Nine clouds and an illusion

The Nine Cloud Dream (Kuunmong)
Penguin Classics 2019
Fiction 288 pages
Kim Man-jung
Heinz Insu Fenkl (Editor, Introduction, Translator)

Serious spoiler alert. The cheapest writer’s trick ever is telling a tale and then revealing it to was all a dream. Yet the author gets away with it by using reincarnation to obscure his intention.  Toward the end of the novel he introduces the sage who dreamt he was a butterfly and wakes wondering if he is now a butterfly dreaming it is a sage. One questions what is real and what is illusion. The story is fantastical. A master sends a young monk to Hell and then the reborn monk sets off as a poor scholar. Along the way he finds good luck and meets women he promises to reunite with. Eventually he becomes an adopted prince and takes those nine women as wives and concubines. Then in his mature years he becomes disillusioned and seeks an ancient master for instruction. He must now confront the realization that what appears real is actually illusion.

As the hero woos women with poetry and engages in fantastic feats of warfare and diplomacy the reader eagerly comes along. This rags to riches story entices readers until their “suspension of disbelief” hits the inevitable surprise promised by the title.  This drives home the point that we are all victims of the illusions we experience.

Kim Man-jung’s story, Kuunmong, takes place in Chinese and is written in Chinese. Author, Kim Man-jung himself resided in Korea and was active in the royal court. Some scholars believe the Kuunmong was published in 1789, though other scholars question that date.

Outfoxed

The Fox Wife: A Novel
Yangsze Choo
Fiction 392 pages
Henry Holt and Co., Press, 2024

“There are as many kinds of foxes as there are types of people. Some are criminals. Others seek to escape this world by refining themselves.”

“The Fox Wife” is told through two perspectives. First person narration comes through a female fox out for revenge, while an elderly detective’s attempts to solve a complex mystery are told through the third person. The chapters alternate, first one told in first person followed by the next in the third person. It works.

 I’ve had difficulty reading stories in which the main characters alternate. An interesting chapter can be followed by a dull one that ruins the effect of the first. But if dovetailed characters and plots are equally interesting, boredom doesn’t arise. An effective twined narrative requires a skilled writer and Yangsze Choo is that.

 Set in 1908 Manchuria, the year in which China’s empress died, and three years prior to its revolution, China’s Qing dynasty is in decline. Revolutionary fervor infects its students. The daughters of poor families are sold to brothels while multiple wives and concubines occupy wealthier homes. It’s a China on the edge of modernity. Old tales of shapeshifting foxes are increasingly considered superstition, yet Bao the detective puzzles over alternative explanations for unlikely occurrences. He has room for doubt remembering how in childhood his nurse worshiped at a fox shrine and his friend claimed to have met a fox in human form.

 This novel features love, lust, loss, mystery, murder and madness. It’s well worth a read.

Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio
Pu Songling (Died 1715) translated by Herbert A. Giles
Fiction 448 pages depending on edition
Public Domain, 1880 translation

Many tales of shapeshifting foxes can be found in Pu Songling’s story anthology. Here is an example.

Friendship with Foxes

A certain man had an enormous stack of straw, as big as a hill, in which his servants, taking what was daily required for use, had made quite a hole. In this hole a fox fixed his abode, and would often show himself to the master of the house in the form of an old man.

 One day the latter invited the master to walk into the cave, which he at first declined, but accepted on being pressed by the fox; and when he got inside, lo! he saw a long suite of handsome apartments. They then sat down, and exquisitely perfumed tea and wine were brought; but the place was so gloomy that there was no difference between night and day. By-and-by, the entertainment being over, the guest took his leave; and on looking back the beautiful rooms and their contents had all disappeared.

 The old man himself was in the habit of going away in the evening and returning with the first streaks of morning; and as no one was able to follow him, the master of the house asked him one day whither he went. To this he replied that a friend invited him to take wine; and then the master begged to be allowed to accompany him, a proposal to which the old man very reluctantly consented. However, he seized the master by the arm, and away they went as though riding on the wings of the wind; and, in about the time it takes to cook a pot of millet, they reached a city, and walked into a restaurant, where there were a number of people drinking together and making a great noise.

The old man led his companion to a gallery above, from which they could look down on the feasters below; and he himself went down and brought away from the tables all kinds of nice food and wine, without appearing to be seen or noticed by any of the company. After awhile a man dressed in red garments came forward and laid upon the table some dishes of cumquats; and the master at once requested the old man to go down and get him some of these. “Ah,” replied the latter, “that is an upright man. I cannot approach him.”

 Thereupon the master said to himself, “By thus seeking the companionship of a fox, I then am deflected from the true course. Henceforth I, too, will be an upright man.” No sooner had he formed this resolution, than he suddenly lost all control over his body, and fell from the gallery down among the revelers below. These gentlemen were much astonished by his unexpected descent; and he himself, looking up, saw there was no gallery to the house, but only a large beam upon which he had been sitting. He now detailed the whole of the circumstances, and those present made up a purse for him to pay his traveling expenses; for he was at Yü-t‘ai—one thousand li from home.

The New Arabian Nights

 

The New Arabian Nights
Robert Louis Stevenson
Fiction, 186 pages

The "Arabian Nights" first appeared during the 10th century before evolving into its final form during the 14th. It’s said that this lengthy work is the greatest expression of fiction from the Islamic Golden Age, an age which arose during the reign of Baghdad caliph, Harun al-Rashid who ruled from 786 until 809. This golden age ended when Mongols overtook Baghdad in 1258. Harun al-Rashid had been dead several centuries by the time he was fictionalized as a ruler who intervenes anonymously in the lives of his subjects.

Robert Louis Stevenson created a more modern version of Harun al-Rashid in his Prince Florizel of Bohemia. The prince appears in stories set in France and England, and told in a mystery/espionage tone. The tale of the Suicide Club begins two cycles of stories involving the prince. After those stories, Stevenson addresses other characters and themes. In one story a scholarly scoundrel eaks out his living during the Middle Ages,

“The poet was a rag of a man, dark, little, and lean, with hollow cheeks and thin black locks. He carried his four-and- twenty years with feverish animation. Greed had made folds about his eyes, evil smiles had puckered his mouth. The wolf and pig struggled together in his face. It was an eloquent, sharp, ugly, earthly countenance. His hands were small and prehensile, with fingers knotted like a cord;”

While the story cycles featuring Prince Florizel resemble the mystery/espionage genre, the collection overall is genre free — or perhaps hinting of genre without being confined by it. The stories also have a fairytale-like quality as do the original Arabian Nights. However, fairytales tend to generalise, but these tales come with the details filled in. Still, like fairytales, they tug at the corners of reality enough to matter. Each story finds an unexpected destination, yet one that evolves naturally from what comes before.

Armageddon, anyone?

Good omens : the nice and accurate prophecies of Agnes Nutter, witch
Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Fiction 384 pages
William Morrow, 1990, 2006

According to the bit in the back of the book, this novel has become a "cult classic" since its publication. The book's sales rank on Amazon supports this claim. I haven't read any of Pratchett's books, but I've read a few by Gaiman. I didn't like this one as well as those.

Gaiman has a talent for taking mythological themes and making them believable. But this book is more of a farce, and as such, it failed to suspend my disbelief. This story, like others by Gaiman, draws from mythology, but unlike American Gods, the mythology isn't Norse, African, or Hindu, but Christian, and that will offend some, or at least cause discomfort. Believers don't like to see their beliefs treated like myths.

 Good Omens is about a friendship between a demon and an angel. Neither sees any sense in a war between Heaven and Hell and prefer to thwart, rather than assist during Armageddon. Crowley, the demon, and Aziraphale, the angel, have lived amidst humanity for so long that they no longer see things in such black and white terms as pure good or evil. They no longer fit in with the bureaucrats of Heaven and Hell. Unfortunately their sophisticated viewpoint isn't universal; satirizing conventional behavior just doesn't work for me.

I find no humor in society's increasing polarization of beliefs and attitudes, in the absence of dialog between left and right, religious and secular, rich and poor. Envisioning Heaven and Hell populated by rigid thinking, bureaucratic zealots simply doesn't amuse me. The world is full of such people already and their numbers are steadily increasing. Maybe Armageddon is coming after all, and that's just not funny.