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An Early Examination of Kim Stanley Robinson'sThe Years of Rice and Salt By Erik Slaine
The Years of Rice and Salt is a wonderful novel, poetic and picturesque, delving into aspects of reality and spirituality that have been previously unexplored by the author. How much of a self-examination of his own spirituality, ethics, and cosmology that this novel represents remains to be speculation without talking with the author himself. As a technical feat, however, it can be examined within the context of the novel itself. Many quick summaries of the novel are already printed on the cover, but do not really convey the scope of the novel in literary terms. They describe the scope of the "alternate reality" that the novel describes, rather than the underlying structure of the novel. This article is intended to explore that subject.
The novel is based upon the mythology presented in The Tibetan Book of the Dead, a religious text of Bön mythology translated as a Buddhist metaphor (Presumably originally by Padma-Sambhava). The novel itself uses summaries of the ideas of this classic text as allegory, and structure.
The jati moves through the bardo and subsequent reincarnations. They are a group of souls that were created at the beginning of this karmic age together "floating together as dandelion seeds on the wind", generally finding each other in every life. Moving through incarnations as a family, together.
The plot of the novel, and the history created in it, mirrors the jati's spiritual journey towards enlightenment, improving themselves through reincarnations. This is also the journey of civilization reaching for enlightenment itself, through technology, spirituality, and social science, among other things. Each stage is told in a different manner that closely matches the views of the lives that the jati must endure in their trials of the human-world. What happens to the jati is echoed in the struggling contemporary societies that they live in.
(p. 84) Kyu and Bold in the Bardo:
"It's a miracle you can find me here. "No. We always meet in the bardo. We will cross paths for as long as the six worlds turn in this cycle of the cosmos. We're part of a karmic jati."(Kim Stanley Robinson)
In The Years of Rice and Salt the author generally has the characters meet in the Chönyid Bardo, where "the deceased is, unless otherwise enlightened, more of less under the delusion that although he is deceased he still possesses a body like the body of flesh and blood. When he comes to realize that really he has no such body, he begins to develop an overmastering desire to possess one; and, seeking for one, the karmic predilection enters into the Third Bardo of seeking Rebirth, and eventually, with his rebirth in this or some other world, the after-death state comes to an end." (W.Y. Evans-Wentz, editor, The Tibetan Book of the Dead.) This state changes with the perceptions of the recently dead that pass through it, so with each incarnation, the jati encounters a different bardo. Early on in the novel, it is fear that drives the jati to their womb, to which they run and hide. Later in the novel it is portrayed as a hopeless Chinese bureaucracy.
Certainly a landmark novel, as I tend to think with each subsequent novel from this author. The novel goes beyond it's genre and expectation.
(edited to remove "spoilers". If you haven't read it by now, that's just too bad.)
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Nice essay. To make it accessible for a broader audience, you might more concretely define terms with with the reader might not be familiar with, such as jati and The Bardo, but of course anyone who has already read to book will be familiar with the concepts.
I was personally a bit disappointed with the later half of the book (or maybe just the last third or so); I was fascinated by the interludes in The Bardo, and was disappointed when Robinson moved away from them. Of course, as you know, it's been awhile since I've read the book (although, as you also know, it's the next book on my list, even ahead of some stuff by George R. R. Martin that I found at a used bookstore earlier this week), so my recolections are a bit vague. I'm sure I'll have more to say once I've reread it.
That bit that you emailed me about the red egg was great stuff, by the way. I've been meaning to write back to let you know how impressed I was with it, but I'll just tell you here.
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I wrote the above essay a couple of days ago, and I thought that the plot moving away from the bardo might be a bit wrenching. But after the jati spits out the potion in the bardo, they gain enough insight to dive right back into the flesh, as mentioned by the introduction to The Tibetan Book of the Deador Bardo Thodol ("unless otherwise enlightened" above).
I did define jati above, but perhaps neglected the bardo.
The bardo is the subconsious that is ourselves outside of the world, the resonant structure of the sentient universe is percieved here by creatures ill-equipped for seeing the universe as it really is. It is a transitory state.
There are generally three states, as defined by the Bardo Thodol:
The Chikhai Bardo "This period it sthe first Bardo or 'Transitional State of The Moment of Death', wherein dawns the Clear Light, first in primordial purity, then the percipient being unable to recognize it, that is to say, to hold on to and remain in the trancendental state of the unmodified mind concomitant with it, percieves it karmically obscured, which is it's secondary aspect." (W.Y. Evans-Wentz, editor, The Tibetan Book of the Dead.) This period is a sleeping or trance state in which the deceased has separated from the "human-plane body".
The Chonyid Bardo was described above, the second of the states of bardo. It is in this bardo that the characters interact in the novel.
The third state of bardo is the Sidpa Bardo, a transitional state of (or while seeking) rebirth. An instance of this in the novel is when Kyu finds himself hiding in the elephant grass of the bardo in Awake to Emptiness. The elephant grass becomes inpenatrable, and he realizes that he has found a womb. It takes the form of the jati jumping off an impossibly high wall in Warp and Weft.
But the bardo is blurred after that. We see Kuo in the bardo confronting Bai when the bardo and the real world become indistinguishable in War of the Asuras, telling Bai just how they were messing up for all these incarnations, just where they went wrong.
I hope that doesn't further confuse the topic. My mind is still racing with this one....
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Red eggs are given as tokens of the New Year, seen as renewal to the Chinese, and the eggs are meant to bring happiness in the birth of the new age. They are the symbol of changing process of life and their round shape is the symbol of harmonious and happy life, and red is the color of happiness. They are also given to mothers to celebrate their new children, celebrate the creation of a new life. They are given in this context by one character to another to mark the beginning of renewal and change in the recieving characters' lives. When Ismail ibn Mani al-Dir Sees the balloon float over Konstantiniyye, it is described as a "red egg" as well. The change in his life is marked by the gift of the egg, presumably from the Kerala of Travancore, and the men in the gondola even smile and wave down at them before dropping bombs to destroy the palace (mass market paperback p. 487).
This, of course, marks the change in Ismail's life, shifting it away from the court of the Ottoman Sultan Califph Selim the Third to that of the Kerala, reuniting Ismail with the rest of the jati (except Selim, who obsconded).
A pivotal moment in the bardo takes place when the jati refuse to drink the potion of forgetfulness at the end of the Chönyid Bardo, thus enabling them to remember their previous existences in their next life (Warp and Weft) The book following, Widow Kang, is important as well, as the jati recognize each other in this life, Ibrahim ibn Hasam and Widow Kang Tongbi strive to produce great literature that influences society toward the path that is needed to be taken by the jati, a path of enlightenment and tolerance. This is the jati making progress in their movement through their particular spiritual path. For the first time, there is no bardo chapter at the end of this book. Instead we have the chapter Afterlife, in which Ibrahim and Kang spend their twilight years together.
(Widow Kang, Afterlife p. 471) Ibrahim ibn Hasam:
From "Wealth and the Four Great Inequalities": a. "With this division of labor the subjugation of farmers by warriors and priests way institutionalized, a subjugation that has never ended. This was the first inequality."
b. "...what we see with our own eyes is that in farming subcultures, women labor both at home and in the fields. In truth farming life requires work from all. But from early on, women did as men required. And in each family, the control of legal power resembled the situation at large: the king and his heir dominated the rest. These were the second and the third inequalities, of men over women and children."
c. "So added to the subjugation of farmer, women, and the family was this fourth inequality, of race or group, leading to the subjugation of the most powerless peoples to slavery. And the unequal accumulation of wealth by the elites continued."
d. "Indeed I now think that the Indian and Chinese description of the afterlife, the system of the six lokas, or realms of reality-the devas, asuras, humans, beasts, pretas, and inhabitants of hell-is in fact a metaphorical but precise description of this world and the inequalities that exist in it, with the devas sitting in luxury and judgment on the rest, the asuras fighting to keep the devas in their high position, the humans getting by as humans do, the beasts laboring as beasts do, the homeless preta suffering in fear at the edge of hell, and the inhabitants of hell enslaved to pure immiseration."--Kim Stanley Robinson
This is a good description of the six lokas and their relationship to Ibrahim ibn Hasam's Four Great Inequalities, and shows an outline of the plot of the novel as well. Consider Kyu beginning in hell as a slave to the Chinese, a young Ethiopian eunuch, and at the fourth inequality. As Kokila she is a wife of low caste, and therefore on the third inequality, but murders her brother in law, and is judged harshly in the bardo, causing her to do time as a tiger in her next incarnation named Kya, in trisan, the beast-world. In her next incarnation she is the Sultana Katima, and has finally risen to the second inequality. She gradually ascends through the inequalities and lokas as the jati moves through time. It is in Warp and Weft that we first see her elevated to a male chieftain, at the top of these human inequalities. And in that society, the inequalities are much more mitigated than in the eastern tradition that the jati must usually deal with.
As the appearance of Kuo in the world which has become the bardo in The War of the Asuras reveals, a downward spiral of the jati and civilization into the depths of hung or Hell begins at the point in Ocean Continents when Kheid uses the violence of guns to achieve his goals, and thoughtlessly "dehumanizes" the savages of Yingzhou. This infection of thought spreads throughout civilization, moving it away from compassion and toward the subjugation and destruction of other races, furthering the fourth inequality.
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"Spoilers" is scaring people away. They probably haven't gotten to this book yet. Spoiler threads kept me away in several instances.
Which is why I sometimes hate trailers for movies. Especially comedies, as they'll take the best one liner in the movie and repeat it ad nauseum.
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I got about 3/5 of the way through it some months ago - enjoying it very much - but got embroiled in a series of household moves which kept my bed-side stack well-shuffled.... Now I am resettled, and this thread has encouraged me to go back and finish it. (And I don't consider your discussion to have spoiled anything very much.)
Nice essay, I was likewise fascinated with the universe here, and eager to learn more about its underpinnings in the source texts. Thanks!
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I was fortunate enough to have access to the Bardo Thodol when I was reading the novel. Kim Stanley Robinson also throws in a lot of other stuff, coloring the text.
A wonderful and insightful allegory. I'm glad you'll finish it.
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For some reason this thing is inducing unpleasant (and probably ridiculous) comparisons with The Celestine Prophecy and The Tenth Insight, which I read for pure snickering amusement.
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Completely different animals, Maccabeus. If you give the book a try, you'll see that the way Erik is approaching it here is just one possibility. It's also possible to just read the book as a fascinating alternate history novel, which used the literary conceit of reincarnation to give continuity of character to a book that spans around 700 years of history. Don't get me wrong--what Erik is saying is completely valid, and he's done a fantastic job of uncovering the sources of a lot of the elements that make their way into the book; as he noted early in his first post, he feels free to focus exclusively on this aspect of the book precisely because the more conventional aspects of the book have been discussed at length elsewhere.
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Thanks. As an alternate history novel, It does rock.
The premise of the story is also the structure of the novel. That is the issue that I intended to explore. I am very interested in the author's writing, and couldn't help but disect it to find those hidden "easter eggs" as jon from The Demimonde put it.
KSR's Mars series is very popular (and award winning) and is more accessible to new readers. I think that my introduction to KSR was apt as well, his first novel, The Wild Shore.
Thanks for the input.
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The Alchemist, Iwang in the bardo. Yeah, that line got me too. You would think in that life that they were making so much progress too!
This however was the life immediatly after Kheid created the "infection" of murdering with guns. Kheid had attempted to chop up Kahli, creating more violence in the world.
I've just finished it. I'm digesting for a piece on the nature of the plot.
I had put off this novel because a.)I couldn't afford the hardcopy, and b.)I wasn't sure.... Kim Stanley Robinson going back to that point? I guess I can wait.
Well good things are worth waiting for!
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Yeah Jenny, that is a great line, isn't it? I remember liking it a lot too. I'm rereading the book now, but I started it just before bed last night, so I'm only about 20 pages into it. It's even better than I remembered. Anybody read Monkey? KSR makes heavy reference to it, at least in the first chapter. Unfortunately, my copy is in KS, so I won't be able to get my hands on it until long after I've finished TYORAS.
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Sun Wu Kong is Bold Bardo's name from a past life, "The Monkey in the Void". I'll dig up some references on it a little later.
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There is a Chinese epic, called Monkey, that was written down relatively recently; I'm thinking 17th century or so. I tried to search for it on Amazon.com just a second ago, but unfortunately they've implemented a search "feature" that makes their site pretty much useless for finding anything.
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Actually I've seen several Hong Kong movies on the subject. The monkey strives for enlightenment against Asuras trying to stop him. When he reaches each step, he must change tactics. It's alot deeper than that, so I'd be interested in hearing more...
Wow, I wish I was rereading TYORAS!
(I read The Wild Shore again every couple of years!)
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Kim Stanley Robinson cites The Journey to the West prior to the Chronology, an exchange between Wu Kong, the monkey, and Tripitaka. Here's a quote from the Amazon description of that particular novel:
quote: About the Author Wu Cheng'en (c. 1500-c. 1582) bore the style Ruzhong and the pen name Sheyang Hermit. According to Records of Huai'an Compiled during the Tianqi reign period of the Ming Dynasty, Wu Chen'en was "lively and clever, erudite and an accomplished writer". W.J.F (Bill) Jenner, born in 1940, is an English student of Chinese history and culture. His secondary education was mainly in the Greek and Latin classics. He began the study of Chinese at Oxford in 1958, where he graduated in Oriental Studies in 1962. He earned his Oxford D Phil for a thesis on the history of the great city of Luoyang in the 5th-6th centruy AD.
From 1963 to 1965 he was a translator at the Foreign Languages Press, for which he translated From Emperor to Citizen (volume 1, 1964; volume 2, 1965; laterreprints in two-volume and single-volume form, including one from Oxford University Press), the ghosted autobiography of Aisin-Gioro Pu Yi, the last emperor of China. He also began his translation of Journey to the West at that time. From 1979 to 1985 he returned to the FLP most summers to complete Journey to the West and to do other translations for the Press and its sister organization Panda Books.They included Lu Xun: Selected Poems, a bilingual edition with introduction and notes published by the FLP in 1982 and Miss Sophie's Diary and Other Stories by Ding Ling (Panda Books, 1985).
Since 1965 he has taught Chinese studies in universities, mainly the University of Leeds and also the Australian National University and the University of East Anglia.
His other books include Modern Chinese Stories, edited and translated with Gladys Yang (London: Oxford Univeristy Press, 1970); Memories of Loyang; Yang Hsuan-chih and the lost capital, 493-534 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981); and The Tyranny of History: the Roots of China's Crisis (London; Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1992; Penguin paperback with corrections and afterword, 1994).
In recent years his main project has been a major new two-volume history of China from the Neolithic the present for Penjuin Books.
He has two daughters and a son.
Book Description Journey to the West is a classic Chinese mythological novel. It was written during the Ming Dynasty based on traditional folktales. Consisting of 100 chapters, this fantasy relates the adventures of a Tang Dynasty (618-907) priest Sanzang and his three disciples, Monkey, Pig and Friar Sand, as they travel west in search of Buddhist Sutra. The first seven chapters recount the birth of the Monkey King and his rebellion against Heaven. Then in chapters eight to twelve, we learn how Sanzang was born and why he is searching for the scriptures, as well as his preparations for the journey. The rest of the story describes how they vanquish demons and monsters, tramp over the Fiery Mountain, cross the Milky Way, and after overcoming many dangers, finally arrive at their destination - the Thunder Monastery in the Western Heaven - and find the Sutra.
Attached are a number of illustrations drawn during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).
From Amazon, about Journey to the West sited by KSR in the Beginning of TYORAS.
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Oh, this has made me want to read this novel. I'm adding it to my Christmas list right now. The issues of the rise of human civilization, the slow schooling of humanity toward the light, are really important to me right now. And of all the treatments of this theme that I've read, almost none seem to understand the advancement of civilization and spirit in terms of technology and knowledge. But when I studied history from the perspective, suddenly it made sense for the first time ever for me. It became more than just an endless series of wars and battles and transfers back and forth of political power (which is really an ephemeral, transitive thing). It became the story of how increased understanding brings increased power. Increased power, when turned to good uses (as it inevitably eventually seems to be) then brings better conditions and in turn, opportunities to further increase understanding.
Sometimes I wonder why it's taken so long for me to get here. Why I haven't always been focused on how humanity must accomplish the task of surviving the next few hundred years. How we will manage to squeak through the narrowing gap between the slamming doors which are our impending extinction. We really have not one millisecond to waste. And we need our best minds and hearts to be fully engaged in the process.
I wonder how other subjects ever interested me so much, unless it was that a complete understanding of those things was needed to see the pieces with which we have to work?
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Erik, you are a wonderful acolyte! <beams at him> Thank you for bringing this book to my attention. I am sure that I want to read it. Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2003
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Rereading this thread, it might be interesting to note that I have now, in fact, read Journey to the West. It is a great classic work, colorful and wonderful. If you know of Handsome Monkey King, this is a great version.
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quote:I see an interesting perspective of human psychology. Delusion is not nessisarily relegated to the bardo. I read the Book of the Dead as literature. It is an interesting view of Buddhist ideas, and gave me a lot of insight into that particular venue of Eastern culture. It's been a while, but I believe that this would be the point where the Devas would force you to flee into a new womb.
I approach these things as if they were true, but I also believe they can be applied to events in life. In my religion, death is seen as another birth, and likewise we have ordinances which suggest death, rebirth, and resurrection, but I feel these can be more than symbolic. There were births into a spiritual realm before the birth into mortality (this is pretty uniquely Latter-Day Saint at this point) and before that, no point at which we did not exist, as there will not be an end.
But there will be a point when, for the exalted, time is no more. What, then, will forward and back in time mean? Lately it seems to me this is release from what the Buddhists call Samsara.
But getting back to psychology, I think liberation (bardo) is a good description of what I see in my mental health endeavors. When I am hunting an insight, it is to see past a lie that I have been bound by - like that anger is bad, or that my parents didn't love me as I thought they should, or what have you. I do think one needs to take care in not becoming liberated of simply everything, though I guess I did go through a phase of that, where almost nothing could be trusted and nearly everything was open to question. It was like digging down to a bedrock foundation.
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Interesting. I really hadn't considered it as a real description of the universe. The psychological ideas really come through when it describes the states of the bardo, however. For me it provides a view of how the mind can evaluate itself morally, a picture of an unconscious metaphor. In TYORAS, KSR has really utilized this rich landscape of allegory.
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