I read four titles in July, an essay from the early 19th century, A Dissertation upon Roast Pig; two memoirs, one from 20th-century Cider with Rosie, the other from 21st century called Wild; and a speculative fiction published in the last couple of years, Babel.
Babel by R. F. Kuang
I hardly ever read contemporary novels. Why did I choose to read it – the book is about translation and the protagonist is a Chinese boy who is uprooted from Canton China and transplanted to Oxford England. It’s a fantasy, where the magic is created by speaking two languages, and one of them, a lot of the time is Chinese, because of the protagonist. As a native Chinese speaker who lives in England and who did translation work for years, those elements attracted me to pick it up.
And what do I think about this book? I think overall, I don’t like it, but I do admire it. If this book is a person, I wouldn’t naturally be friends with him, he’s so different from me, but I acknowledge he has great qualities and he has done remarkable things.
The novel was published in 2022. The story is about Robin, a boy from Canton, who was taken to England in the 1830s as an orphan, to study at Oxford University, specifically at Babel, the fictional Royal Institute of Translation. There are four of them, two boys and two girls for this year’s intake. Their study of translation is not for the use of communication, but to power the clockwork of British society in the form of silver. Silver bars that are inscribed with a match-pair of words in two languages have magic power. They can make carriages run faster and safer. They can heal illness. But Robin soon finds out the darker side of the academia – Babel scholars are not there to create more useful match-pairs of words for the public good, but to make profit. The silver bars only heal people when they can afford to pay, and a lot of the silver bars are used for frivolous things of the upper class, like, keeping rich people’s roses fragrant for longer. But worse than that, the silver is used for British dominance and violence over other countries: British ships move faster and the cannons aim truer because of the silver bars. At this point, a real historical event is woven into this world of alternative reality, the Opium War in China. To put it simply, Robin’s innocent academic work in a clean study in Oxford is helping the British to force the free trade of opium into China and ruin the lives of his own people. So after enjoying years of a comfortable good life given by Babel, therefore, hesitating for years over this, Robin finally decided to rebel against Babel and lead a revolution.
I never thought language and translation could appear in the same sentence as violence and revolution so I had no idea what to think when I first saw the subtitle of the novel: Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Ar’cane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution. And the last part, the chapters on the revolution itself, is definitely my favourite.
So what do I not like about it? It feels patronising. The author has a point to make; that exploitation and colonialism are bad. I don’t disagree with her. But she seems to assume I disagree with her. A lot of the points about colonialism are made with preachy footnotes and using stereotypical villains. I liked the last part better because there was less direct commentary and more plot development. For a lot of the book I really felt her breathing down my neck like a school teacher to make sure I get her point. I felt I was being treated like a child or an idiot.
That’s the first thing. The second thing is that the author judges people in history from a 21st century point of view. Which a lot of people do nowadays and that needs its own discussion. But when it happened in the novel, I felt I was constantly being pulled out of the story, being told to judge and criticise, and then being shoved back into the story for a while, until I was pulled back out again. Maybe the author does it on purpose. But I don’t like that reading experience. When I read a story, I want to live in it and feel it and come to the conclusion the author intends me to come to, myself.
Lastly, the audiobook is badly produced. Sorry to sound harsh, it’s hard to believe it’s professionally done. I understand it’s a huge challenge for the narrator to speak all the languages used in the novel. But the sentences are stitched up so badly, it’s painful to listen to at times. My audiobook listening time ran out at about 70% and I read the rest myself. The story got better after that. I wonder if the audiobook affected my reading experience. But I guess the points earlier still stand if I listen to or read the story.
And here’s what I admire. The novel has some very interesting and fresh ideas. I might not like how it’s done but it really makes the point. It feels like the author has this argument to make and she creates this novel and all the characters around the argument. Even though it does read more like an extended sermon illustration than a novel, she does a good job creating a unique world and an original story. The author is clearly very knowledgeable with languages, and very intelligent. It’s a book that will generate a lot of discussion especially if you read it with a group; if that was her goal, she’s certainly succeeded.
Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee
Cider with Rosie is a 1959 memoir by Laurie Lee (published in the US as Edge of Day: Boyhood in the West of England a year later). It is the first book of a trilogy that continues with As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969) and A Moment of War (1991). It’s an account of his childhood in an English village called Slad in the Cotswolds.
The Cotswolds has one of the most beautiful and quintessential of English landscapes. When you think of ‘the green and pleasant land of England’, the images in your head – green pastures and rolling hills, tiny villages dotted with cottages covered in rambling roses or a huge wisteria under a thatched roof – that’s the Cotswolds. That’s where Laurie Lee grew up since age 3 in 1917. He was an English poet, novelist and screenwriter. But his most well known works are these memoirs.
I’ve only read Cider with Rosie so far. I really enjoyed it, partly because of his writing, I’ll give you a couple of examples in a second; partly because the world he lived in is so different to mine, even though I can visit his village today if I want, and there’s less than a century in between. But as L. P. Hartley says, ‘the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there’. And because it’s not a distant past, it’s a very near past, it feels even more extraordinary that life was so different. It was harsh but through his eyes, it was beautiful and romantic. I wonder if anyone has written a memoir today about our everyday lives that people will read in a hundred years and think our lives in 2024 beautiful and romantic?
Laurie Lee was 45 when he wrote and published this in 1959. I listened to the audiobook and was a bit surprised to find that it was narrated by the author himself. I heard an old man’s voice as soon as I pressed the play button. He says, ‘I was set down from the carrier’s cart at the age of three; and there with a sense of bewilderment and terror my life in the village began.’
It was electrifying. I immediately had this image of an old man sitting comfortably in an armchair next to an evening fire, eyes smiling looking far into the past. I also immediately wanted to know when the audio recording was made: I want to know when he red his memoir out many years later, how did he think and feel? Was there anything that he would have liked to change? Or did the scenes from his childhood stand still and sparkling like a drop of amber? I think the recording was made in 1989 when he was 75, 30 years after he wrote it. He died in 1997, aged 82.
Cider with Rosie starts with him at age three and goes on till he’s a teenager. It’s about his family, his neighbours, the village school, sometimes about things more intriguing and dark like suicides and murders in the village, the carol singing during Christmas and it ends with the breaking up of the village community as well as his family when his sisters got married and left home. The writing is breathtaking. It’s plain but it’s poetry in prose.
A Dissertation upon Roast Pig by Charles Lamb
A Dissertation upon Roast Pig is an essay by Charles Lamb from 1823. It starts with a story of the origin of roast pig, continues with Lamb’s praise for the dish and his particular taste for cooking the animal, then a personal story to demonstrate his argument that good food is not for sharing. He gives the serious matter of animal cruelty a very quick shot, about half a page in a ten page essay, before he moves swiftly on to which kind of sauce goes best with the dish. The end.
When I mentioned that I was going to read it on holiday, one of you said they were very interested in hearing what I think. I wasn’t sure why, but after I red it, I think it might be the 5-page opening story of the origin of the roast pig. It goes something like this. The first people who discovered roast pig were a father and a son in ancient China. The stupid boy burnt down their dilapidated cottage along with a litter of piglets. After the boy discovered the taste of roast pig by accident, not only his father, but also the whole town could not resist it.
The thing took wing, and now there was nothing to be seen but fires in every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enormously dear all over the district. The insurance offices one and all shut up shop. People built slighter and slighter every day, until it was feared that the very science of architecture would in no long time be lost to the world. Thus this custom of firing houses continued…
Until a wise man came along to say, you know you can just cook the pork without burning the house down. When I googled the Roast Pig, one of the first search results says, it “describes the discovery of pork roast in China, with a somewhat politically incorrect text.” I can understand why it’s thought to be ‘politically incorrect’. I think Lamb not only offends Chinese people, he also offends people from Abyssinia, which is modern day Ethiopia, since he says people of Abyssinia “ate their meat raw, clawing or biting it from the living animal… to this day.” I think vegetarians should feel offended too. Listen to this:
Behold him, while he is ‘doing’ [as in, when the pig is being roasted]- it seemeth rather a refreshing warmth, than a scorching heat, that he is so passive to. How equably he twirleth round the string! – Now he is just done. To see the extreme sensibility of that tender age! He hath wept out his pretty eyes – radiant jellies – shouting start. –
Actually I think he offends everybody:
See him [the pig] in the dish, his second cradle, how meek he lieth! – wouldst thou have had this innocent grow up to the grossness and indocility which too often accompany maturer swinehood? Ten to one he would have proved a glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, disagreeable animal – wallowing in all manner of filthy conversation – from these sins he is happily snatched away –
Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade,
Death came with timely care –
Those two lines are from a poem by his contemporary Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It’s called Epitaph On An Infant, it’s a poem mourning, with hope and comfort, the brevity and innocence of an infant’s life. And Lamb uses it to argue that it’s better to slaughter pigs young. Coleridge is certainly entitled to feel offended.
If you just hold this thought for a second. Something I discovered on the internet is an essay published in 2000 called ‘“Poor Percy Bishe!!” Charles Lamb’s “A Dissertation on Roast Pig” in context’. It’s an essay that came up as one of the search results so I’m not sure how credible it is. But it gives some fascinating insight into why Lamb wrote Roast Pig. When I red it without context, it’s completely random, funny and all over the place. Lamb seems to write it to please himself. But this essay online says, Lamb wrote it after the death of Percy Shelley and it was a response to Shelley’s utopian view on vegetarianism. Just to be clear, I don’t have access to the whole essay; I could only read the abstract and the first paragraph. But it seems to say that Shelley believed that mental health problems are, quoting the essay, “both caused by and cured by diet”. If you know a little bit about the Lamb siblings, you might have heard that both Charles and Mary had serious mental health issues. Imagine, as someone who suffers mentally yourself, and who watches over a loved one who also suffers, you read an article saying, you’ll be fine if you just eat vegetables. How would you feel? Quoting the online essay again, “Lamb’s work had been characterised as the ‘blasphemies of a poor maniac’.” His writing is not taken seriously and people think he’s mad. If I were Lamb, I think I would write a hilarious, border-on-hysterical essay praising roast pig. There’s a lot of heartache hidden under the laughter.
In short, the heart of the essay A Dissertation upon Roast Pig has very little to do with the discovery of roast pork in China. But if you are still thinking at this point Lamb has no business offending the good people in China. That’s very kind of you! But I can assure you, this Chinese person is not a bit offended and quite enjoys the author’s fantastic sense of humour. And I look forward to making further acquaintances with Charles Lamb!
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
Wild is a 2012 memoir by an American writer Cheryl Strayed. It describes her 1100-mile hike on the Pacific Crest Trail in 1995. This was my second time reading it. I loved it when I first read it a few years ago. At the time, I’d say it was one of my favourite books. I’m thinking of making a video about memoirs so I decided to read it again. I can’t remember how I heard about it in the first place. I think I was attracted to it because it’s about a long-distance hike. I also love walking, though I have done nothing as epic as this. But I know what it’s like to put one foot in front of another again and again for hours with a heavy backpack up and down mountains. And I know the strange joy of physical exhaustion and the longing to return to the almost punishing exercise when it finishes. On the one hand, thinking why do I put myself through this voluntarily, and on the other, can’t wait to go back. Let alone the breathtaking view that makes it all worthwhile.
But Wild is not only about her physical struggles on the trail, from lifting her monstrously huge backpack and not being able to stand up straight, to losing her toenails one by one. I feel like I walked every mile with her. As she looked forward to the re-supply box at each stop, I looked forward to them too. Wild is also about the stunning landscape she measured with her every step. I’ve never been to the US; it sounds a lot more wild than the UK and I’m nervous about meeting bears and rattlesnakes, but I’d love to see those mountains and lakes she described. Wild is also wonderful because of all the people she met along the way, as well as the people in her head, her family, especially her mother. She was stuck in life because of her mother’s death and the hike was the way she tried to understand and find peace.
I love the book because I can feel her heartache, her honest insecurity, a young woman lost in grief and the mess of life. But she also makes me laugh. Her love for her mother was really intense. She had this insatiable hunger for her mother’s love. The death of her mother in her 40s was completely traumatic. When I red it a few years ago, I couldn’t quite get how a person can love another so intensely. I think I understand it more now.
A Day of Small Things 