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The Story of the Stone Volume 3 Note on Spelling Preface
Chapter 54:
Lady Jia ridicules the cliches of romantic fiction; And Wang Xi-feng emulates the filifal antics of Lao Lia-zi
Chapter 55:
A foolish concubine seeks to humiliate her own daughter; And an ill-natured stewardess tries to outwit her young mistress
Chapter 56:
Resourceful Tan-chun abolilshes abuses in the interests of econoomy; And sapient Bao-chai shows how small consessions can be made without loss of dignity
Chapter 57:
Nightengale tests Jade Boy with a startling message; And Aunt Xue comforts Frowner with words of loving kindness
Chapter 58:
In which the cock-bird who mourns his mate is found to be a hen; And a true heart is able to sympathize with a strange kind of love
Chapter 59:
By Willow Walk the conververs of property resort to violence and abuse; And at Green Delights the defenders of law and order invoke a higher authority
Chapter 60:
As a substiture for rose-orris Jia Huan is given jasmine face-powder; And in return for rose essence Cook Liu is given lycoperdon snow
Chapter 61:
Bao-yu owns up to a crime he did not commit; And Patience bends authority in order that the innocent may be spared
Chapter 62:
A tipsy Xiang-yun sleeps on a peony-petal pillow; And a grateful Caltrop unfastens her pomegranate skirt
Chapter 63:
Flower-maidens combine for nocturnal birthday revels; And a grass widow copes with funeral arrangments single-handed
Chapter 64:
Five fair women make subjects for a chaste maid's verse; And nine jade dragons make a love-gift for a flirt
Chapter 65:
Jia Lian's second marriage is celebrated in secret; And the future marriage of San-jie becomes a matter of speculation
Chapter 66:
Shame drives a warm-hearted young woman to take her life; And shock leads a cold-hearted young gentleman to renounce the world
Chapter 67:
Frowner sees something that makes her homesick; And Xi-feng hears something that rouses her suspicions
Chapter 68:
Er-jie takes up residence in Prospect Garden; And Xi-feng makes a disturbance in Ning-guo House
Chapter 69:
A scheming woman kills with a borrowed knife; And one who has ceased to hope swallows gold and dies
Chapter 70:
Lin Dai-yu resuscitates the Poetry Club; And Shi Xiang-yun tries her hand at a song lyric
Chapter 71:
Lady Xing deliberately humiliates her daughter-in-law; And Faithful inadvertently iterrupts a pair of love-birds
Chapter 72:
Wang Xi-fen refuses to see a doctor; And Brightie's wife seeks help with a betrothal
Chapter 73:
A half-witted servant girl picks up a highly embarrassing object; And an easy-going young mistress refuses to inquire into a theft
Chapter 74:
Lady Wang authorizes a raid on Prospect Garden; And Jia Xi-chun breaks off relations with Ning-guo House
Chapter 75:
Midnight revellers are startled by a sound of evil omen; And Mid-Autumn moon-watchers listen to quantrains of unequal merit
Chapter 76:
Flute-playing at Convex Pavillion provokes too much melancholy; And linked verses at Concave Pavilion betray a morbid sensitivity
Chapter 77:
A wronged maid takes a loving last leave of her master; And three young actresses seek to escape matrimony in the cloister
Chapter 78:
Jia Zheng commissions the Ballad of the Winsome Colonel; And Bao-yu composes an Invocation to the Hibiscus Spirit
Chapter 79:
Xue Pan finds to his sorrow that he is married to a termagant; And Ying-chun's parents betroth her to a Zhong-shan wolf
Chapter 80:
Unfortunate Caltrop is battered by a philandering husband; And One Plaster Wang presribes for an insufferavle wife
Appendix I: Sandal, Musk, and Skybright
Appendix II: Suncloud, Sunset and Moonrise
Appendix III: You San-jie, Liu Xiang-lian and Jia Lian's Journeys
Appendix IV: Old Mrs. You and the Zhangs
Appendix V: Fivey, Bao Er and The Mattress
Appendix VI: Euergesia and the Little Actresses
Characters in Volume 3
Genealogical Tables
| Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
| $99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub |
Bob Boberson
reviewed Story of the Stone (aka Dream of the Red Chamber), Volume 3: The Warning Voice on February 02, 2015
Story of the Stone (aka Dream of the Red Chamber), Volume 3: The Warning Voice
After greatly enjoying Volume 2, I found this long middle volume a bit of a slog.
I can't tell how much of this is due to any intrinsic difference (after all, the 5-volume division was made by the translator, not the author) and how much of it is due to the fact that I have a finite, if large, patience for this kind of story. In my review of Vol. 2 I made a big deal out of how formless the plot is -- sometimes dramatic, sometimes very mundane for long stretches, never following predictable "arc" structures -- and how this struck me as enjoyably lifelike. Vol. 3 is, if anything, more extreme in this regard. In particular, it focuses more than the earlier volumes on a wide array of "minor" characters, to the point that the putative main characters disappear for long stretches. There is a thin line between the sublime "lifelikeness" I praised in Vol. 2 and just being really really boring, and a lot of Vol. 3 crossed that line for me.
That said, there is a stretch near the middle of the book -- the story of the You sisters -- that is atypically exciting and dramatic, and I found myself racing through it. This section ends with the appearance of a character, "the lame Taoist," who had originally appeared way back in Vol. 1 when the story involved more supernatural elements, and the translator comments that in fact this entire section might have been spliced in from another more dramatic, more supernatural novel which Xueqin never finished or showed to the world. I found this quite disappointing; it made me feel as though I had been reading something haphazardly made, which expressed no unified artistic vision but instead just consisted of a bunch of disparate pieces slapped together. This feeling is of course only worsened by the fact that Xueqin himself did not finish the novel -- the sections definitely written by him end with Vol. 3, and Vols. 4-5 are thought to be written at least in part by someone else.
What is this thing I have been reading for several years now? It has been called the greatest work of Chinese literature. Mao Zedong claimed to have read it 25 times and recommended that others read it 5 times (it is 2500 pages long!). It has beautiful and hilarious moments, incredibly dull stretches, a strange and problematic structure and textual history. It definitely doesn't have fit the model I have in mind for a "great work." But I am determined to see it through to the end, in part because I have no idea where it could possibly be going. On to Vol. 4.
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