Monkey, also known as The Monkey King or The Journey to the West, is one of the four great novels of China--along with The Water Margins, Dream of the Red Mansion, and The Three Kingdoms.  It tells the story, in allegorical form, of Xuan Zang (or Hsuan Tsang), a 7th Century monk who trekked from China to India in search of Buddhist texts, his translations of which were a key to the growth of Buddhism in China.  His real-life travelogue is itself considered to be a great work of literature, but for purposes of the novel he, referred to here as Tripitaka, is given a group of comic companions : the Monkey King, a kind of trickster god, who represents rebelliousness against both heavenly and earthly order;  Pigsy, a marshal of heaven turned into his animal namesake for attacking a fairy maiden, who represents a sort of earthy stolidity; and Sandy, a kind of sea monster, who Waley says represents "whole-heartedness", whatever that means.

The book is intermittently amusing, but even in this abridged version is way too long.  Characters' motivations and the meanings of most of the action are awfully obscure.  And like any picaresque, it is almost purely episode driven, without the various episodes necessarily adding up to a coherent and sustained story.  The book is interesting as a cultural relic, but, if no one told you, you wouldn't imagine it to be such an influential text.

(Reviewed:12-Jun-01)

Grade: (C) Orrin C. Judd

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