Rereading the Stone: Desire and the Making of Fiction in "Dream of the Red Chamber" Book

A couple points that this book gets right, and then a whole lot that it doesn't get right.

1) The discussion of the "fictionality" of the "Stone" is important. Sometimes that gets lost, particularly for those who view it as being an autobiography of the author (Cao Xueqin). It does have some biographical elements, but it is still a "novel" and "fiction," and the author plays with this concept of "real" versus "not-real", "fiction" versus "non-fiction," and the author's own self-reflexivity.

2) The discussions on "desire" (欲) and "passion/sentiment" (情) make some good points but the author tends to go on tangents, almost like a sort of "stream of consciousness." I also am not convinced that Prof. Yu quite *got* what Cao Xueqin's definition of "passion/sentiment" (qing) was.

I also have two major problems with Prof. Yu's work:

1) His prose is very difficult to follow unless you are of a similar academic stature. When I see the kind of language that he uses in excess (a little is not a bad thing), it gives me the impression that he was more interested in proving his own erudition, and in turn getting all the back-slapping attention and praise for his "penetrating analysis" or "revolutionary interpretations" from other self-important "scholars" who do the same. It's all BS. This is not a book that is in any form accessible to the average "Stone" reader; therefore, I don't see it as adding anything of particular value to the field.

2) Prof. Yu's greatest sin is trying to tie up his theses and arguments with examples from the final forty chapters, which are clearly forged. Gao E (or whoever was the author of the final 40 chapters, although it certainly wasn't Cao Xueqin's work, of which there is no disputing) had very different ideas on the core theme(s) of the novel and Cao Xueqin's original intent (which was a radical anti-traditionalism), and worse, brings the concept of "qing" (as well as "desire") back to a negotiated position within Neo-Confucianism. This is NOT what the author intended at all, and trying to argue that the original 80 chapters and (forged) final 40 chapters have any sort of consistent, running theme is just absurd and lazy scholarship (or lack of understanding of the subtleties and nuances of the novel, the Red Inkstone commentary, and previous "Stone" scholarship).

Very disappointing.