The Story of the Stone is an immensely fun, inviting, and enjoyable novel, but explaining why it is so is a bit of a challenge.Indeed, any literal-minded summary of its content would make it sound immensely, almost parodically boring, like some sort of hypothetical novel Borges might imagine on a lark. I have now read over 1000 pages of this gigantic novel (the five-volume split is a choice made by the translator, it's really just one big thing), I'm still less than halfway through, and there is still nothing resembling a central dramatic conflict or a "plot" in any ordinary sense. The most notable development in the "plot" (so to speak) in Volume 2 is that . . . some of the main characters start a poetry club. The poetry club is not the site of any grand drama or a metaphor for some theme or other; it is simply the pretext for a bunch of scenes where the characters compose poems and poke fun at one another in a light-hearted manner.Although there are some highly dramatic scenes in this volume -- which emerge shockingly from nowhere and then vanish away just as quickly, leaving tiny, barely discernible ripples in later chapters -- for the most part it is a chronicle of mundane domestic activity. The characters attend poetry club meetings, stroll over to each others' dwellings to hang out, celebrate holidays, talk over home economics and financial logistics (recounted to the reader in unsparing detail), plan garden parties and then have garden parties, call in doctors because they've caught minor respiratory illnesses, etc. There are something like 100 characters, many of them obscure relatives or servants of characters who are themselves somewhat obscure, who show up occasionally to ask for a loan or complete some sub-plot that started 30 chapters ago and then fade into the background; keeping track of all these people is impossible but also unnecessary, since most of their actions have no great significance. Thrilling!So what exactly makes this thing so much fun? For me, it's the fact that it feels -- in certain ways -- more like real life than anything else I've ever read. The profusion of mundane events, the endless side-characters and side-stories which aren't significant (except sometimes they are), the way drama and violence appears in sudden outbursts rather than dramatic "arcs," the focus on the ups and downs of day-to-day friendship rather than grand thematic drama . . . it all feels exactly the way actual day-to-day life feels, in an eerie way I've never encountered in any other book. Reading Xueqin, I feel less like I'm reading an ordinary novel than dropping into some sort of virtual reality MMO world to hang out with the characters -- a persistent, plotless world in which anything can happen and what does happen is often mundane (but then, that's life).It's a common trope for novelists to write as though they were recording real events -- e.g. the familiar frame narrative which presents the main text as a "biography" of the protagonist or an "account of notable events" or something. In most cases this is not very believable -- despite the "biographical" framing one can always envision the author sitting there thinking "hmm, what exciting misadventure can I get this character into next?" The Story of the Stone is unique in that it really does feel like a record of real events, despite its supernatural elements and sometimes implausible comedic episodes.In fact, it's so "believable" that it would make more intuitive sense if it really were such a record; it's really hard for me to imagine Cao Xueqin actually planning out, on a scene-by-scene level, this complicated, lifelike, unstructured, and sometimes boring reality. "Hmm, I think we need another budget-balancing discussion before we can get to the next bit of banter between two of the 5 billion maids. Wait, it's been too long since someone got the flu! Oh, and maybe I'll have some guy beat up a dude for being gay somewhere in there. I wonder what's going on with maid #45923 around this time . . . "I sound like I'm making fun of the book, and I guess I am -- but the reason the book is easy to mock is that it feels so much like real life, and real life really is quite often full of details that are nonsensical and pointless (or, more subjectively: that can't be put into any kind of dramatic or thematic framework no matter how hard one tries). I am eagerly moving on to Volume 3, not exactly because I want to know what happens next, but just because I want to keep hanging out in StoneWorld. And thankfully, I can do that for thousands more pages.
Band 2 der epischen Familiengeschichte"Story of the Stone", auch als "Dream of the Red Chamber" bekannt, ist einer, viele Kritikern sagen sogar der wichtigste, der "großen Klassiker" Chinas. Band 2 (von 5) sammelt nun die Kapitel 27 bis 53 und verfolgt weiterhin das Alltagsleben einer mandschurischen aristokratischen Großfamilie. Der Untertitel dieses zweiten Bandes, "The Crab-Flower Club", weist schon darauf hin, wie wenig wirkliche Arbeit diese Menschen zu verrichten haben, und mit welchem Aufwand sie ihre dadurch entstehende Langeweile bekämpfen; bis zu dem Punkt, wo die Feiern, Festchen und gegenseitigen Besuche in Arbeit ausarten, die die Protagonisten kaum mehr bewältigen können. Eine neue dieser Verpflichtungen ist nun der "Crab-Flower Club", ein Dichtclub, der von den Cousins gegründet wird.Sehr interessant und aufschlussreich sind in diesem Band die Kapitel, in denen "Grannie" Liu, eine Bauernfrau, ihre entfernten Verwandten besuchen kommt. Das Aufeinanderprallen des einfachen Landlebens und des ausschweifenden Stadtlebens ist eine gelungene Kritik an der Dekadenz der Aristokratie: Grannie Liu wird wie ein Ausstellungsstück herumgereicht und dient der Belustigung, weil sie so gar nicht in die starre ritualfixierte Etikette passen will. Die Klasse des Autors zeigt sich nun wiederum aber darin, dass die Grannie nicht als Opfer dargestellt wird; sie selbst erkennt ihre Rolle als Hofnarr, und spielt sie mit viel Hintersinn aus. Diese Szenerie könnte auch von Lu Xun stammen, allerdings hätte er dies sicherlich mit mehr Sarkasmus und Sozialkritik geschrieben, wodurch die Leichtigkeit verloren gegangen wäre, die diese Kapitel auszeichnet.Wie schon in Band 1 sind einige knappe Anhänge, die diesmal die chinesischen Reim- und Dominospiele erklären, sowie die bekannten, aber immer noch äußerst hilfreichen Stammbäume vorhanden. Hawkes' Übersetzung ist ein Meisterwerk, und wird nicht durch Fußnoten belastet, die vom Text ablenken. Seine Strategie, unklare Stellen durch Texterweiterungen zu erklären und nicht durch Fußnoten zu erläutern, mag in Bezug auf Texttreue etwas fragwürdig scheinen; doch letztlich macht sie den Roman einmalig leserlich und bietet einen tollen Einblick in das dekadente Leben der Qing-Aristokraten.
What do You think about The Crab-Flower Club (1977)?
But when? I want everyone to love this book as much as I did, but this several-days-long gap has me worried. Or are you just too focused on "Imperial China" right now?
—Hadrian
there is so much going on in this book. the imagery of the novel is beautiful. there is so much to digest. this deserves another read. we are not reading book 3 and we only have parts of 4 and 5. so i am sure we are missing a lot. even though she is crying all the time i really like dai-yu. i wish bao-chai would not give her so much hell. had i not taken this class (world lit--renaissance to 18th eastern lit) i don't think i would have ever read a chinese novel. i may even read another, perhaps one that is not 5 volumes, they are so pretty. i don't know if you can write pretty, but this one is.
—bridget trinkaus
Better than volume 1, which I also quite liked. These have both been very interesting portrayals of aristocratic life in Qing China. So decadent and rigidly hierarchical, and transgressions are met with such ferocity and violence. Feudalism and aristocracy be crazy, yo. At the same time as reading this, I've been listening to a history of the French revolution podcast, and yeah, I totally get why peasants revolt and try to overthrow the system.At the same time, I just really enjoy reading about Chinese history and culture. I love the level of detail Cao brings, painting word-pictures of the everyday goings-on of the Jia estate. Learning about history is an ongoing, never-ending process. There are always more gaps to fill in. This book certainly helps with that.
—Marlo
