Doctor Sax by Kerouac

I was quite dissapointed in this book. I'm not sure what Kerouac was on when he wrote this but his style just wasn't there. The book was a strange mixture of childhood dreams, adolescent sex, baseball and B horror movies. There didn't seem to be any lasting or coherant thoughts to hold it together. The only part I did like was the letter from Dr. Sax about the party. Still one bad book is not enough to put me off, I will keep reading him.

The Story of the Stone, "The golden days" Vol. 1 (Hawkes translation)

紅樓夢 is my favorite novel, one of the reasons I'm learning Chinese is so that I can read it in the original. This translation however is not my favorite. The translator does some annoying things, writing for an audience that doesn't know Chinese culture he tends to remove or change a lot of the cultural references, which I find really annoying. One of the things I liked about the Yangs translation so much when I read this book the first time was all the things I learned about Chinese culture and history. Here Hawkes takes English or Japanese words and uses them a little too liberally, "The Lord" and "Yama" being two examples that spring to mind right away. He also makes the poetry rhyme, and it virtually becomes unreadable.

What I can say for this book is that he does stick quite closely to the original text. Having read passages from this volume, I had no trouble locating and reading the passages in my Chinese edition.

Vol. 1 contains the background of the stone, the Taoist and Buddhist monk, the building of the garden, Granny Liu's first visit, BaoYu and Xifeng being possessed by demon's and going insane, the cute gay boys at school, dreams set in the world of the immortals, and a lot of Xifeng being very capable.