Backlisted - Monkey King: Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en

Episode Date: April 28, 2025

Kaliane Bradley, author of The Ministry of Time, joins John and Andy for a tour of Monkey King: Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en, the sixteenth-century fable widely regarded as one of the most important Chinese novels ever written, newly translated by Julia Lovell. The Monkey King's powers include shape-shifting, immortality and "being incredibly rude"; listeners of a certain age will be familiar with his legendary exploits - and those of his travelling companions Pigsy, Sandy and Tripitaka - from the 1980s cult TV series Monkey, a staple of BBC2's week-night schedule. The book itself is a hugely entertaining combination of action caper, farce and religious allegory, analogous in some ways to The Pilgrim's Progress but with a lot more jokes and fighting. We throughly enjoyed chatting with Kaliane about Monkey King, her own writing and also her day job as an editor at Penguin Classics and we think you will feel the Monkey Magic too. All together now: "the spirit of Monkey was irrepressible!" * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes and exclusive writing, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted *You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast which gives new life to old books. The book featured in today's show is Monkey King Journey to the West, the 16th century classic novel attributed to Wu Chang-in. I'm John Mitchinson, publisher at Boundless. And I'm Andy Miller, the author of the year of reading dangerously. And today we welcome a new guest to backlisted. Colleen Bradley. Hello, Colleen. Hello, I'm very excited to be here.

Thank you for having me. Thank you for coming on. Colleen is a British Cambodian writer and editor based in London. Her short stories have appeared in Electric Literature, Catapult, Some Such Stories, and the Willow Herb Review, among others. She was the Willow Herb Review.

What's that? It's a nature writing journal that specifically publishes nature writers from marginalised communities run by Jessica Jaylee, who's really, really great. It really is great. Good. Good. Well, let's devote this episode to the Willow Herb Room. There we are. Colleanne was the winner of the 2022 Harper's Bazaar Short Story Prize and the 2022 V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize as well. Now, her debut novel, Ministry of Time, was an instant Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller.

Is that true? Was it an instant bestseller? It was instant. It was very startling. And then, of course, it fell off the list again. But that's fine. It did it. But it's come back on again, right? It's the paperback. It's come back on again. It's the coming Sunday. Congratulations. It was chosen as one of the Observer's Best Debut Novels of 2024. I love how in this, I hope you don't mind me saying these two things are presented as the

like an equivalence. The Ministry of Time was chosen as one of the Observer's Best Debut Novels of 2024 and a Barack Obama summer pick. Yeah, because they're the same, aren't they? They have the same reach. What advance notice did you get of the Barack Obama thing? Nothing at all. The first time I heard of it, my friend texted me to say, oh my God, have you seen what Barack Obama's done? I immediately thought he's not running for president, that's definitely illegal. She'd sent me a link, I clicked on it. And at that, I had to read through this list before I got to my name. And I thought, Oh God, oh wow, this man has read about Graham Gore and I wonder what he feels about that.

What real world impact did that have? Yeah. I think a very, very slight bump in sales. I think the main real world impact was people texting me like, have you seen what Obama has done? By the way, I understand that in the US there are like bookshop displays that say obviously Barack Obama's summer reading list. He's talked about these books. But like it wasn't enormous, but it was enough that I was pleased to have been part of the list.

That's amazing. And you know, equally, have any of us ever seen a bookshop display for the Observer's best debut novels of 2024? Not yet. There's always, you know. Casting no shade on the answer. Let me tell you, and it's usually, I think, Alex Preston, who does it, former guest or guest on the show. And it is one of those articles that everybody's very, very pleased to have been included in, because weirdly people I think do read it. So.

Yeah, I was delighted. And also there's a wonderful book on that list, Going Home by Tom Lamont, which I absolutely adored and thought was so beautiful. And the fact that I was sort of early warned that it was going to be great by that list was nice. What did Barack Obama think of that one? He is silent. He is silent on going. Yes, he's silent. What's fascinating about it is how he gets the books. That's always what I mean. So when we were looking at that list, there are a number of quite like this. There was Rita Bullwinkle's Headshot and there was Kavyaak

Bar-Mata, both of which like very cool debuts. And I think maybe he's he's got an independent bookshop that he goes to where the booksellers know him and they're just sliding books across. Like we've heard this one's going to be good. I think you'd probably like it. Your your novel, The Ministry of Time, also has this incredible portfolio of short listings longlisted for the 2025 Women's Prize for Fiction, shortlisted for a Hugo Award, Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, a Books in My Bag award, the Everyman Woodhouse Prize for Comic Fiction,

and the Edward Stamford Travel Writing Award. I mean, apart from anything else, where on earth does your novel live in the bookshop? I mean, I know it lives in fiction, but... People do really, really panic. Yeah, I don't know. What kind of book did I write? Who can say anyone's guess is as good as mine?

You did an event at Waterstones near me a couple of weeks ago. I loved hearing you talk about it, partly because, Colleen, I've got the sense that all this deserved success did come as a pleasant surprise to you. A staggering. success did come as a pleasant surprise to you. This novel. Tell people how you started working on this novel. Yes. LW. Sort of entirely by accident because I didn't intend for this to be my debut novel and I think I would have been quite surprised if you told me four years ago that the book that I was going to get in front of people was about going loopy for a dead

man. Perhaps I would have been reconsidered. During lockdown, I got very interested in this TV series called The Terror, which is about John Franklin's lost 1845 expedition to the Arctic. Wonderful series and a fascinating piece of history. What were these 129 men and two boats doing vanishing in the Arctic, never coming home? And I got very interested by mistake in one of the offices on that expedition, a man called Graham Gore, because I was reading the Wikipedia page that had his name. I thought, that's an interesting name. It is lockdown. I've got nothing to do. I'm just on my sofa. I will go and look at this man's Wikipedia page. And there is a, I think, extremely dashing photo of the man up on his Wikipedia page, plus a biography that makes him sound so calm,

so competent, so likeable. He just seemed great. And I immediately was like, oh, I've got to find out more about this very twinkly-eyed dashing guy. Not a lot online actually because he wasn't a particularly important person in history, not a particularly important person in the TV series. But I did find an online community of people who were researching polar exploration, who were very generous with the research they had, and they shared that with me. And I started writing what would become the Ministry of Time for them really as a kind of joke and as a game for them. What would it be like? As a jeux d'esprit. A jeux d'esprit, yes, absolutely. I'm going to start using that in all my events now. That makes it sound much more

pompous. I suppose it was a kind of jeux d'esprit if you will. I love that Alice Wynn, a writer described you, she said you write with the maximalist confidence of PG Woodhouse, but also with the page turning pining of Sally Rooney. I thought that was actually, you know, those comparisons are often overdone, but I thought that was quite, I thought that was, that was, that's a good line to have on the cover of your book. That's a good thing. I mean, yeah, Alice was so generous and it was very kind of her to have read it before publication.

But funny is rare for first novels. I'm really struck that it's been shortlisted and pleased that it's shortlisted for the Hugo. That kind of overlap between sort of literary shortlists and sci-fi doesn't happen very often. And I noticed the Hugo, there's two books by Adrian Tchaikovsky, who's a writer I really, really admire on there. So it's a rather different company to be keeping, I guess.

Well, one more question before we move on to the main topic. It occurs to me, we had a really interesting conversation with our guest, Chris Chibnall, on the last episode of Batlisted about Kazuo Ishiguro and the Unconsoled. And one of the things we talked about on that was when you achieve a perhaps unexpected success as Ishiguro did with the remains of the day, and Chris did with Broadchurch, it gives you a dilemma. And I suspect, Colleen, you have this dilemma right now, which is for your next book or the book after,

do you carry on doing what you're doing based on this thing that kind of organically grew during lockdown? Or do you give people more of what you think they liked about the book you published as your first novel, right? I don't expect you to solve that, but do you feel that kind of slight dilemma? You have put your finger right on the existential crisis that I'm going through at the moment. Oh good, keep it light. I have actually handed in my second book. It's handed in, it's the 25th, so I handed it in 24 days ago.

Congrats. And I had to, during the writing, I had to stop reading all reviews because every time someone praised something actually or said that this is wonderful, I kept on thinking, okay, I should put that in the second book and then thinking, no, what am I doing? So difficult, isn't it? Maybe that means my second book will be an enormous disappointment, but I guess we'll find out. No, it won't. There we are. Let's reassure you right away. John, please take us into the main book. Yes. So the book Carleona has chosen is Monkey King Journey to the West, one of the great Chinese classic novels dating back to the 1590s and which since

the early 20th century has usually been attributed to Wu Cheng-en, a Ming dynasty novelist, poet, and politician, although there's quite a bit of dispute about whether he really was the author or not. What isn't disputed is the book's popularity and influence on the culture of China and beyond, is the book's popularity and influence on the culture of China and beyond, combining knockabout comedy with a very sharp satire of both Chinese bureaucracy and religious piety. It somehow manages to work both as a profound religious allegory and a rollicking Marvel-style superhero adventure, as the Buddhist monk Chippitaka makes a long, arduous journey to India to recover some lost religious texts. That is the MacGuffin in this particular story. He is protected on his journey by Shun Wukong, the Monkey King, an irrepressible, rude and clever master of transformation.

By Pigsy, a greedy and lustful half-man, half-pig with magical powers. And Sandy, a sand spirit, skilled at water combat and conflict resolution. Their adventures endlessly fighting off demons and spirits to protect Tripitaka as he rides his white dragon horse towards a meeting with the Buddha himself forms the core of the book. But Andy, I think you've got a better way of describing the plot. Yes, John, I do have a better way of summarizing the events, fiction events in the journey to the West. Here we go. of summarizing the events, fiction events in the journey to the West. Here we go.

Born from an egg on a mountain top, the punkiest monkey that ever popped. He knew every magic trick under the sun to tease the gods and everyone and have some fun. What a cocky saucy monkey this one is. All the gods were angered and they punished him until he was saved by a kindly priest. And that was the start of their pilgrimage west. Missing the obvious rhyme there, but okay. Monkey magic, it was monkey magic, John, monkey magic. It was indeed. Now, those are the words of the theme song

to the 1980s Japanese television adaptation, though filmed in Northern China, of Journey to the West under the name Monkey. And our producer Nicky Burch, before we started, said, now listen, Andy and John, we are all horribly familiar with Monkey. When we talk about this book, we as Gen Xers all think instantly of the BBC two TV series that was on about six o'clock, Monkey and the theme song Monkey Magic, which we can't play for copyright reasons, but everyone of our age will know.

When I met you a few weeks ago, Colleen, I said to you, have you seen Monkey? In a kind of eager way. And you went, you looked at me very sagely and went, hmm, yes, people have told me about this. It's a way to make a guy feel old. Thank you very much. Have you really never seen it?

I've never seen it. And now I really like, I deeply deeply regret it because based on that beautiful Rhyme, you know the gorgeous piece of poetry you just read. I feel like it would speak to me That was the Japanese band go Diego who recorded it in 1979. It was indeed John. They're still going I know I know I was looking they've released album Still one of Japan's biggest acts. 50 albums, 50 albums from God Diego. Monkey remains their best known work.

But as well as that series, Journey to the West has inspired countless anime and manga versions of jazz jazz opera, a Netflix series, a version by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett of Gorillaz, which was a top five album in the UK in August 2008. There you go, bet you didn't know that. And there are at least four video game versions of it, including last year's PlayStation 5 hit Black Myth Wukong.

But today we are mostly looking at it as a rich and strange literary text in the excellent new translation by Julia Lovell, first published by Penguin Classics in 2021, and a section of which appears in Monkey Makes Havoc in Heaven, one of the new Penguin Archive titles, an eclectic international list of 90 short classics, which we shall return to in a moment

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And we're back. And before we start on the main course, it's a good moment to mention that we'll be picking up elements of today's discussion in next week's Locklisted, our show for patrons. You can subscribe to that at patreon.com forward slash backlisted and five years of superior book, film and music chat plus ad free early versions of the main show will be yours. Right to business. Now, Colleen, I'm going to ask you the magic question. When did you first read this book? But also that will open us up into the topic of your day job, which does indeed have a bearing on some of the other things we want to talk about. So when did you first read Monkey King, Journey

to the West? So quite recently, because I work at Penguin Classics, and we commissioned the team at Penguin Press, commissioned for the 90th birthday of Penguin, this wonderful series, the Penguin Archive series, which is 90 books for 90 years, published as a penguin released in these beautiful little small A-format books. And one of the authors I thought would be fun to consider was Wu Chang-en. I'd never read Monkey King, but I'd heard about it. I think the very first time someone told me about it was when I was talking about Hanuman, actually. I was talking about the story of Hanuman to a friend of mine, Thomas MacMullen, who's a novelist. And he said, you know, there's actually a Chinese version of that myth, which is going westwards. So I started reading Julia Lovell's new translation. I don't know what I was expecting, but I felt like I was sort of planning to slog through in a dutiful way, and instead I find myself like skipping and zipping along. It's just a complete joy to read. Julia Lovell is a genius. This translation just bounces off

the page much like a Monkey King directly into your face. And so Julia, when I asked her about it, said that traditionally short extracts of the book are often the very first seven chapters, which is what we put into Monkey King Makes Habit in Heaven, which is the birth of Monkey from the stone egg and his hassling of heaven. His punkiness. His punkiness. Exactly. To use the literary term, his punkiness. Thank you. So you read it for professional reasons, but of course one of the marvellous things about working for Penguin Classics, if one is fortunate enough to do so, is if one's personal enthusiasms and professional obligations overlap, right? I'm looking at the list of authors and books selected for this project, for the Penguin Archive project. So were you part of the editorial team

that decided which books to excerpt for this publishing exercise? I was indeed. So the whole thing was headed up by the publishing director of Penguin Classics, Jessica Harrison, but every editor at Penguin Press and there are quite a few of us were assigned five years or a decade to kind of fill out. So this is one of the ones I got to read.

And among the other things I read, like I had to read a lot of Camus because I did the Camus selection. Sometimes I think about my job and I think, gosh, this is the job that I invented for myself at the age of 12. Colleen, were you responsible then for, was your decade the 1960s? One of, yes, one of my decades was a great decade, a very cool decade. As regular listeners will know, I could hardly be more envious. What a thing.

So we have here Camus, Nabokov, Lorca, McCullers, Spar, Nietzsche. Nietzsche in 1961, goodness me. Laurie Lee, Roald Dahl, James Baldwin, Hermann Hesse, Seneca, Gertrude Stein, Elizabeth Gaskell. Goodness me, what a thing. Really, just a lot of fun, a lot of fun. a thing. Really a lot, just a lot of fun, a lot of fun. And Colleen, as part of your duties therefore within this publishing process, I have here the Monkey King Makes Havoc in Heaven edition from the Penguin Archive, the small paperback, and I noticed it has a blurb on the back and it's traditional within Backlisted that we read blurbs aloud. Before I do that, however, in backlisted that we read blurbs aloud. Before I do that, however, who wrote this blurb?

Um, that is, that is me. I am, I am the author of that blurb. Oh my Lord. Is this the first time we've had a fully confessed blurb writer in a 238 episodes that we've recorded? That's amazing. Are you responsible for the blurbs on all the books from the 1960s then? No, only the ones that I worked on. So if some of them are also brilliant or terrible, I'm afraid I cannot take responsibility. But would it be, in theory though, in theory, given you are yourself a bestselling author, would it be possible for me to pirate your blurbs from the back of certain of these, bundle them together and publish them as your next book

before your next book comes out? That would be a lot quicker than actually going through the edits of my second book, so I'm not going to stop you. Right, I'm on it. I'm on it. Okay, so here we go. I'm so sorry, Colleen. You cannot have anticipated when you wrote this in the office on a Wednesday morning at half 11, right? But it will be read aloud, but I'm going to read it aloud. Wu Cheng-en's 16th century novel Journey to the West is widely regarded as one of the most important Chinese novels ever written. Oh, the look on your face is a study if you don't mind me saying. Here in Julia Lovell's witty and charismatic translation, we meet one of its heroes, Sun Wukong or Monkey King, whose powers include shape-shifting, immortality, and quote, being incredibly rude. That's brilliant. I feel I detect the hand of the author, Colleen Bradley, in that phrase. But anyway, though he rises to a position of power in the heavenly bureaucracy, Monkey King's arrogant exploits

attract the attention of the Buddha with very unfortunate consequences. Indeed. Unfortunate and unforeseen by him at least. That's great. That's, you know, that absolutely does the trick. Let's pretend, Collieanne's not listening. She's wandered out.

She's gone out to the kitchen. She's making herself a cup of tea. Clutching at her head. Are you happy with that blurb? I very much like the phrase witty and charismatic because that is, it's not often that you would describe a translation. Thus, I had a brief look at the Arthur Whaley, which looked fine, but nowhere near as much fun as this was.

So I like that. And I very much like the very unfortunate consequences, a bit of comic bathos there at the end. It's just, it's good. It's, it's a short paragraph that makes you want to read what's inside, which is what a blurb is supposed to do. Gets a big tick from me. Right.

What, Colleen, what are your goals for next year for your appraisal? Because we're happy. Colleanne, what are your goals for next year for your appraisal? Because we're happy. I will very proudly say actually, John Minters from the Backlisted podcast did say that my blurbs were good and pass muster. So please can I have a pay rise? Yes, very good. Tell them we sent you.

Very good. Very good. When you're composing a blurb, are you aiming to be transparent entirely, or do you permit yourself a little stylistic gift occasionally? I mean, I sense that charismatic translation is you, the writer, rather than the marketeer, say, and the phrase being incredibly rude is you the writer. So is there a trade-off for kind of one for me, one for them thing going on? A little bit. I think the other thing about, because there were 90 books that we are very keen on, we're hoping that everyone reads all 90, it'll be good for the soul. But obviously writing the blurb for the Camus or the Gertrude Stein, you would use a different style for those books than you would for Monkey King

Makes Havoc in Heaven. And one of the great joys, I think, about writing the blurb for this book is that it is fun and there's a wink from the translator as she writes and there's a wink across time from the author. So I felt like maybe if they're all winking at me, maybe I can do a little bit of winking at a potential reader. Great. That's a very nice way of putting it. That's nice. So in other words, it's capturing the tone, right? It's capturing the tone and sending it out to the potential purchaser. Yeah. Also, I like the idea that you would write of Albert Camus whose powers include shape-shifting immortality and being incredibly rude. Yeah, it's not for me to say.

Who knows what was going on in France at the time, Algeria at the time. So, so, Colleen, would you read us please a little of Monkey King Journey to the West so we can give listeners more of a flavour of it. Absolutely. So I'm going to read a bit from chapter 29. At this point, Chippitaka and Pigsy and Sandy are crossing a river. They cross the river. It looks delicious. They would like to drink some water so I'm just going to it this sounds like it sounds like an extremely dull set up but I can promise you it's

drinking some water out of a river is actually thrilling. On the other side Tripitaka asked Sandy to open one of the bundles and take out a few coppers to pay the woman for her trouble. She accepted the offering without haggling, tied the boat to a post on the bank, and disappeared into a nearby house, chortling away to herself. Gazing at the clear water, Tripitaka suddenly felt thirsty. "'Get the bowl and scoop me some water, would you?' he asked Pigsy. "'I could use a drink myself,' Pigsy replied. Tripitaka drank less than half the water that Pigsy bailed. Pigsy then finished the rest and helped Tripitaka back onto the horse. The pilgrims had barely travelled for an hour when Tripitaka started to whimper.

My stomach aches. Mine too, complained Pigsy. Could it be the cold water you just drank? wondered Sandy. I feel terrible! cried Tripitaka. Oww! echoed Pixie. As the pain grew steadily more unbearable, their stomachs began to swell. When they rubbed their abdomens, there seemed to be a blood plot or a mysterious lump ricocheting madly about inside them.

Before long, Tripitaka was in agony. As soon as Monkey spotted a cottage at the roadside up ahead, he advised stopping there. We'll ask for some hot water and whether there's an apothecary nearby where I could get you both some stomach medicine. Tripitaka spurred the horse on and they arrived there shortly. An old woman was sitting outside on the grass, weaving hemp. "'We're pilgrims from the Tang Empire,' Monkey told her. "'My teacher here is the Emperor's brother. "'Since drinking water from the river we just crossed, "'he's had a horrible stomachache.'

The old woman hiccuped with laughter. "'Hilarious! That's the best thing I've heard all day. "'Come inside and I'll explain.' By now, Chibitaka and Pixie needed to lean heavily on the other two to stagger into the cottage, where they sat down, groaning with pain, their stomachs protruding, their faces waxing and contorted. We'd be most grateful, Monkey asked the old woman, if you could get us some hot water.

Ignoring the request, the giggling old woman rushed into the next room. Here's some fun, she could be heard saying. Come and see what I just brought him. A handful of middle-aged women, gurgling with laughter, now clattered into the pilgrim's room. Monkey bared his teeth, terrifying them into retreat, then grabbed hold of their hostess. Get me some hot water now, if you want to live. grabbed hold of their hostess. Get me some hot water now if you want to live." Hot water won't help your friends, Mr. Monkey, the old woman said, trembling.

Let go of me and I'll explain. Monkey relented and she began. You're in Western Liang, also known as the land of women. There are no men here. That's why we were so tickled when you turned up. I'm afraid it's very bad news that your friends drank from that river. It's called the Mother and Child River. Women around here don't touch its water until they're past their 20th birthday because it brings on labour.

Just outside our capital, there's a receiving maleness post-house, to the side of which runs the embryo-reflecting spring. Three days after a woman has drunk from the river, she goes and looks at her reflection in the spring. If she sees a double reflection, it means birth is imminent. Your friends have clearly fallen pregnant after drinking from mother and child and are due to give birth any moment now.

What good will hot water do? Sorry, that is very, very good. It's one of the things that I find so marvellously funny about some of these strange and bizarre episodes is that this is forcing these religious pilgrims to experience the daily realities of women in botanicality that they had to go into labour, they had to be pregnant. It was actually very physically unpleasant. As soon as a Buddhist sage and a, you know, an immortal experiences, the daily human factor being pregnant, they're leaning and collapsing around like, Oh God, I can't possibly go on. What am I going to do? It's just, it's like a wonderful, a wonderful joke at their expense.

And that, that whole, all the way through the book is that gentle kind of ribbing of... Tripitaka is basically, the Buddhist monk is basically just a misery and a coward through most of the book and it's very ambiguous about its relationship with religion, although not, I suppose, ultimately, spoiler alert, they do get to meet the Buddha at the end. It seems to me one of those stories, like a bit like Don Quixote, it's obvious who the character,

the dominant character of the book is not Tripitaka the monk, but it is this extraordinary character, Monkey. I think it was known as Journey to the West, where I originally and acquired the title Monkey because it was clear that Monkey was the charismatic heart of the book. It's interesting you should mention Don Quixote because I found a very good quote from about Journey to the West by Edwin Muir, Edwin and Willem Muir, who were the first translators into English of Kafka, I believe. And Edwin Muir describes Monkey in character terms as, quote, Prometheus and Reynard the Fox, one of those inexhaustible characters

who postulate an endless story and whom we continue to imagine in other situations. I thought that was tremendous. So I think that's exactly what Monkey represents within the framework of the book and for that matter, the adaptations and the TV series and that's why when Arthur Whaley produced his translation in the 1940s or a translation of a part of Journey to the West he called it Monkey. It's really from that point onwards that here we think

of it as Monkey than than anything else. Colleen, can I ask you, when you read it, were you aware of the debates, which presumably will never end, about the extent to which on the one hand, it's a rombustious adventure and a series of unexpected comic events. And on the other, that it's a parable of Buddhist, slow Buddhist progress. It's a religious allegory. Did you have much of a sense of that when you read it?

I slightly cheated because I read Julia Lovell's introduction before I started reading it. And so I had the framework of that debate in my mind. I think if I had been reading it without that, I might have not thought about the kind of allegorical status of the novel at all, returned to it another time having been told that and being surprised by how deep and far-reaching that allegory is. Particularly surprising to me, I was brought up a Buddhist and in a slightly different Buddhist tradition. I don't know why it really preoccupies me. The desiocists have seen Buddha as someone with a sense of humour, so because of this, this book is very dear to me now. Colleen, seriously, so you're brought up as a Buddhist and therefore you do bring

a degree of religious, spiritual, preparedness to this particular text? Yes, right. And so were you able to discern moral lessons or the attempts at moral lessons within this when you were reading it? LR. So what's interesting is that what I felt like I personally reacted to, and I'm not saying this is like a strong critical reading, but more of a personal response, is that quite often I feel like the characters run up against the kind of dilemmas the Buddhist would run up against in the day. I mean, magnified and exploded to mad fable proportions. And they react to them in incredibly human ways. I'm thinking especially of every single time a demon disguises themselves as a sexy young woman or a worthy priest and

then Monkey has to beat them to death. Pixie says, oh look, Chippataka, he reneged on his vows, he just killed someone, look, he's doing it again, he's killing them again. And then Chippataka, who's supposed to be this wise sage, is like, Monkey, I can't believe you did that. I cannot believe you did this. And tortures him really nastily with this sort of metal thing around his head, which creates terrible headaches. And then the embarrassment of being a Buddhist and a vegetarian and having to explain, sorry, I don't eat meat. I can't partake of this ceremony that you've put in place.

I found that incredibly, I think, actually moving because often when you read about the way Buddhism is represented in Western literature, it's always this mystical, otherworldly thing, this very monastic and restrained and very serious as if people are not people and people do not make mistakes and people are not stumbling over rocks on the path to mistakes and people are not stumbling over rocks on the path to nirvana. So I found that very... CB There's also that... There's a tension, isn't there, also with Confucianism and Taoism. There's a great bit towards the end of the book where Triptaka in full mansplaining mode says, a Buddhist monk acquires peace, knowledge and enlightenment through meditation. He seeks immortality not through elixirs, but through eliminating mortal desires. Pah! snorted the Taoist, wagging his finger at

Tripitaka. Meditation gets you nothing but a sore bottom. Your precious nirvana still leaves you a rotting corpse. Taoism is your method if you want to live forever. We collect herbs, dance, clap and generally milk the energies of heaven and earth, the sun and the moon, yin and yang, fire and water. Taoism is the greatest. And there is that kind of, Taoism sounds like more fun, you know, Confucianism definitely sounds like it's, you know, more philosophical and to do with power. And Buddhism is this kind of strange, trying to transcend all of those things. And I think you do get a really strong sense of that contrast throughout the book, but obviously done in such a lively and not dull way. I mean, it's a very undull novel.

LR It's a very undull novel. And it's the novel of someone who I guess is written by someone who was experiencing the kind of immediate and very live push and pull of all these different religious traditions in daily life. ALAN I have to confess that I found it very difficult to strip my mind of the television version. But I also found that I enjoyed thinking about what the character archetypes were represented by the principles in the novel. So you have Monkey who is a kind of, I don't know, Huck Finn style ball of energy, right? You have Pigsy, who's a rabble lazy and glutton and lech. You have Sandy, who was my favourite as a kid because he was the depressive. He just kind of mopes around. He is the Eeyore of the gang. And then finally you've got Trippie Tarker, he's just a little whining.

He just shut up mate. But that actually I think, and we'll come onto this in the second half of the show. There are few things more enjoyable and more productive of comedy than trapping four bickering people together, whether that be Porridge or our Vida Zane pet, the Likely Lads, or Dad's Army. The young ones. Yeah, so you have character types. Rising down.

Don't get on and then you confine them, step-toe and son. I mean, it's, and that, I loved that. I found that very funny. And we'll come onto the bickering in the second half. We're also, we're gonna take a quick break now. When we come back, we're gonna hear what the daily mail made of the children's version of Monkey King Journey to the West in 1973 so buckle up it's gonna be a bumpy ride in the meantime here's a word from our sponsors

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Thursday, May 8th is McHappy Day, when every menu item purchased at McDonald's helps support families with sick children. So you can feel the good that comes from doing good, just from ordering. So if I order a Big Mac, I'm helping. What about a McFlurry? 10-piece Chicken McNuggets and Apple Pie? You got it.

Every single order helps. Join us at McDonald's for McHappy Day on Thursday, May 8th. Do good, feel good. A portion of food and beverage sales will support RMHC chapters and local children's charities across Canada. And we're back. Now, before we took a break, we subjected Colleen to the cruel fate of having her own blurb read to her. fate of having her own blurb read to her. Here, Collian, here's what I would ask you, I'm going to ask you to react now to this review from the Daily Mail from 1973. This is the review in its entirety. Let me know what you think. Dear Monkey by Arthur Whaley. Blackie Publishing, £2.75. Blackie Publishing, £2.75. The Chinese classic about monkey's amazing journey from India to China, now happily reprinted and shortened.

It's the wrong way round for a start. Oh, wow. That's it. That's it. That's it. I'll read it again this time. The Chinese classic about monkey's amazing journey from India to China, now happily reprinted and shortened. Oh my God. from India to China, now happily reprinted and shortened. Oh my god. From India to China. But you only have to get one thing right in this book. And I feel like the words, you know, west, they can mean a lot of things to a lot of people,

but as a direction, it's not a lot of scope for mistakes there. Wow. There's not a lot of scope for mistakes there. Wow. Somebody got paid to write that. Oh wow. That was reviews back then. I've also got those, before we move on from this, I also have another couple of reviews from, so we should talk a bit about Arthur Whaley's translation.

Yes. So, Coneyanne, before Julia Lovell translated this, the version with which British and American readers will be most familiar is probably Arthur Whaley's translation. But we should also say that the original Journey to the West is a much longer book, right? There is a full translation in English by Anthony Yu, but it's about four times as long as Arthur Whaley's version and indeed as Julia Lovell's, is that right? So did Julia take a different, make her own different cut from Arthur Whaley's version?

ALICE Yeah, I believe that she wanted to, she chose episodes that she felt would be representative and made a clear arc, a narrative arc. So it still presents the story of Monkey and then the religious and allegorical journey as well as the kind of incredible, picaresque dancing westwards. ALICE There are a hundred chapters, aren't they, in the Anakina Chinese text that we think was written by Wu Cheng-en. So even in her version, we're maybe getting about half of it, roughly. So Colleen, just talk us through then what the thinking would have been

to commission a new translation. It's partly that. It is, I know I say this on the blood, but it is one of the most important novels, I mean, I would say ever written. I know that we say one of the most important Chinese novels ever written, but in global literature, it's an enormously important and influential text. The fact that the Penguin classics, Arthur Whaley Monkey was, you know, it's a very respected translation, but it's the fact that there was just one translation from quite

a long time ago that had never reckoned again with the language and the playfulness. It seemed like it would be the right thing to have a new translation. And you know, translations are always, even when they're not abridging a text, translations are always a series of choices made by the translator about what to convey, how to convey it, how the style should look. They are effectively a new book every time. So Julia Lovell's translation, which I think is very much rooted in a very contemporary cadence and contemporary language, I think, speaks immediately to a readership now. It's always going to be a relevant text, but we're always going to be approaching it in a new way depending on what point in history we're standing. So it felt like the right thing to do.

ALICE You described it there as a new book every time. Presumably there are sound business reasons for Penguin Classics as well to commission new translations in order to re-present texts, not published as new books exactly, but... ALICE Fresh interpretations. ongoing process. Is there an editor sitting in Penguin right now going, we need a new crime and punishment? I think it's a sort of ongoing discussion. This is one of the nice things actually about working at Penguin Classics, looking at the list as a whole and revisiting certain texts that maybe feel like they do need a new translation, or there is a moment in time to celebrate them if there's a new anniversary coming up, or if we feel

that a text has become quite dated. Sometimes translations use language that we wouldn't use anymore. So it's a mixture of wanting to celebrate a text and find a way to bring that text back to the four, and the sense that we do want to be working on a live list. I do think of Penguin Classics as a live and responsive list, one that is continually relevant and continually speaking to a readership. And I feel like maybe I wouldn't necessarily feel that way if we were just keeping an archive of old translations. News that stays news. News, yes, exactly.

Exactly. This is a related question. We were talking a bit about this earlier. I'm always very interested when I go into a bookshop and I see if they have a display of classics or classics on the shelf, and there's a Penguin Classic edition of a book of and I see if they have a display of classics or classics on the shelf and there's a Penguin Classic edition of a book of which I've never heard. So my idea of what a classic is and or a Penguin Classic is probably rather fixed by what was in Penguin Classics when I was at school or when I was a bookseller. But as you say, that's a constantly evolving thing, isn't it? So how are those decisions come to? Does somebody say, oh, I was on holiday in Greece and I

noticed there was a 17th century selection of sonnets that need to be brought to people's attentions. I think we at Penguin Classics should be the people to do that. Or is that a burlesque of what happens? I mean, there's an element of that. I think that the commissioning is quite broad ranging. So one of the things is that, as you say, the idea of this cannon, I'm very resistant to the idea of a cannon

because the canon is an ever-changing thing. Again, wherever we stand at any point in history, there will be a series of texts that we are responding to and a series of texts that have fallen into our past. So I like to think of us as commissioning for a moving point in time. We are constantly evolving. And there is a mixture of the way that commissioning happens. Sometimes it is the case that we are trying to think very actively, proactively about languages, cultures that we haven't really translated from historically. I mean, as is probably expected quite a lot of Penguin classics as ancient Greek, Latin, Western European,

and English, but we don't have so much from Southeast Asia. Because of course, there are going to be great works of classic literature in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, that we just haven't yet had translated because of a history of commissioning that hasn't included it. Sometimes it is the case that a book that was influential and important at the time and has since fallen out of print, often because the writer was a marginalised gender or sexuality or class, can be looked at again. We can interrogate why this writer has fallen out of print and why there might be a case for making it a Penguin classic. ALICE But presumably it's also the case. I'm looking at the list here from the Penguin Archive

of authors that we've, an author who we have featured on backlisted Clarice Lispector and another one who we haven't, Thurvey Ditlefsson, whose works were popular in their country of origin quite recently, maybe 30, 40 years ago, but never received British publication or if they were published in Britain, it was very partial and they didn't receive much attention. Yes, exactly. And I think there is also, I mean, this has been, this chestnut has been trotted out for many, many years, but at one point, maybe when I was first working in publishing, the number of books that were in translation in the UK market was something like 3%. And that has since increased. But yeah, the fact that there has been a kind of historical resistance to translated literature, or this kind of siloing of translated literature as

that kind of difficult thing that we don't really deal with. We've got enough homegrown writers, we don't need to do that. Again, I think that publishing across the board is addressing that more and more. AL – Well, I think what's so interesting about that is the process you've just described, I think is, I think that somebody like Arthur Whaley, Arthur Whaley, who was very respected, orientalist, was a member of the Bloomsbury group, was extremely well connected. I think that in the 1940s, they felt they were engaged with exactly the same activity, albeit probably from a different cultural perspective. I have here a review of Arthur Whaley's translation from The Guardian from August 26, 1942. I'll just read you this because it dovetails so nicely with what you were just saying.

The Guardian reviewer says, "'This 16th century Chinese novel is a popular classic of the East. Its central theme, the pilgrimage of Tripitaka to India to worship Buddha and get the scriptures, had by the 10th century become the subject of a whole cycle of fantastic legends. Wu Chang'en made of it a richly profound, absurd, allegorical, satirical and poetical Pilgrim's

progress. The original book is immensely long, but in abridging it, Mr Whaley has reduced the number of episodes so skillfully that the sense of continuity is never broken. His rendering, as it was to be expected, is delightfully simple and colloquial, with a sprinkling of such modern slang as gate-crashing or quote, it's a tough job, which adds a topical raciness. There you go, A topical raciness. That's what they felt they were engaged with, right? It ends like this. And remember, this is 1942. 1942. The Guardian reviewer closes, in these days, when England, deprived of the influence of France and the continent, is relapsing into a complacent barbarism, we are lucky indeed to be given a book of this sort. Its civilization, its wit, its satire, its vigorous debunking will delight

and encourage all those who think that American journalists and Hitler's late char women write too much." Brilliant! That's so good. That is superb. That's 80 years ago. It's expressing something differently, but it's not dissimilar to what we might say now. Definitely. That sense of, we little Englanders should be grateful for being given a window onto the wider world. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like the idea that Monkey King journey to the West, our best guess is that we can attribute it to Wu Chang'en. But we don't know, as they used to say in this in the TV show, Collier, forgive me, everybody. The spirit of monkey is irrepressible, was that what they used to say in the TV show.

Yes, they did. I love the fact that Wu Cheng En day job seemed to be writing greetings, birthday greetings. It's a small, and also that he'd failed. It comes up, the civil service exam comes up at several points in the narrative and he'd failed this. So we don't know whether it was him, but it's interesting. I would love you to read us another excerpt from Journey to the West, but before I do that, there is one other question I have about the similarities between Monkey King and the Ministry of Time, which is both you and Wu Cheng-en probably get a lot of fun out of bureaucracy. Is that because, is that something in Penguin

that you find amusing? I'm going to answer this so diplomatically. We're all going to be really impressed. So Wu Cheng-en failing the civil service exams and then having a character who refuses to take the civil service exams essentially and jumps over the ranks is very, very funny and very satisfying. And I think Julia Lovell's translation is particularly good at making fun of all these different side departments and filing to the Jade Emperor to get the permission for the rain slips so that the dragons can create rain. Sorry, the Jade Emperor said that we can't rain here, so I guess these guys are going to have to starve. It's more than my job's worth. It's done very playfully, but the kind of more than my job's worth, these people are just going to have to die,

I'm afraid. The emperor here is just going to eat the hearts of these 100 boys in cages in order to live forever because that's what this mad old demon disguised as a monk has said. In the Ministry of Time, there is a translation in fact to the narrator who has repeatedly failed the field exams. She wanted to be a field agent to fact, who is the narrator who has repeatedly failed the field exams. She wanted to be a field agent to spy, but she's just not very good. So she keeps failing it, and then that is the thing that propels her into the ministry, into this new job looking after time travellers. She also experiences the difficulty of collecting data that seems to be unused and being told,

you're going to have to clear that with your line manager or you're going to have to clear that with the upper secretary. Sorry, no time travel science for you. It's all paperwork. I think that partly came out of being stuck in lockdown and experiencing the strangeness of bureaucracy as a kind of unwitting, wriggling insect within it. But also at the time I was writing The Ministry of Time, I was changing jobs. I left my old job to join Penguin. And because it was locked down, I hadn't met anyone. I hadn't met any of my colleagues except my direct line manager. And trying to get everything set up, the VPN, the different filing systems, was so difficult and bizarre. And I don't know, they just felt like so many rules and so many hurdles.

And then I put all of that frustration into a book, like Wu Chung, you know, Wu Chung and enemy. OK, all right. That's brilliant. Well spotted. All right, then let me ask you one more question. Which of the four principal characters of Journey to the West, what energy did you bring to Penguin when you arrived?

I would like to say monkey. I would like to say I brought havoc and joy and like incredible bad taste. In fact, I think I am like the little dragon horse. The very small dragon, you know, Wu Chong is always like, he's just a little dragon. And then he was turned into quite a little horse. He's doing his best.

I'm doing my best. All right, very good, very good, very good, very good. Colleen, will you read us a little horse. He's doing his best. I'm doing my best. All right. Very good. Very good. Very good. Very good. Colleen, will you read us a little bit and then we'll wind the show up. I'm going to read a very short piece of Monkey Having a Great Time. This is Monkey and Tripatica. The next day after breakfast, the two set out once more. On they went for months, traveling by day and resting at night, until one day in early winter, six men jumped out at them from the side of the road, armed with spears, swords and bows, shouting, your money or your life! Done with fear, Tripitaka tumbled off the

horse. Monkey picked him up off the ground. Don't worry, master, these nice men have come to give us all their clothes and money. Is there something wrong with your hearing? Tripitaka asked him. You just look after our things, Monkey said soothingly, while I go and have an exchange of views with them. But there are six of them to one of you and you're an undersized monkey. How will you manage?" Monkey sauntered up to them with his arms folded. "'Why?' May I ask, are you blocking our way?' "'We are the kings of the highway,' they replied,

famed for our feats of wealth redistribution. To ourselves, though you seem inexplicably ignorant of our reputation, we are. Eyes that see in delight, eyes that see and delight, ears that hear and rage, nose that smells and loves, tongue that tastes and desires, mind that sees and lusts,

and body that sustains and suffers. Give us everything you possess or we'll smash you to a pulp. I see, muse monkey, six hairy bandits. Hand over all your ill-gotten gains or I'll pulp you." Snorting with a combination of amusement and rage, the highwayman hacked at Monkey's head for a good ten minutes or so. Monkey was entirely unbothered. Tough nut to crack, this one, observed one of the robbers. Monkey giggled.

You must be tired after all that exercise. Let me show you this needle of mine. While the Robbers looked at one another in confusion. Is he an acupuncturist? We're not ill. Monkey pulled the magic iron out from his ear and turned it into a thick iron cudgel. Monkey's turn. He whooped. So great. Oh, there we are. That's great. I love that. You know what? I think the 80s show that you haven't seen, Colianne, is actually more faithful to the original than I had imagined.

It has all that comedy violence energy just outlined there. So, you know, John. Great. And that's where we must end our pilgrimage in sight of the land of ultimate bliss. Huge thanks to Cullihan for inviting us along as her trusty companions and to our producer, Nikki Birch, for making monkey magic out of mere words.

The monkey queen herself. If you want show notes with clips, links and suggestions for further reading for this show and the disturbingly Kubrickian 237 shining fans that we've already recorded, please visit our website at backlisted.fm. If you want to buy the books discussed on this or any of our other shows, visit our shop at bookshop.org and choose Backlisted as your bookshop. And do subscribe to our Patreon, patreon.com forward slash backlisted. Remember if you subscribe at the lot Listen 11, you'll get two extra exclusive podcasts every month.

The next one will feature Andy, Nick and I talking about this show and recommending other books, films and music we've enjoyed in the last fortnight. People who subscribe at this level also get their names read out like this. Kevin Mail, thank you Kevin. Kathleen B, thank you. Laura Croson, thank you. Mark Gullidge, thank you. Lisa McLemmon, thank you. And we salute a new entrant to the highest circle in the back listed firmament. The Guild of Master Storytellers welcomes Sarah Jane Saunders. Thank you, Sarah Jane, for your faith and your excellent taste. But before we go, Collian, I must ask you, is there anything else that you'd like to say about Monkey or Wu Cheng En or Journey to the West before we go that we didn't cover in our conversation? I don't think so. I think we've really made a case for monkey as the hero for our time.

Would you say that it was one of the most important Chinese novels ever written? I think I would. And I think I would describe this translation as particularly witty and charismatic. I'm pleased. Yes, I think so too. That's excellent. Good. Thank you.

John, anything else you'd like to add? Well, I'm just, I have to say I discovered in my research that Pixar had optioned this to even before Toy Story to make into a kind of a Pixar movie. And it was kiboshed in the end by Steve Jobs, who felt they didn't have the technology to deliver it sufficiently strongly. But that's a film, a Pixar version of this story I would probably pay good money to see.

And then I just- John, I would love to hear songs by Randy Newman based on this. Yes! Based on this particular text. Listen, I'm talking about that. I just love this line from the book, because this book is incidentally quite profound, and I love this. When he's given his religious name, Monkey's name, Shun Wukong, it means monkey who was awoken to emptiness.

The narrator says, the name spoke an important truth, for at the beginning of everything, there were no names, only emptiness. To advance from emptiness, living creatures must first become aware of it. I thought, that's Beckett good, that's excellent. To progress from emptiness, living creatures are first got to become aware of it. Well, listen, I would like to thank you guys for such an interesting conversation. And I really

would like to thank Colleen for coming on here and also for suggesting we read this. I very much doubt that I would have read this book had you not suggested it, but goodness me, I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much and thank you for your time. Absolutely. Thank you very much for having me and thank you for letting me talk about Monkey King, which is just a bouncing joy to spend time with. And I will now leave you to create a blurb for Homer or something. Yeah, we look forward to, I'm looking at the Penguin, I have to say that the Penguin Archive list looks fab and very collectible and moreish. Anyway, thank you so much everybody.

Thank you. And we will see you next time. Cheerio, bye bye. Bye everybody. Bye. The End