On "The Dream of the Red Chamber" by Cao Xaoqin ***

Credit working a second job and general length of the book for making me take so long to get through this one. Or perhaps credit the fact that this book, although a classic of Chinese literature, goes nowhere. It reminded me of the Japanese classic The Tale of Genji, insofar as it is largely about court intrigues and relationships among a well-to-do family. Single chapters are great. Indeed, I read an excerpt from this book in an anthology, which made me look forward to reading this text. But the episodic nature of the book and the fact that the writer often introduces plot points that go nowhere ultimately make this something of a frustrating read.

The early chapters of the book recount the disappearance of a young woman and the family's reaction to it. It's a great set-up (where'd she go? what happened? don't know), but eventually, we end up spending time mostly with the family of one Pao-yu Secundus, a fifteen-year-old with many female cousins and servants who sloughs off at his schooling and displeases his father. As a portrait of this portion of China at this time, it's intriguing. Pao-yu forges a close friendship with one other male at one point, who then traipses off to other places. He forges close relationships with his various maids and cousins. They get together to write poetry and start a poetry club. Families of the maids visit. One lower-class mother of one of the maids visits, gets drunk, and makes a full of herself.  One maid is given the opportunity to be the second wife to a rich older man, which she rejects, much to the shock of others. Pao-yu travels far off to a temple, unbeknownst to his family, indeed, hiding the very fact. Each of these things is told in discrete chapters, which alone are interesting enough. Together, not so much. Court life is tedious.

The book ends--or at least the version of the book I read--ends with Pao-yu meeting a doppelganger, another boy named Pao-yu, this one twelve years old, but otherwise similar in personality and looks and even class situation. He is even, at one point, somewhat mistaken for the other boy. Intriguing. But alas, it was just a dream. Not so intriguing. "And if you'd like to know what happens next, reader, you'll need to turn to the next chapter." That is, the book ends with the same ending that all other chapters carry, as if the author were writing a serial that was cancelled in its midst, with discrete chapters that feature the same characters but not always plot points that go from start to finish.

On "The Shepherd of Hermas" **

I wasn't expecting much from this work, and it delivered just about what I expected. I find it interesting so many early Christian writers thought this almost on the level of scripture. My interest in that stems largely from the fact that were this work actually in the cannon, what sense would I make of it--and why would one think it at such a level that it should be.

The work starts off with a set of visions or tales in which Hermas meets up with various angels--mostly women. He finds himself drawn to them; they give him instructions. He's warned about having lusting thoughts. At one point, he's even told that Christians have the opportunity to repent only once of a sin after baptism; after that, there's no more hope. That seems a strange comment and one that later portions of the work don't seem to confirm.

Although the visions were not particularly interesting to me, the next two sections had a bit more going for them. The second section consists of mandates, twelve of them. Think of them like commandments for New Testament believers. I couple of them seemed so close in meaning that I had a hard time distinguishing between them. Most were a bit long-winded, and so not as easy to ferret out or summarize as the Ten Commandments. Nevertheless, I'll try here:

1. Believe God is one.
2. Be guileless.
3. Love truth.
4. Remain pure.
5. Have patience.
6. Trust righteousness.
7. Fear the right things.
8. Remain temperate in right things.
9. Avoid doubt.
10. Put away sorrow.
11. Trust the Spirit.
12. Remove evil desire.

The last section consists of a set of parables, comparing the church and believers to this and that--trees, plants, cities, towers. These, on the whole, seemed much more approachable than the visions at the book's start.