Kevin

@kmichaelwilson

Historical Chinese literature, poetry, and philosophy. Co-host Rereading the Stone podcast book reviews & discussion of Ming-Qing literature, science fiction, etc.

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Kevin@kmichaelwilson· 29d

pooh-poohing one of most obviously good and righteous moments of the French Revolution tell us more, professor smooth brain

professor smooth brain: Did it put ordinary people in charge of their destiny tho

The storming of the Bastille was the opening act in a century-long upheaval that broke with the premodern world and finally put ordinary people in charge of their nation's destiny.
That's the legacy of the French Revolution.

Kevin@kmichaelwilson· 29d

look, just because it's a 1930s Chinese novel by Zhang Henshui 张恨水 (Fate in Tears and Laughter 啼笑因緣) doesn't mean we can't *assemble a crew* everyone who's anyone is here: ✔️ "Quick-knife Zhou" 快刀周 ✔️ "Pockmarked Jiang" 麻子江 ✔️ "Baldy Wang" 王二秃子

沈大娘也进来相见，寿峰给他介绍：那先进来的叫快刀周，是羊屠夫；麻子叫江老海，是吹糖人儿的；秃子便叫王二秃子，是赶大车的。寿峰道：“大嫂！你的事我都对他们说了，

cover to the novel, drawing of a beautiful woman

Kevin@kmichaelwilson· Jul 13

editing the podcast today

Stalin picture before and after Nikolai Yezhov is removed, with the word "installation" on top of him (where "installment" probably should have been said, a recurring gaffe that spans an impressive 40+ episodes)

Kevin@kmichaelwilson· Jul 13

The secondary literature is awful! There's so much work to be done!

Kevin@kmichaelwilson· Jul 11

this, and *not* Stephen King, is peak performance for a writer: 🌸 wrote a few works, but certainly didn't "write every day;" led a full life, full of non-writerly experiences 🌺 never made any money from it 🌸 highly educated 🪷 thinly-veiled personal obsessions/ fetishes ("skin in the game")

cover to Sphere edition of The Sound of His Horn (1952)

#booksky

John William Wall (6 November 1910 - 11 April 1989), pen name Sarban, was a British writer and diplomat. Wall's diplomatic career lasted more than thirty years, but his writing career as Sarban was brief and not prolific, ending during the early 1950s. Sarban is described in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy as "a subtle, literate teller of tales, conscious of the darker and less acceptable implications that underlie much popular literature". Wall cited the supernatural fiction of Arthur Machen and Walter de la Mare as influences on his work. [1]

Kevin@kmichaelwilson· Jul 11

when you learn Classical Chinese, they usually fail to mention that, as a bonus, you'll also be able to read the most significant poem in Vietnamese literature

From Wikipedia: The first page of Kim Vân Kiều tân truyện 斷腸新聲, better known as Truyện Kiều (Tale of Kiều) 傳翹.

Based on 17th C. caizi jiaren novel I reference in the above tweet.

#booksky

Kevin@kmichaelwilson· Jul 9

getting extremely strong dream vibes off Tale of Jin, Yun, and Qiao 金雲翹傳 (17th C.), these levels are off-the-charts maybe the most HLM-pilled caizi jiaren novel I've yet encountered; 0% chance Cao didn't read this one

extremely dream-pilled scene, with a female character writing a bunch of poems of lament to be formally deposited in the (magical) Register of the Broken-hearted 斷腸冊

惜多才
9 惜多才，鴛箋不忍裁。合歡年年為人譜，自身祇把相思捱。相思捱，惜多才。
10 憐薄命
11 憐薄命，夜夜成孤另。金屋常聞貯阿嬌，偏咱一面難僥幸。難僥幸，憐薄命。
12 悲岐路
13 悲岐路，羊腸苦難度。路艱未若奴心艱，一折差時千折誤。千折誤，悲岐路。
14 憶故人
15 憶故人，眼見白頭新。何曾昔宿雲霄上，認得平生車笠真。車笠真，憶故人。
16 念奴嬌
17 念奴嬌，對鏡頓魂消。我見猶然頻歎息，怎教紅粉不相嘲。不相嘲，念奴嬌。
18 哀青春
19 哀青春，嬌花似美人。正是上林春色好，願祈風雨潤花神。潤花神，哀青春。
20 嗟蹇遇
21 嗟蹇遇，好夢都醒去。非是逢人便乞憐，祇因不識朱門路。朱門路，嗟蹇遇。
22 苦零落
23 苦零落，一身無處著。落花辭樹自東西，孤燕失巢繞簾幙。繞簾幙，苦零落。
24 夢故園
25 夢故園，歸魂誰肯援。松菊舊廬都不識，白雲芳草默無言。默無言，夢故園。
26 哭相思
27 哭相思，哽咽已多時。心痛有聲吞不住，情深攽吐忽傷悲。忽傷悲，哭相思。

extreme Daiyu (I just inverted the colors, same joke as "extreme Lu Xun")

Kevin@kmichaelwilson· Jul 9

Kevin@kmichaelwilson· Jul 9

provocative gum-feeding scene that I wasn't expected from a 1930s Chinese novel (Fate in Tears and Laughter 啼笑因緣 by Zhang Henshui 张恨水) (see ALT)

He Lina (rich young Bejiing lady, seeming embodiment of "modern woman") takes out two sticks of gum, eats one herself and directly feeds the other to bourgeois male protagonist ("Have some," she says as feeding him), who's moved but doesn't quite know why (generally, he's more into the younger poor singing girl who looks just like her and whom he is paying to go to school...)

Kevin@kmichaelwilson· Jul 6

Fate in Tears and Laughter 啼笑因緣 (1930), by Zhang Henshui 张恨水 A Lady Awakened (2011), by Cecilia Grant Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation (1993), by John Guillory Tian dao 天道 (2008) (tv show) 2/2

"Which singing girl is not to be pitied?"

Kevin@kmichaelwilson· Jul 4

new trope just dropped 🀄📚

Qing Tropes
Trope
In the event of a wife's being an only child, giving one of her children her surname in order to continue the lineage
Instances: Pledged Lovers 定情人，Jinxiang Pavilion 錦香亭

#booksky #trope #明清小說

Kevin@kmichaelwilson· Jul 4

"Because I think about it a lot," says OP who clearly has never even googled this topic, let alone thought about it in any meaningful capacity

Do you ever just think about the fact that the illiterate masses of Elizabethan England were able to appreciate Shakespeare and the average person today has worse media literacy in spite of being theoretically capable of reading? Because I think about it a lot
7:31 AM • Jul 3, 2026 @ Everybody can reply
89 reposts 10 quotes 680 likes 13 saves
52
₴ 99
© 680

Kevin@kmichaelwilson· Jul 4

all your favorite dorks are like "PKD, PKD," but this is correct answer

The Sound of His Horn (1952), by Sarban (John William Wall)

#booksky

Kevin@kmichaelwilson· Jul 3

who up reading Chapter 5 of John Guillory's Cultural Capital, "Chapter Five: The Discourse of Value: From Adam Smith to Barbara Herrnstein Smith"

Kevin@kmichaelwilson· Jul 1

What's this, why, it's a physical book that its publisher is requesting you "return to your local bookseller" if you happen not personally to have purchased it! (contra US law) Thinking that the physicality of the book is what's critical, and not a history of social struggle, is called "fetishism"

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.
This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and a not purchase it, or it wasn't purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite book retai and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
All rights reserved.

#booksky #fetishism #commodityfetishism #materialism

Kevin@kmichaelwilson· Jul 1

Pretty sure that questions of privacy and surveillance are social and legal questions, not an artifact of the final product's form? Were these books written by hand, Daniel? Using magic ink? Did you teleport to the library? When you move house, do you have magic spirits to help you?

Physical books.
You own them. They don't require updates. They don't surveil you or collect and sell your data. They are a genuinely safe hallucinogen that leaves you smarter and more empathetic and with a longer attention span the more you use them. Free from the library.
What's not to like?
7:57 AM • Jul 1, 2026 & Some people can reply
295 reposts 1.2K likes 10 saves

Kevin@kmichaelwilson· Jun 30

southern racist John Crowe Ransom (April 30, 1888 – July 3, 1974) moves to Ohio to start literary school premised on ignoring history, gets nominated for the Pulitzer prize

ugly guy in a stupid hat, imagining the "good ol' days"

In 1930, alongside eleven other Southern Agrarians, he published the conservative, Agrarian manifesto /'I Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition, which assailed the tide of industrialism that appeared to be sweeping away traditional Southern culture. 6] The Agrarians believed that the Southern tradition, rooted in the pre-Civil War agricultural model, was the answer to the South's economic and cultural problems. His contribution to I'II Take My Stand is his essay
Reconstructed but Unregenerate which starts the book and lays out the Southern Agrarians' basic argument. In various essays influenced by his Agrarian beliefs, Ransom defended the manifesto's assertion that modern industrial capitalism was a dehumanizing force that the South should reject in favor of an agrarian economic model. However, by the late 1930s

New Criticism was a formalist movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic object. The movement derived its name from John Crowe Ransom's 1941 book The New Criticism.

Kevin@kmichaelwilson· Jun 30

new trope just dropped

Trope
Instances
Killing oneself (usually as a concubine, wife, or servant) in order to sacrifice your body as food for starving troops
Jinxiang Pavilion 錦香亭

inverted color "extreme Lu Xun" (author of "The Madman's Diary")

Kevin@kmichaelwilson· Jun 29

this is actually really encouraging — the "centrism" complicit in the rise of American authoritarianism has no socio-material basis, and is entirely limited to a few hundred people online intoning daily self-congratulations for how they voted in the past

the entirety of American centrism -- some guy who on a daily basis congratulates himself online for voting for K amala H arris

Kevin@kmichaelwilson· Jun 28

you ever watch Tiandao (2007)? worst music for a show I've ever seen, but the plot is interesting enough

poster for Tiandao, main characters' visages in the sky, a car beneath them sort of

Kevin@kmichaelwilson· Jun 27

oh damn, I was in the graveyard and stumbled up Wang Xifeng's tombstone #石頭記

氣也賭盡了，強也算爭足了。

In the Hawkes translation of Dream of the Red Chamber, “I've been able to indulge my every whim, no one's ever managed to get the better of me in anything.”

#booksky

Kevin@kmichaelwilson· Jun 22

[explanation, tedious] Famously, Jia 賈 is homophonous with 假 “fake, false," whereas Eyre is homophonous with "error." In the texts of both Hongloumeng and Jane Eyre these connections are explicitly made. Baoyu means "precious jade" and Baoyu was made in error, an unneeded extra piece of the sky

still standing up, giving tedious and lengthy explanation of the comment/ joke

Kevin@kmichaelwilson· Jun 22

check this out

example of the kind of stage costume you get to see in the show, this one blue and white, with extremely elaborate headwear and wing-like attachments

Kevin@kmichaelwilson· Jun 22

Any of you watching The Lead 主角 (2026)? It's a good show, to be sure. Great visuals of traditional Chinese performance. Hard not to tire, though, of how female characters are being portrayed. Brave and dedicated, yet quiet and composed? "Strong female" with male fantasy characteristics imo...

Yi Qing'e in traditional costume and makeup

Kevin@kmichaelwilson· Jun 20

Notice, by the way, the seeming reference, shall we say... indebtedness to David Graeber's cover design

DEBT
THE FIRST
5,000 YEARS
DAVID GRAEBER
"A BRILLIANT, DEEPLY ORIGINAL POLITICAL THINKER." REBECCA SOLNIT, AUTHOR A PARADISE BUILT IN HELL
THANK YOU! COME AGAIN!
MELVILLE HOUSE
PUBLISHING

Kevin@kmichaelwilson· Jun 20

one of the greatest things about Goodreads is when ordinary people review academic titles, and they simply are not interested in flattering the author 😂

I was really hoping this book would be a cohesive adventure through prosody etc. in
Chinese, but it seems to be more of an exoticizing collection of a professor's post-it notes; "Here is a cool metaphor and what it implies about thinking!" "Oh but here is a contradicting metaphor, whup!" Sort of pseudo-sociolinguistic/psycholinguistic rambling. (which is fine, just know what you're in for)

also do not totally trust the author's interpretations--at one point he mentions the English saying "push a meeting up a week," which in my usage means having the meeting sooner (and some cursory googling says this is the more common interpretation), to mean having a meeting later, which also explains his failure to connect it to "up" and "down" on a calendar when trying to explain and compare it with the Mandarin use of up/down for time. This is not exactly reassuring seeing as I cannot proofread his Mandarin translations. As for rhythm; citing TV jingles, political slogans, and public signs as having rhythmic patters is very reasonable, but extrapolating that this makes Mandarin "more rhythmic" is to ignore the same phenomena in English. Casual experiments have shown that from prosody alone people have a hard time distinguishing between
Mandarin and English (see Language Log for some examples).

So while I do not want to say this is the latest version of "Eskimos have 50 words for snow." do go in not looking for facts but more for a selection of thoughts. There is some interesting

Kevin@kmichaelwilson· Jun 20

author on one page lists readily recognizable romantic gestures, calling them all "empty signification" on the next page bemoans the very idea of love's having any cross-cultural identity; bemoans how "love is fetishized as a global currency" fetishizing... love?

no ALT for works I'm subtweeting; DM me for accessibility, and I'll personally send you what you need

Kevin@kmichaelwilson· Jun 16

immediately thought of this

No Skateboarding Smoking Drinking Dog Sign

Kevin@kmichaelwilson· Jun 14

only a few chapters in, but this is clearly a defining text of our era, a book that everyone sooner or later will have read press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Against Money
J. W. Mason and Arjun Jayadev

book cover, light green, an "X" formed by the book's own ISBN

A powerful deconstruction of humanity’s most influential invention, from the acclaimed economists J. W. Mason and Arjun Jayadev.

#booksky

Kevin@kmichaelwilson· Jun 14

Cover to Man, oh man! 人啊,人! (1980), by Dai Houying 戴厚英