January 28, 2023

In last week’s episode we agreed that the last 40 “Story of the Stone” chapters were giving final season wrap-up-all-the-loose-threads vibes, but perhaps our #ReadingTheStone chats now do that too.

We circled back to the topic of one of our first conversations – on failure as generative of creativity, a theme that begins this novel and also structures a particular ethos of reading the text.

Discussion of Chapters 86-90 ranged today from the impending doom of Baoyu’s marriage, the “impossibility” of Daiyu and Baoyu as a good match, sharpening depictions of officialdom and venality; to the transition from the lyrical to the melodramatic in HLM; to some thoughts from Steve’s prison class,  to incomplete narrative or linguistic understanding as a mode of learning (“falling in love with things in layers, before you fully understand them” – Elena’s beautiful phrasing); to finally, this insight from Shelly: “Today’s #ReadingTheStone (Chapters 86-90) was even richer and more heart-warming than ever. Sometimes digging deep into old classic texts is the most contemporary, and necessary kind of mental and moral activity one can muster.”  Indeed.

Join us next week as we soldier onwards to Chapters 91-95.

Including a few screenshots of our sidebar discussion from today; a rich array of post-chat comments have been posted on the #ReadingTheStone hashtag, too.

Listen to today’s chat: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1974761/12136780