The Deer and the Cauldron (1st Book) by Louis Cha (Jin Yong)

[cranefly]

The Deer and the Cauldron (First Book) by Louis Cha (Jin Yong)
Serialized in a newspaper from 1969 to 1972

I wasn’t certain I was going to like this, as the main character Trinket is such an anti-hero among heroes, undisciplined among the disciplined, prone to unethical and immoral behavior amidst the chivalrous. Perhaps most significantly, he’s not a martial artist among lots of martial artists.

But it works. Trinket grows on you, and I can understand how Louis Cha (the author) became interested in such a character. And Louis Cha is quite a writer.

True, there are times when the book has a juvenile feel about it, a little too simplistic in plot and characters. But then Louis Cha will introduce another layer to what has been going on, and you realize that the people and the goings-on weren’t nearly as simple as you had been led to believe.

This book doesn’t have as much martial arts fighting in it as his earlier books, but when they come, they are very sophisticated and well thought out. Louis Cha is very good at orchestrating big scenes. The book keeps adding layers of mystery and intrigue, such that as it nears its end, you’re wondering how Cha is going to tie up all the loose (and fascinating) threads.

Well, I’ll tell you how he ties them all up -- and no, I don’t believe this warrants a spoiler alert. On the final page, even in the final paragraph, he adds two more unfinished threads.

I actually laughed at the end. Talk about a cliffhanger.

So next up is book two -- which turns out to be problematic. You see, it’s a trilogy, and the English translation (done brilliantly by John Minford) is available only in hardback. I actually bought the first book several years ago when I had money. Now I don’t have quite so much floating about. Still, I did check Amazon, and yes, the second book is available.

For $180.

Actually, I just now checked again, and it’s no loner available. Not new. Some people are offering it used for $99. When someone offers to sell you something for $99, it really means $100. I mean, just so you know. Stupid psychological games in the marketplace. Do sellers really think we’re that dumb? (Gee willikers, it’s only a two-digit number of dollars! That’s a lot less than, say, a three-digit number of dollars! What a steal!)

So I started looking for it in local libraries. Nope. Not even available through inter-library loan. BTW, there is a neat website (I forget the name) that will tell you the nearest library that has a book. The closest one was over in Europe. England, if I recall correctly. At a distance of 5324 miles or somesuch. Yeah, I’ll be making that trip real soon.

Then just yesterday I decided to search anew. Not certain what I did differently this time, but I got a couple hits through interlibrary loan.

I put in a request. The second book should be on its way soon for pickup at the Mountain View library.

Coming from Fresno, of all places.

[Drunk Monk]

I can't remember which though. I was inclined to say part 4, but you say it's a trilogy. I'll have to look at my bookshelf when I get home. Do you want to borrow/trade? Because I never read part 1.

I agree with you about Trinket. He's a lot like Monkey in Journey to the West, quite a cad and an anti-hero, but they both grow on you.

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

My library has the Deer and the Cauldron but calls it the second book in the trilogy.

Or, as I continued to hunt, the book was broken up into three parts for the translated edition. If it is actually the second or first book of a trilogy there will be a problem as it's the last book Louis Cha wrote.

[cranefly]

It's a trilogy, but Jin Yong lost interest after the first two and never finished the third. Fortunately L. Ron Hubbard offered to write the third one from the grave, for which we should all be thankful, and I believe I ventured into make-believe-land...

Here's what wikipedia says:
The Deer and the Cauldron has been translated into English by John Minford, published in three volumes from 1997 to 2002. Several minute details were paraphrased and omitted in the translation.

Me again. Book 2, for whatever reason, is the really expensive one. The first and third books can be had for maybe $30 each. But that middle one is 6 times more expensive.

Sure, DM, if you want to borrow Book 1, that'd be fine. And if you have Book 2 or 3, I'd be interested in borrowing it. I'm a notoriously slow reader. I mean, I read slower than I eat (I chew food up into individual quarks). So trying to read the library copy in 3 weeks might be tough. Also, I do not trust the interlibrary loan form I filled out. It is just ambiguous enough to make me suspect they'll send me book 1 by mistake. We'll see.

I actually saw a couple reviews of book 2. It sounds very scattered and off the wall, so it may just be more loose threads and I'll ultimately be disappointed. But I still want to give it a go.

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

When I get my copy of whatever volume they have (Hoping for all combined in one volume), I'll let you know.

I'm very pleased with our library loaning options. If it is anywhere in the LA county library system, they will deliver it to your local branch.

L. Ron isn't dead. He is waiting in the spaceship in the desert to avoid income tax complications.

[cranefly]

So. Uh. Interesting development.

I sometimes check TV listings on titantv.com. It's very handy. Establish an account and set up your viewing area, then just stay logged in. You can go there anytime and see what's on all the channels at a glance.

So a few days ago I was checking for when The Big Bang Theory is on (which is always) and The Deer and the Cauldron jumped out at me. It's on channel 32.5 (KMTP) at 6 pm on several nights, and it's listed as a drama. The problem is, I always see news when I go there. So I was searching for a TV serialization of The Deer and the Cauldron on the web, and, well, instead I hit something else.

It's a pdf of the whole trilogy. Yep, I downloaded it, and it's in English, translated by Minford, the whole shebang. Not certain what I think of that.
I don't intend to read it as a pdf, unless problems arise getting the hardback books through libraries or friends. But anyway, FYI, it's on the mediafire site, whatever that is. I won't put the link, but you should be able to find it if it interests you.

I still don't know whether there really is a TV serialization of the books. I suspect so. But I'll dig into that more at a later date.

One last thing. I did some cursory trolling of a wuxia fan site, and there's considerable animosity towards Minford's translation. They take issue with his westernization of some of the proper names, and with condensing some of the text, and also he used the word karate somewhere, so they're up in arms over that, because that's a Japanese term. Without knowing a lot about it, I'm going to suggest they're a bunch of anal shitheads incapable of understanding the difficulty -- or appreciating the result -- of a literate translation. So I stand by Minford's translation (he gives reasons for some of his liberties in the foreward), believing it to be far superior to whatever translations these fans might have cobbled together themselves. But again, I haven't researched this much, except to get a powerful sense of anal shitheads in wuxia fandom.

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

From the wikipedia entry (not that I trust anything wikipedia says) there was a 100 episode series about the book.

[Drunk Monk]

I meant to check my bookshelf last night but forget. We went to a meet and greet with Nastia Liukin so I spaced it.

It wouldn't surprise me if there is a television series. Almost all the big wuxia novels are made into television series. I'm told there's a good one playing right now on channel 26 of Outlaws of the Marsh (again, meant to check that out last night but forget).

I've always had a hard time wrapping my head around the impact of Jin Yong. Meir Shahar told me he once went to a symposium just on Jin Yong where they had this huge banquet based on Jin Yong stories. He was really impressed with this giant slab of ham that was poked with finger holes as tribute to some iron finger character, and the holes were filled with tofu, which was plucked out and served, then the ham was discarded.

[cranefly]

I just picked up The Second Book from the library. Looks good. The lady cautioned me that if anything happened to it I would have to pay something like $120. So I'm going to flip pages very carefully....

[Drunk Monk]

i forgot to look again last night. :oops:

[cranefly]

I'm thinking we're about due for another "goddammit" post from the DM.

Meanwhile, I'm 200 pages into book 2, a little over 300 to go.

Oh, a question I've been meaning to ask DM. How is it you managed to read one of the later
books in the trilogy but not the first?

[Drunk Monk]

...and I'd be happy to loan it to you. Maybe we should do lunch soon. Know any good Thai bowling alleys? (not a euphemism despite what you all think).

I got tD&tC because I was an assistant teacher for Meir Shahar's class on CMA at Stanford. He had added that to the class book list, even though we barely engaged it. I got all the books on the book list that I didn't already have, which were really only a few.