But slow down a second: a doorstop-sized novel about a magic monkey? You bet! One of the pillars of China's literary heritage, Journey to the West (西游记) is probably better known by its common English title, Monkey. (Good job, lads, took a lot of time to come up with that one, eh?) Finding its roots in millenium-old Buddhist & Taoist folklore, the epic narrative was anonymously published in the late 16th century and credited retroactively to poet Wu Cheng-En. It possesses a canonical importance equivalent to the Iliad and Odyssey in the West, and boasts more than a few of the same narrative features: instructional pop-ins by dead souls? Check. A kingdom unfathomably run by matriarchy? Check. Attempted seduction by grotesque beast-woman hybrids? Check, except now they're arachnids instead of predatory waterfowl.The story itself? Well, over the course of 100 chapters, the titular simian, Sun Wukong, races through the three-act rise/fall/redemption arc before becoming the disciple of Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang (a.k.a. Tripitaka, as he is known in most English translations). Together with the literally-nicknamed Pigsy and Sandy Priest, they travel with the sun to fetch the Theraveda Buddhist sutras from India, for the benefit of the Chinese people. And, as they do in folktales, they live happily ever after.
Though the 5.4 billion of us who aren't Chinese can be forgiven for our unfamiliarity with the tale, it's actually been a remarkably popular cultural reference point since its first Occidental publication in the 1942. In China, it's a perennially popular stage production and has spawned at least a dozen films, the most recent of which starred Jet Li and Jackie Chan (a Hollywood blockbuster is currently in preproduction, with Will Smith rumoured to play Tripitaka). Proto-ambient prog-rockers Jade Warrior peppered their albums with references to the story, including song titles like "Water-Curtain Cave" and "The Mountain of Flowers and Fruit". British and Japanese men pushing 40 probably recall the surprise TV hit of the late-'70s, Monkey Magic. Even otaku mainstay Dragonball was conceived as a liberal adaptation, though that pretense was swiftly defenestrated.So am I recommending Journey to the West as essential to your post-globalisation edification, or as some Rosetta Stone for primate-oriented global junk-culture? Nah. Bottom-line, Journey to the West is handicapped by that same Achilles' heel as all those other big, important books written before paper replaced papyrus: bad writing.
The narrative sputters with the start-stop-stall rhythm of someone making it all up as they go along. There are innumerable passages fattened with pointless kipple, to the effect of:And Xuanzang knelt by his mother, his hands folded piously within the folds of his robe. "But mother," he said, as he knelt, "how did you come to recognize me as a man for you have not seen me since I was but a baby?"This, of course, after a good half-page was already spent in chapter 8 describing the foresight of such knuckle-severing as it happened. Yeesh.
"My son," said the mother to her son who now knelt by her side, "I despaired that I would not recognize you as a man for not having seen you since you were but a baby. In my despair I decided that I must mark you, so as to recognize you as a man, and thus bit off the last knuckle of your baby toe so that when I saw you as a man I would recognize you by the absence of the last knuckle on your baby toe."
And mother and son embraced, and there was much rejoicing.
And then, when it comes to the fantastic blood-fountain battle scenes and magical invocations, they race by with less detail than an AP report of some tribal melee consigned to a sidebar on page 14:
And Monkey and Erlang Shen clashed with a ferocity that cannot possibly be imagined, let alone described, until Erlang Shen was exhausted and Monkey returned victorious to the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit.Boo. Disappointing. (Dept. of CYA: lest an overzealous Chinese literature major accuse me of mangling the text, the above passages are not quoted from the story; it's called parody, people.)
Then his monkey minions threw a feast, and there was much rejoicing.
As a final illustration of how lopsided the story is, please note that chapters 13-99 document the quintet's travels from China to Vulture Peak in India to obtain the sutras, and chapter 100 - the final chapter - describes not only the whole journey back, but also the protagonists' divine recompense in (I shit you not) various bureaucratic posts in Heaven.
A grimly comic footnote about Journey to the West's enduring popularity in China is that Sun Wukong/Monkey was frequently cited by Mao Zedong as a role model for "his fearlessness in thinking, doing work, striving for the objective and extricating China from poverty." Right. A workshy, megalomaniacal chimp prone to hissy fits, who declared war on Heaven for being fired from his post as holy horse-groom for incompetence; who cut such a swath across the celestial palace that Buddha himself imprisoned him under a mountain for five centuries; who only submitted to Tripitaka after being strapped to some alchemical electroshock torture-halo - a good role model. That's like Lenin citing Gogol's madman diarist as an exemplary Bolshevik.And you already thought Mao was fucked in the head, eh?
So why did I slog through this absurd & seemingly slap-dash epic? Well, aside from a lot of enjoyable picaresque, the friend who lent me the book pitched it as "the story of a flying warrior-monkey whose divine title is Great Sage - Equal of Heaven." Not a hard sell when it's presented as such. Of course, whenever I started skimming pages or furrowing my brow at particularly awkward passages, I kept the issue of translation in mind. Perhaps I was handed the Ford Edsel of English editions, and doubtlessly the cadence gets dismembered when removed from its mother tongue.
That being said, if you've got the time to learn classical Chinese and read a hundred-chapter Lord of the Sutras, get back to me about how that worked out.
Retroreferential Postscript: You know how "Paper Planes" by M.I.A. struck me as the anthem not of third-world animus but of illiquid asset robber barons? Called it. Hoodies with Saturday night specials aren't the only ones who use terror to ply people from their wallets.The truly maddening thing about the bailout is how close we are to flipping the script in a sweeping way: if only Congress & the Senate looked ex-Goldman Sachs man Paulson in the eye and said, "Yeah, we've got your $700 billion, but this ain't a bailout, this is a buyout. They had their chance and blew it big-time, so no, they can't have their company back once we've resurrected it." But no, instead the gov't is acting like lax parents whose shithead sixteen-year-old just totaled the minivan; shrugging that "kids will be kids," they hand the budding sociopath the AmEx card to rent a car so he can still get around.
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The truly maddening thing about the bailout is how close we are to flipping the script in a sweeping way: if only Congress & the Senate looked ex-Goldman Sachs man Paulson in the eye and said, "Yeah, we've got your $700 billion, but this ain't a bailout, this is a buyout. They had their chance and blew it big-time, so no, they can't have their company back once we've resurrected it." But no, instead the gov't is acting like lax parents whose shithead sixteen-year-old just totaled the minivan; shrugging that "kids will be kids," they hand the budding sociopath the AmEx card to rent a car so he can still get around.
You seem to be a little confused about what exactly this crisis is all about. If Congress gave those terms, nobody would sell their troubled assets and the economy would crash down around Congress's ears (assuming you believe that is what would happen absent the bailout and I do have my doubts). As it is, Congress essentially does have that sort of deal. In those cases when the Treasury is buying directly from firms, they are only doing so if they get equity warrants (or, in companies that don't issue stock, senior debt). (This is not a bad solution, since it also injects desperately needed capital.) Those firms which had to accept terms like yours, like AIG and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are indeed essentially now owned by the government and management was kicked to the curb. (How long the Treasury will keep Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and whether and how they will be sold is an open question.)
The U.S. is right now in a classic liquidity trap, similar to Japan's problem in the 1990s. There is no way to use monetary policy to stimulate so the only option left is helicopter money.
However, I think there is much to the view that government intervention in busts do more harm than good, prolonging the busts and making things worse than they would otherwise be. The Great Depression and Japan in the 1990s appear to bear this out, but I know that's just speculative and I wouldn't push that case very hard.
Keep in mind that I wrote that post about 4 hours before American markets opened last Friday, when the bailout was still closer to its initial 3-page skeleton instead of the 106-page behemoth it is now.
I also have my doubts about the "or else" threatened by the bailout's backers, not the least because small banks are advertising no distress. Yes, LIBOR is almost 4% and many larger banks aren't lending to eachother as readily, but that's because they're counting on the bailout; why would they try to keep the credit circuit switched on when they can just wait, arms folded, for free money?
As for the bailout itself, I (like others) second Jodi Dean's sentiment in the post I linked to above: the bailout's about shoring up the ruling class and reiterating that the gov't is little more than balast to keep capitalism from flying off the handle.
There may not be "golden parachutes" for execs whose firms were specifically bailed out, but who cares if not only there are no "say on pay" votes by shareholders, but the bosses who dove into bankruptcy don't even have to resign? The party is bloody well not over when it comes to executive renumeration.
Also, if the current "crisis" is rooted in the popped housing bubble, why on earth would Republicans kill the affordable housing fund appended to the bailout? Hell, why not just pass the $700 billion directly to struggling homeowners? David Sirota brought this up: "If the root of this problem is people not being able to pay off their mortgages, and those defaults then devaluing banks' mortgage-backed assets, then simply helping people pay their mortgages would preserve the value of the mortgage-backed assets and recharge the market with liquidity. That would be a bottom-up solution helping the mass public, rather than a top-down move helping only financial industry executives." And no, that would not be any less fair than handing the same amount of dough straight to Wall Street.
The most embarrassing "provision" of the bailout is its suggestion that, should no profit appear from the gov't-backed banks in 5 years, the president should sorta suggest a plan to congress about how they might somehow make, y'know, a profit. A plan as elegant, coherent, and complete as this.
Anyway, should those banks actually turn a profit down the line, why shouldn't they be kept in public ownership with the benefits going to the tax base? After all, if 5% of the GDP is instantly tacked onto the tumescent national debt, the public are the last people who ought to be deprived of the potential profits. After all, there's no shortage of other, better ways to spend $700 billion.
I also have my doubts about the "or else" threatened by the bailout's backers, not the least because small banks are advertising no distress. Yes, LIBOR is almost 4% and many larger banks aren't lending to eachother as readily, but that's because they're counting on the bailout; why would they try to keep the credit circuit switched on when they can just wait, arms folded, for free money?
I flatly disagree with this. It's true that small banks have few asset-backed securities or overt exposure to the subprime market, so they're not in any trouble. However, you appear to be claiming that the big banks could start lending any time and would be making a profit by doing so, but are actually all colluding in a blackmail scheme? This is not a credible theory. What is actually happening is banks are squeezed for capital. When they lose assets, they need to replace those assets to meet capital requirements, drawing down on what they have available to lend. Also, their risk aversion has just gone up by about 1000%. A classic liquidity trap. However, this doesn't mean that the freezing of credit markets has to be such a bad thing. It might well purge the economy of malinvestment made during the boom.
There may not be "golden parachutes" for execs whose firms were specifically bailed out, but who cares if not only there are no "say on pay" votes by shareholders, but the bosses who dove into bankruptcy don't even have to resign? The party is bloody well not over when it comes to executive renumeration.
The chairmen of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, Lehman Brothers, and Bear Stearns did all have to resign and lost a lot of money in the process.
Also, if the current "crisis" is rooted in the popped housing bubble, why on earth would Republicans kill the affordable housing fund appended to the bailout?
The affordable housing fund was a poison pill by the Democrats. It was being used to try to fund political-action groups like ACORN who do indeed do a lot of yeoman's work in housing, but also do voter-registration drives for the Democrats. The Democratic Party was looking to fund its own party-building activities through public funds.
Hell, why not just pass the $700 billion directly to struggling homeowners? David Sirota brought this up: "If the root of this problem is people not being able to pay off their mortgages, and those defaults then devaluing banks' mortgage-backed assets, then simply helping people pay their mortgages would preserve the value of the mortgage-backed assets and recharge the market with liquidity. That would be a bottom-up solution helping the mass public, rather than a top-down move helping only financial industry executives." And no, that would not be any less fair than handing the same amount of dough straight to Wall Street.
This is a stronger argument and I could probably get behind something like this. But there are a couple of issues here. First, don't be fooled by the word "subprime." Not all subprime borrowers are poor people. There are plenty of income-affluent and wealthy people who have poor credit ratings. Some of them are subprime because they're in debt up to their eyeballs (real estate moguls usually have poor credit scores because they have mountains of debt). Some of these defaults are because people are walking away from homes where they have negative equity since they can buy a cheaper house elsewhere now that prices have declined, sticking the banks with the bill. (It wasn't just the lenders who pretended that house prices never declined.) Also, if we bail out the people who borrow, we create two kinds of moral hazard - one for lenders and one for borrowers. If we only bail out the lenders, we've only created a moral hazard for lenders. (And some of that moral hazard, in the egregious case of Government-Sponsored Entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, has existed for decades.)
This is certainly a defeasible argument, though. If bailouts of homeowners was done responsibly, it would probably be the best solution. But it would be much more expensive to do it responsibly and wouldn't be done responsibly in any event. Still, I'm not really defending the plan we've got. Helicopter money is always sticky due to politics. It's usually done like this one is being done, covertly so it doesn't look like the gov't is simply handing out money. (E.g. the Federal Reserve buying gold well above market prices during the Great Depression.) The same thing is being done here - the Treasury is buying assets at above market value, but they are, in fact, actually getting something for the money. I agree that it's still a giveaway. However, if the government's price ends up being below the maturity value of the assets, then Wall Street would have been better off (in the long run) by refusing the money. I'm sure there are some companies who are going to bet that way.
Anyway, should those banks actually turn a profit down the line, why shouldn't they be kept in public ownership with the benefits going to the tax base? After all, if 5% of the GDP is instantly tacked onto the tumescent national debt, the public are the last people who ought to be deprived of the potential profits. After all, there's no shortage of other, better ways to spend $700 billion.
With the bill as it is currently constructed, it seems quite possible that the Treasury will make a profit. And, indeed, they're taking your advice and apparently will come out of this with a whole lot of equity, so your original criticism (valid when you made it) seems out-of-date. Of course, they're not going to be run by the government, which seemed to have been your fantasy scenario, but few companies appear to be in that kind of mess. One thing that's always puzzled me about socialists - I get why you don't trust corporations. They're quite open about the fact that they're just in it for their own self-interest, after all. What I've never understood is why you trust the clowns in government. Even if they weren't corrupt (which a great many of them are - how do you think Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac happened?), they're almost invariably completely incompetent at business.
Whoops, bailout bill failed anyway. Too much opposition from both the left and the right (Rush Limbaugh and International ANSWER opposed it - strange bedfellows indeed). So Jodi Dean can rest easy.
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