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The Tower of Myriad Mirrors
China’s most outrageous character—the magical Monkey who battles a hundred monsters—returns to the fray in this seventeenth-century sequel to the Buddhist novel Journey to the West . In The Tower of Myriad Mirrors , he defends his claim to enlightenment against a villain who induces hallucinations that take Monkey into the past, to heaven and hell, and even through a sex change. The villain turns out to be the personification of his own desires, aroused by his penetration of a female adversary’s body in Journey to the West . The Tower of Myriad Mirrors is the only novel of Tung Yüeh (1620–1686), a monk and Confucian scholar. Tung picks up the slapstick of the original tale and overlays it with Buddhist theory and bitter satire of the Ming government’s capitulation to the Manchus. After a nod to Journey ’s storyteller format, Tung carries Monkey’s quest into an evocation of shifting psychological states rarely found in premodern fiction. An important though relatively unknown link in the development of the Chinese novel, and a window into late Ming intellectual history, The Tower of Myriad Mirrors further rewards by being a wonderful read.
- GenresChinaLiteratureFiction
151 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1640
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 5, 2013
Nice addition to "Journey to the West"
This "supplement", written about 100 years after "Journey to the West", sneaks itself in between chapter 61 and 62 of that great Chinese classic. In 16 chapters, each of them shorter than a standard JttW chapter, the story about Sun Wukong's travel to a foreign world is described, and his attempts to escape from that strange world.
Some of the chapters present us all the things we love the Monkey King for, especially his multi-layered humor, other chapters deviate from that well-known characterization: Sometimes he seems irresolute, hesitant and timid, which is just the opposite of our decisive, proactive hero.
The foreword is a major spoiler, and I cannot understand why editors did not put such comments simply in an afterword. As it is, I recommend to read it after the text. If you haven't read JttW yet, there are some footnotes and comments to explain the roughest ideas, but I don't think it makes sense or is fun to read this work without having read JttW in advance.
The translation is fluent on the whole - but sometimes you ask yourself whether the Chinese original text is similarly confusing (not to say obfuscated). Chinese proper names are transliterated using Wade-Giles.
Altogether, "The Tower of Myriad Mirrors" is a nice addition to the world of JttW. Never reaching the heights of amusement and suspense of the original, it is still entertaining. The author's main objective in writing this text, as you glean from the foreword, was not to write a simple sequel (or "inquel"), but to use the well-established characters and scenery of JttW to present his political and religious Weltanschauung, and that gets lost in translation completely, if you don't have the required background in Chinese history and culture.
This "supplement", written about 100 years after "Journey to the West", sneaks itself in between chapter 61 and 62 of that great Chinese classic. In 16 chapters, each of them shorter than a standard JttW chapter, the story about Sun Wukong's travel to a foreign world is described, and his attempts to escape from that strange world.
Some of the chapters present us all the things we love the Monkey King for, especially his multi-layered humor, other chapters deviate from that well-known characterization: Sometimes he seems irresolute, hesitant and timid, which is just the opposite of our decisive, proactive hero.
The foreword is a major spoiler, and I cannot understand why editors did not put such comments simply in an afterword. As it is, I recommend to read it after the text. If you haven't read JttW yet, there are some footnotes and comments to explain the roughest ideas, but I don't think it makes sense or is fun to read this work without having read JttW in advance.
The translation is fluent on the whole - but sometimes you ask yourself whether the Chinese original text is similarly confusing (not to say obfuscated). Chinese proper names are transliterated using Wade-Giles.
Altogether, "The Tower of Myriad Mirrors" is a nice addition to the world of JttW. Never reaching the heights of amusement and suspense of the original, it is still entertaining. The author's main objective in writing this text, as you glean from the foreword, was not to write a simple sequel (or "inquel"), but to use the well-established characters and scenery of JttW to present his political and religious Weltanschauung, and that gets lost in translation completely, if you don't have the required background in Chinese history and culture.
April 20, 2011
16th century fanfiction- I kid you not. This is a 'missing chapter' from "The Journey to the West" one of the great works of Chinese literature and one of the best fantasy novels of all time (to be adapted into a movie by Neil Gaiman and Guillermo Del Toro.) "Tower" is honestly pretty dry. It was written by a monk and was intended to be an exploration of Buddhist philosophy regarding the evils of desire, so it spends a lot of time doing that, as well as dealing horrible torturous deaths to historical figures and politicians the author did not like. Still, the writing is actually somewhat ahead of its time in the way it deals with POV and symbolic psychology- downright Freudian in some places. And there's some very cool psychedelic fantasy stuff too. Still, not really worth it (even for such a slim volume) if you aren't a passionate fan of the original novel and also a lover of esoterica.
October 28, 2010
Fantastic. Best fan fiction of all time. Time travel, gender-bending, dreams within dreams, worlds within worlds. A spiritually insightful, deeply imaginative, slapstick quest, and a genuinely valuable addition to the original classic. If you love Monkey King, absolutely seek this out.
October 11, 2020
Easily one of the most fascinating historical works of dream literature, and one of my all-time favorite works of historical fiction. Bizarre, almost postmodern sensibility, and deep psychological, even psychoanalytic, insight. Highly recommended! Some knowledge of Journey to the West 西遊記 helpful.
September 15, 2012
Monkey returns and careens through the myriad worlds of the Avatamsaka Sutra. Wonderful!
April 19, 2013
A 17th century sequel to the Journey to the East told in the "Monkey" series. A continuation of the dreamlike states of Monkey. Wonderful stuff!
December 5, 2007
Chinese classic:-----------read for school, Monkey
Read
January 5, 2019Read for school
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews