Yesterday I posted a quote by Wang Chong taken from The Early Chinese Empires by Mark Edward Lewis, followed by a long commentary on my (slow) progress in reading the text, with a lot of extraneous matter and links thrown in beside. Unfortunately I was working directly with the hosting service, and when it was time to go live, only the initial quote posted and everything else was lost. Irritating, but no great matter, “in the long run” (to quote Keynes—or what is commonly attributed to him).
One of the things I had mentioned, was that Lewis repeats himself a lot, while on the other hand presuming a prior knowledge about many things which I lack. Having just made my way through Chapter 4, I have a good example of that. He writes (on p.91):
One of the things I had mentioned, was that Lewis repeats himself a lot, while on the other hand presuming a prior knowledge about many things which I lack. Having just made my way through Chapter 4, I have a good example of that. He writes (on p.91):
The Records of the Historian/Astrologer portrays the [Han] founder, Emperor Gaozu (as Liu Bang became known), as a man who lacked loyalty to family and home, and it attributes his triumph to this very characteristic.
All very interesting, but this is the third time he mentions that Liu Bang, as emperor, was known by Gaozu. Either he expects the reader to have excessively poor retention (as I sometimes do), or the editing (or the writing?) is bad. It is very easy, when dealing with an unwieldy text, and doing a lot of cutting and pasting, to wind up with inconsistencies like this. Worse than duplication, omissions of critical data, make the text harder to follow than it ought to be—sometimes a fact being thrown in (say) in Chapter 3 that suddenly renders explicable a long drawn-out passage from the first chapter.
Having said that, I have no real complaints. Had I been able to get the book I wanted on the Chou, I might be better prepared for the ascent of the Qin (which has, by the way, gone up another $25 from the cheapest vendor since the last time I mentioned it).
If organizationally I find Lewis to be lacking, nothing he writes seems extraneous. Despite my deficiencies, I am—little by little—conjuring up a picture of his subject(s). Following on the Chang, this too relies on archeology (as you might expect); yet a description of what was found is helpful to imagining an alien political and social landscape. The emperor “ruling by absence” lies outside of Western tradition; though, if you read my Peony Pavilion (which is to be considered a retelling or a new version) you may note I retained the emperor’s designation by only an offstage voice.
“The costumes of the urban elite,” writes Lewis, “as in so many societies, became the standard for others to emulate.” I am not sure of his original source for the following quotation, but I like it:
Having said that, I have no real complaints. Had I been able to get the book I wanted on the Chou, I might be better prepared for the ascent of the Qin (which has, by the way, gone up another $25 from the cheapest vendor since the last time I mentioned it).
If organizationally I find Lewis to be lacking, nothing he writes seems extraneous. Despite my deficiencies, I am—little by little—conjuring up a picture of his subject(s). Following on the Chang, this too relies on archeology (as you might expect); yet a description of what was found is helpful to imagining an alien political and social landscape. The emperor “ruling by absence” lies outside of Western tradition; though, if you read my Peony Pavilion (which is to be considered a retelling or a new version) you may note I retained the emperor’s designation by only an offstage voice.
“The costumes of the urban elite,” writes Lewis, “as in so many societies, became the standard for others to emulate.” I am not sure of his original source for the following quotation, but I like it:
In the city, if they love to have their hair dressed up high,
Then everywhere else they dress their hair an inch higher.
In the city, if they love to enlarge their eyebrows,
Then everywhere else they will make their eyebrows cover half their foreheads.
In the city, if they love large sleeves,
Then everywhere else they will use up whole bolts of silk.
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