even feel that they are missing the context and mood of the original book. If your interest in this masterpiece is for its fundamental merits -- storytelling, characterization, beauty of language -- then you will find this a pleasure, and you need look no further. If you wish a deeper sense of the Chinese mood of the work, then the four-volume translation may be more attractive.
A Remarkable Achievement.......2002-08-19
I spend a lot of time wandering through bookstores. One particular book has caught my eye over the years, and the other day I bought it - Volume 1 of Cao Xueqin's eighteenth century epic, "The Story of the Stone: The Golden Days". As a developing eighteenth century scholar, I was doubly attracted to it. "The Golden Days" absolutely blew me away - used as I am to eighteenth century novels (British, French, American), this is wholly unlike anything I've read from the era. It bears structural similarities to the Laurence Sterne's "Tristram Shandy" and "Sentimental Journey," but aside from that bears more in common with ancient Greek novels like Longus's "Daphnis and Chloe" or Heliodorus's "Eithopian Romance," as well as the mysticism of the ancient Egyptian "Story of the Shipwrecked Sailor." And yet, Cao's attention to actual life experiences, and the detail he conveys about tradition and ceremony, along with frank dealings with human relationships and sexuality makes "The Golden Days" much more than any quick summary of style or content can relate.
"The Golden Days" begins in amusing, but sympathetic fashion: the goddess Nü-wa is repairing the sky with 36,501 stones. When she finishes, one remains, which is cast off. Having been touched by a goddess, this stone has magical properties, able to move, change size, and even talk. One day, a Buddhist monk and a Taoist come upon the stone, and promise to let the stone have an adventure - to become human. As the stone waits by a pond, it falls desperately in love with a Crimson Pearl Flower, which is also selected for incarnation by the Fairy Disenchantment. The stone and the flower are incarnated as the novel begins in earnest, as a young minor nobleman named Jia Bao-yu, and a commoner related to the family, a girl named Lin Dai-yu - both unaware of their heavenly origins. "The Golden Days" centers around the daily events and occurrences in the lives of these two teenagers, as they come to grips, as we all must, with human life.
The Rong and Ning branches of the Jia family, on opposite sides of Two Dukes Street, are the centerpieces of the novel's action. Like the "big house" fiction of the English eighteenth century, these ancestral manses provide a locus of activity, as the nobles, their extended families, friends, and servants mingle and interact constantly. Cao marks himself as a remarkable author by the way he handles a massive cast of characters, letting us into the private lives and concerns of all ranks of society, as well as the forms of etiquette that determine their relationships. Another terrific facet of the novel's construction is the almost stream of consciousness style Cao employs - as characters pass in and out of the immediate action of the novel, the narrative seems to choose the person it's most interested in and follow them for pages at a time, before seamlessly passing to the next character. It's really quite amazing, how, in this way, we come to understand the motivations, fears, and hopes of so many individuals. Time, distance, culture, Cao levels distinctions, making historical China accessible to even 21st century readers - he reduces people to their human concerns.
Cao Xueqin's novel is also remarkable for what I can only call it's pro(to)-feminist tone. While we are reminded by certain characters that male lineage is of major importance to the structure of the society, the narrative consistently shows the power, ability, and influence of women. At the novel's beginning, a Taoist named Vanitas finds the stone, and is asked to transcribe its story, but complains initially that it is about a "number of females". The stone obviously insists that the story be written out. Later, Bao-yu, the major male character, says he is more comfortable around women - that they are like water, while men are like mud, castoffs, unclean. One of the main characters of this volume is Wang Xi-feng, a young woman in her early twenties, who for an extended period, manages the affairs of both the Ning and Rong mansions. Cao's respect and admiration for the strong women in Bao-yu's life: Xi-feng, Dai-yu, and two particular servants, Aroma and Caltrop, is quite obvious and important to the novel.
If you are like me, and know tragically little about Chinese literature and culture, Cao takes care of that too - there is a heavy emphasis throughout the novel on the cultural productions of China. The book integrates a wide range of poetry, drama, fiction, folk wisdom, and mythology as a central part of Bao-yu and Dai-yu's upbringing. One can sense Cao's insistence in the novel that education and cultural production is of vital importance, particularly to children. While the Fairy Disenchantment seems to be the guiding spirit of the novel, hinting at the diappointments inevitable in the course of life, this is a novel about youth, and hope for the future, even in the midst of concern about how long prosperity can last. Taken altogether, "The Golden Days" cannot be recommended enough. David Hawkes's translation is first rate, and his introduction, pronunciation notes, and appendices are thorough and very helpful.
Translation is great for English Readers.......2002-02-02
This book was fascination not only for the cultural review of 1700's in Manchu (Qing Dynasty) China and aristocratic households of the day, but also for the introspective look at family dynamics and confucian practices in the time. With the tragic/romantic form of writing one feels a longing to understand how different life was in those times and places. I also got a great feel for what the writers intent was and the criticisms of political changes through the translaters appendixi and annotations. Great reading for thinkers!
Average customer rating:
- One of the greatest novels ever written
- Mystical-Reality
- A Truly Revolutionary Classical Chinese Romantic Work
- I think I can't use only "good" to describe such a good book
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The Dreamer Wakes (The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber, Volume 5)
Cao Xuequin ,
Cao Xueqin ,
E. Gao , and
Gao E
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
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Customer Reviews:
One of the greatest novels ever written.......2001-01-19
I read the other reviews on this page, and I thought I should add something: this novel is unbelievably beautifully written, and the english translation is absolutely superb.
You cannot find any better example of novel-writing skill in any language.
Mystical-Reality.......2000-09-21
I've read all parts of The Story of the Stone. It starts and ends in a mystical fashion; coming full circle in a traditional ying/yang way. Wonderful five volume story about two wealthy families closely connected to the throne. Although there's not much known about the true author, I suspect that it was written by a maid. There is incredible detail from the perspective of the servents working for their sometimes nutty employers. The family actually built a garden at one point in honor of a visit from a daughter who had been chosen to be a royal concubine. If you want to immerse yourself in the ups and downs, daily life, (warts and all) of 1750's Chinese culture don't miss The Story of the Stone et al.
A Truly Revolutionary Classical Chinese Romantic Work.......1999-03-18
This book was written one year before the French Revolution, in 1788, in Beijing, China by a riches-to -rags nobleman called Cao Xue Quin. It is viewed by many as the greatest classical Chinese romantic novel ever written.
I read the original Chinese version of this book when I was in high school, many years ago. At that time, my impression was that it was a Chinese Romeo and Juliet type tragic love story, in which the main characters Bao-yu and his cousin Dai-yu (Black Jade) suffered the fate of unfulfilled love, and no ever after. There was more to it than that, but I could not figure out what.
Recently, I re-read the book (the current trans- lated version). This time it sounded like the Adven- tures of Tom Jones, in which the teen-aged playboy Bao-yu was dallying in the ranks of the female members of his household (his cousins and maids), longing after many but only truly loving Dai-yu.
It was also a bit similar to Upstairs Downstairs -- a big noble clan with all its ladies, young misses and maids, and their lives of adventures and tears. But something was still missing. There was a theme, a message, which draws me and others to this great work of literature.
I finally figured it out: Almost all the WOMEN in this book were described as elegant, sophisticated, intelligent, graceful, excellent decision makers, and above all, beautiful. Most MEN, however, were described as fools, red-necks, unfaithful, heart-breakers, nogooders, users of prostitutes and abusers of power!
What I am looking at is a book (or one-MAN crusade) of Early Feminism. It is all the more remarkable because in feudal China, women did not have equal status. "marrying for love" seldom existed. It was more like "married by parental arrangement". Poor girls were sold as maids into rich households, or worse, they were sold as second wives or concubines.
The confirmation of my theory came from the author Cao himself. In his introductory book review, he said, "Thus begins this book ... I have hidden the real events and substituted them with fiction ... There were real persons in the inner-chambers, and their stories must be told ..." (Modern translation: I have real women in my household).
This message would make this a truly revolutionary work, not only in feudal China, but even to-day.
Should have first read the book review by the author.
I think I can't use only "good" to describe such a good book.......1998-12-04
The book gives us a complete picture of the feudal societ of China.It exposes the rot of the late Qing Dynasty of China.What makes people moved most is the tragic love story between Lin Daiyu and Jia Baoyu.Its exquisite style of writing and variegated description do great credit to its success.Some forfather has said that it was an encyclopaedia of the feudal society of China,and I do agree with it.I think that the most valuable point of this book,is that it denounces the cruel percecution which has been done to women by the feudalism--the feudal system,and it embodies the author's thoughts that women should be respecte and be equal to men.In that society,these are rare and valuable.
Book Description
The eighteenth-century Hongloumeng, known in English as Dream of the Red Chamber or The Story of the Stone, is generally considered to be the greatest of Chinese novels--one that masterfully blends realism and romance, psychological motivation and fate, daily life and mythical occurrences, as it narrates the decline of a powerful Chinese family. In this path-breaking study, Anthony Yu goes beyond the customary view of Hongloumeng as a vivid reflection of late imperial Chinese culture by examining the novel as a story about fictive representation. Through a maze of literary devices, the novel challenges the authority of history as well as referential biases in reading. At the heart of Hongloumeng, Yu argues, is the narration of desire. Desire appears in this tale as the defining trait and problem of human beings and at the same time shapes the novel's literary invention and effect. According to Yu, this focalizing treatment of desire may well be Hongloumeng's most distinctive accomplishment.
Through close readings of selected episodes, Yu analyzes principal motifs of the narrative, such as dream, mirror, literature, religious enlightenment, and rhetorical reflexivity in relation to fictive representation. He contextualizes his discussions with a comprehensive genealogy of qing--desire, disposition, sentiment, feeling--a concept of fundamental importance in historical Chinese culture, and shows how the text ingeniously exploits its multiple meanings. Spanning a wide range of comparative literary sources, Yu creates a new conceptual framework in which to reevaluate this masterpiece.
Book Description
In this pathbreaking study of three of the most familiar texts in the Chinese traditionâall concerning stones endowed with magical propertiesâJing Wang develops a monumental reconstruction of ancient Chinese stone lore. Wang’s thorough and systematic comparison of these classic works illuminates the various tellings of the stone story and provides new insight into major topics in traditional Chinese literature.
Bringing together Chinese myth, religion, folklore, art, and literature, this book is the first in any language to amass the sources of stone myth and stone lore in Chinese culture. Uniting classical Chinese studies with contemporary Western theoretical concerns, Wang examines these stone narratives by analyzing intertextuality within Chinese traditions. She offers revelatory interpretations to long-standing critical issues, such as the paradoxical character of the monkey in The Journey to the West, the circularity of narrative logic in The Dream of the Red Chamber, and the structural necessity of the stone tablet in Water Margin.
By both challenging and incorporating traditional sinological scholarship, Wang’s The Story of Stone reveals the ideological ramifications of these three literary works on Chinese cultural history and makes the past relevant to contemporary intellectual discourse. Specialists in Chinese literature and culture, comparative literature, literary theory, and religious studies will find much of interest in this outstanding work, which is sure to become a standard reference on the subject.
Customer Reviews:
It was ok.......2001-01-26
This book had a magnificent whirl of fun twisted into it, while it still kept the seriousness of jing wang.
Book Description
On a warm night in July, 32-year-old Jenny finds herself sitting on the deck of a Chinese cruise ship next to a charming but secretive stranger. In Jenny's lap is a tin containing the ashes of her best friend, Amanda Ruth, mysteriously murdered fourteen years earlier in a small Alabama town.
In this foreign landscape, filled with ancient cities that will soon be inundated by the rising waters of the Yangtze River, Jenny must confront her haunted past and decide the direction of her future. As the ship moves slowly upriver, from one abandoned village to another, Jenny journeys deeper into her own guilt and eroticism.
Dream of the Blue Room explores the nature of friendship and the intimacy that exists between young girls as they struggle toward adulthood. Set against the impressive landscape of the Yangtze, this stunning novel reflects on the human desire to control and tame what is ultimately untamable.
Customer Reviews:
Very good, but .......2006-12-21
I really enjoyed reading this novel but what kept me going was wondering how the death of Amanda Ruth was going to be resolved. Did the main character do it? Would there be a confession, or was it some unexpected person or the girl's Chinese father. The problem is that nothing ever really happened. Nothing was resolved. I was disappointed with the ending, with everything hanging up in the air, people left with other strangers, trying to drudge up something, but never really having it come to the surface.
The writing was interesting. The short paragraphs and chapters helped to propel me through the book, but my opinion is that there was no real story here, just a listing of feelings, observations and events. I agree with other reviewers about the delightful dream-like quality of some portions of the book.
I was also disappointed with the depth of her observations on China. I mean, I was hoping to actually learn something, to come away with something I didn't know before, but no. I got about the same amount of info that I'd get from reading a Wikipedia piece or some travel book.
Maybe I'm being too harsh, but I gave it 4 stars, and I'm not related ...
exquisite storytelling..........2005-07-21
Reviewed by Joanna Pearson for Small Spiral Notebook
Foreign travel is about learning to exist in a dreamy state of in-between-ness. Unknown and ungrounded, you wander through strange environs seeing strange faces, and yet the ever-resourceful mind manages to seize upon vague familiarities, constructing a hybrid place that has the eerie quality of a dreamscape. So we find our main character, Jenny, on a cruise ship in China in Michelle Richmond's debut novel Dream of a Blue Room. Tense and insomniac, Jenny has traveled here on a dual mission: to resolve her collapsing marriage one way or the other, and to scatter the ashes of her murdered childhood best friend. As in all good stories that unfold on a plane, train, bus, or ship (with a nod to the Hitchcockian principle), Jenny soon finds her task complicated by the pull she feels towards Graham, a fellow traveler she meets who has his own reasons for making this voyage.
Redmond excels in conjuring that state of heightened, dream-like awareness fueled by lack of sleep and periods of intense emotional stress. Her deft descriptions of the Chinese landscape and Yangtze serve as a context for Jenny's extended meditation on her own riverside childhood in Alabama and the history of her failing marriage. The two settings and time periods are ambitiously and successfully interwoven, much to Redmond's credit. She is as en point in her descriptions of Chinese river dolphins, funeral ceremonies, and elderly tea shop ladies as she is in her descriptions of tubing, Sunday School, and watermelons in Mobile. Much more than travel fiction, this is instead a story of growing up as an outsider in the South, revealed through contrast-like looking at the negatives of a series of photos in order to see what you couldn't have noticed otherwise. In this way, China triggers a reflection on Jenny's life back home, proof of the idea that one understands home the best when away from it. We realize very quickly that Jenny's relationship with the murdered Amanda Ruth was more than a mere friendship. Redmond beautifully describes the intimacy, both physical and emotional, between two girls during the pivotal period of late adolescence, as well as the grinding forces of Southern culture and religion that threatened this intimacy.
For the most part, Redmond's prose has a lovely lyricality. She is at her best when describing situations with clarity and simplicity-she has a keen sense of place, an eye for details like how the raindrops fall at a particular instant. Redmond is a sensual writer and on occasion, her writing can veer towards the overripe, particularly when describing erotic moments. There could have been fewer oversignified descriptions of sex, and the book would have been none the worse for it. Throughout most of the novel, however, Redmond's touch is far subtler, allowing a memory of a summer afternoon in a boathouse or a Chinese funeral procession to do no more symbolic load bearing than warranted.
As the cruise ship eases down the river, the reality of Jenny's ending marriage becomes apparent even as her relationship with newcomer Graham rapidly progresses. It is through this new, albeit short-lived relationship with Graham and the drastic act he requests of her that Jenny is ultimately able to exit her suspended state. With the slow build-up of a mystery, the exquisite pain of a coming-of-age novel, the masterful images of a travel writer, and a darkness that is true to the Southern Gothic, Dream of a Blue Room is a work of wonderfully chimeric form. And through this, a novelistic form that skillfully defies a single genre, Redmond, quite fittingly, tells the story of a woman finding her way out of the boundaries of singular categories, out of limbo, out of the in-between.
sad and lovely.......2003-12-13
Michelle Richmond's novel is an impressive, impressionistic vision of a woman suffering one loss after another, and growing incredibly strong along the way. There's a vivid evocation of China, almost a secondary character in the novel. And there's even a villain or two for the reader to hate. There are many moments of luminous writing, reflecting the dreamlike quality suggested by the title. And, oh yeah, there's some really good sex too.
A vivid journey through China.......2003-10-01
This novel takes you up the Yangtze River during the construction of the Three Gorges Dam. The descriptions of abandoned villages and bustling riverside cities are lush and unforgettable. But something more is happening in this novel. While the main character, Jenny, travels up the Yangtze, her marriage is falling apart. The dissolution of the marriage is captured with painful accuracy, and the memories of Jenny's adolescent relationship with a girl named Amanda Ruth are both sensual and poignant. Jenny and Amanda Ruth were so close and Jenny's love for her was so strong that, even though Amanda Ruth is dead, she is a constant presence in Jenny's mind.
If you've ever been to China, or if you ever plan to go, this book should be your travel companion!
An erotic literary masterpiece!.......2003-07-06
Finally, an erotic novel in which the story and the writing are just as good as the sex scenes. My book club spent half an hour discussing the scene in the cave...Richmond combines lush, poetic prose with page-turning suspense. A book club winner!
Book Description
Translated by H. Bencraft Joly
Average customer rating:
- An excellent introduction
- Morbid sensibility between the lovers
- A great translation of a great book
- Famous Chinese Novel
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The Dream of the Red Chamber: Hung Lou Meng
Chan Ts'ao
Manufacturer: Greenwood Press Reprint
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0837181135 |
Customer Reviews:
An excellent introduction.......2006-07-10
This was the first translation of Hong Lou Meng that I ever read, and it quickly became one of my favorite novels. This edition omits many of the long descriptions of elaborate ceremony that pepper the original, and are only of interest for what they reveal about the culture of the time. Nothing of the narrative proper is ommited, and the language is far more masterful than the FLP edition.
My only objection was in the way that names were handled, and in fact I have yet to see a satisfactory way of translating the names. Kuhn uses the convention of litteraly translating most, but not all, of the female names (leading to such unfortunate coinages as "Little Lung" and "Mandarin Duck") and rendering the men's names in Wade-Giles.
This was a great first translation, and has launched me on a path to explore Chinese literature more fully.
Morbid sensibility between the lovers.......2005-10-24
The second installment of The Dream of the Red Chamber is saliently deprived of all the supernatural phenomena, celestial illusions and fairy appearances that were mandatory to account for the general background of the novel. This volume begins with the whimsical resolution of a life-threatening black magic spell that had befallen Baoyu and his cousin Wang Xi-feng owing to the concubine's vicious scheme to rid the only heir of the Jias. A Taoist restored the power of Baoyu's jade, which had been inevitably contaminated and thus divested of its visceral power by worldly lust and temptation. Again above the novel hangs the constant reminder of another dimension of existence, scrupulously governed by Buddhist beliefs.
The narrative of Volume 2 is firmly grounded in the Jia's domestic life and the world's affairs. An affluence of prose devotes to the cousins' founding of the poetry club in the Prospect Garden, The Crab-Flower Club. The story now becomes entwined with the conceiving, writing and critique of poems. Although this volume is deprived of the excitement of magic, it holds significant value in Chinese literature. The text proliferates with passages containing references to books, plays, and poetry that to most readers, lacking the literary background that Cao Xueqin was able to take for granted in his Chinese contemporaries that are quite difficult to read. The characters made frequent allusions to the Four Books, Five Classics, and Complete Poems of the Tang Dynasty, literature that were among the syllabi for civil service examination and reading lists of well-nurtured youngsters. Lin Daiyu composed lines that demonstrated a form of poetry that became perfected in the 18th century known as regulated verse. Regulated verse exploits the characteristic tonality of the Chinese language, using an extremely rigid formal structure in which tension is created by combining tonal contrast with verbal parallelism.
Daiyu's verses reveal effort of deep thought and grief in her morbidly austere relationship with Baoyu. As banal as the domestic life this volume so tediously portrays, an important fact one can conceive out of the family's daily hurly-burly is the mutual affection between Baoyu and Daiyu. He assured her that she the only one in his heart other than Grandmother and his parents and renounced "a jade to match the gold" (Baoyu's cousin Bao-chai possessed a gold locket). The boy might be all wrapped up in his thoughts for Dai-yu but owing to his eccentricity he failed to convey them to her. For a long time his feeling for her had been a very peculiar one: one that was stippled with anticipation but fear. A sense of morbid sensibility overcame him and rendered the relationship teetering on a precipice. They would contrive to speak circuitously, proceeded in a beat-around-the-bush manner to probe each other to see if the feeling was reciprocated. The outcome was an awkward situation in which both parties concealed their real emotions and assumed counterfeit ones in an endeavor to find out what the real feelings of the other party were. It was not surprising that a paltry misunderstanding could throw Dai-yu into a seasonable sorrow, which found its expression in a violent outburst of grief.
While sibling rivalries drove the first volume to a climax in which Baoyu's life was threatened, adultery seized the attention and broke the monotonous formality of the family. Xi-feng caught her husband in bed with this omnivorously promiscuous creature, the wife of the cook, and vented her anger on her able maid. Terribly unjustly treated and humiliated in front of a crowd, the maid dashed from the scene and vowed to stab herself to claim her innocence in the matter. Domestic drama like adultery, match-making, money matters, and forced appropriation of a maid to be concubine expose not only the women's being at the mercy of men but to the interest character analysis Baoyu's tenderness and understanding in handling the girls around him. His consideration for his personal maid Aroma, his solicitous effort to appease Patience of the injustice to which she was subjected, and his punctilious caring the Skybright in sick bed, all confirmed the illusions the fairy had shown him in Volume 1. His surreptitious excursion at to the temple to mourn Golden, who had taken her own life at Baoyu's wrongdoing, also showed remarkable understanding and sentiment in his relations to the girls even though they were only his servants.
The rapprochement between Daiyu and Bao-chai also strikes a significant note in Volume 2. Fate might have paired up the crimson pearl flower and the stone, but the Jias had always deemed holders of the jade and golden locket a perfect match. Knowing Bao-chai is his parents' favorite and found favor with everyone, Daiyu had always harbored a resentment toward Bao-chai. She was jealous of her and hated to hear the praise of Bao-chai's kindness and virtue, which she deemed skeptically as a cover up for some secret vices. It was not until Bao-chai, who out of her volition made frequent visits to the illness afflicted Dai-yu and offered her bird's nest soup and kept her company that Dai-yu realized she had been wrong about her. Bao-chai's gesture of kindness finally broke the ice and it dawned on Daiyu that Bao-chai really did care about her. This laid the ground for the mistaken marriage between Baoyu and Bao-chai.
As the text becomes more concretized as opposed to the illusion and mystery, one becomes familiar with the traditions, culture, and formality of a highborn Chinese household. Wealthy families usually populate with troops of concubines and half-siblings. Proliferation of extended family and the retinue of maids, junior maids, women servants staffing the domestic hierarchy were reflections of a family's grandeur and status. Concubine appropriation bespoke the weak-willed, complacent nature of women who, at that time, were at the mercy of men. For the sake of a quiet life and financial security, a married woman would tolerate sharing a husband with concubines and please her husband at all cost.
A great translation of a great book.......2001-04-18
I have read several versions of "The Dream of the Red Chamber", including the five-volume edition published by Penguin Classics ("The Story of the Stone"), and this version is by far the best. It's been out of print for several years and I'm delighted it's been reissued. It's concise, omits nothing of importance to the story, and it's a great read. "Red Chamber" is the story of the Chia clan, a large and very rich Mandarin family, racing headlong into financial and moral ruin, which is redeemed by the youngest son of the house, the spoiled and effeminate Pao Yu. Heading the family is the Princess Ancestress, one of the most arresting and interesting characters of any literature, able to stand up to and hold her own against anyone. Other strong figures in the family are Pao Yu's father, Chia Cheng, a stern, upright, moralistic individual, unable to see past his own nose, and his aunt Phoenix, too shrewd and clever for her own good, whose intrigues and double-dealing bring the house crashing down. The tale of ruin and redemption is an old one in Chinese literature, and "Red Chamber" relates it excellently, all the while giving us fascinating insights into Chinese life, culture and values. For anyone interested in things Chinese, or anyone who just appreciates a great book, this book is a must-read.
Famous Chinese Novel.......2000-06-04
A Dream of the Red Chamber is a wonderful novel that tells the story of a large, wealthy family amd their tragic decline. It is one of the most famous chinese novels ever written and allows the reader to learn a lot about the Chinese culture and life.
Average customer rating:
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Fictions of Enlightenment: Journey to the West, Tower of Myriad Mirrors, and Dream of the Red Chamber
Qiancheng Li
Manufacturer: University of Hawaii Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0824825977 |
Book Description
Fictions of Enlightenment is the first book to examine the fascinating and intricate relationship between Buddhism and the development of Chinese vernacular fiction. Qiancheng Li brings Buddhist models to bear on the vision, structure, and narrative form of three classics of late imperial literature--Journey to the West, Tower of Myriad Mirrors, and Dream of the Red Chamber--arguing that by fashioning their plots after the narratives of certain Mahayana sutras, the novelists transformed Buddhist concepts into narrative structures. Within the traditional Chinese novel Li even defines a new genre: the fiction of enlightenment.
Following a discussion of the often neglected Buddhist milieu in the literary landscape of the late Ming to the mid-Qing period, Li sets the context for the study of the novels. The Buddhist soteriological model was first established by the religion's founder and reenacted in sutras, such as the pilgrimages of Sadaprarudita and Sudhana. In the search for enlightenment, however, another pattern develops, a significant variation that appears to be a subversion of the Buddhist quest. This is characterized by an embrace of the phenomenal world as a result of the Mahayana understanding of the intrinsic relationship between samsara and nirvana. In this context, then, Journey to the West owes much to the model of pilgrimage and variations of it become the philosophical basis of Tower of Myriad Mirrors and Dream of the Red Chamber, which are characterized by movement away from the road and wilderness to the family. The settings of these novels change, corresponding to a shift in emphasis. Tower departs from Journey in its exploration of the tensions between and interdependence of enlightenment and desire. Dream both makes extensive use of the soteriological patterns and subverts them, turning itself into the consummate "fiction of enlightenment" and at the same time an elegy of love.
Richly documented and researched, Fictions of Enlightenment will inform and instruct those in the fields of Buddhist studies; Chinese literature, religion, and history; and comparative religion and literature.
Books:
- East Side Story: A Novel
- Elle Decor: The Grand Book of French Style
- Elsewhere (Ala Notable Children's Books. Older Readers)
- Ethnicity and Family Therapy, Third Edition
- Flipping the Switch...: Unleash the Power of Personal Accountability Using the QBQ!
- God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian
- Heartbreaker
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
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