Babel by R. F. Kuang

[lizbee]

Five days ago, I posted this to Facebook: 

'I started Babel by R. F. Kuang yesterday at lunchtime, and I'm now 53% through. It's a 600-page ebook, but I literally could not put it down. I had my iPad propped up on the vanity as I brushed my teeth last night.
 

HOWEVER. It is possible that is ... I won't say "bad", in fact I think it's very good, but is it maybe a bit overrated? Not as groundbreaking as it's made out to be?
 

This might just be that I'm a Humanities person and a lot of science fiction and fantasy readers are STEM people. So a book goes, "Hey, did you know the British Empire was bad? HUGE IF TRUE," and that's not really news to me. Like when the MINDBLOWING REVOLUTIONARY CONCEPT of Ancillary Justice was "maybe imperialism is problematic". Guys, I've read Tacitus.
 

Which is not to say Kuang's worldbuilding and depiction of the British Empire using limited magical resources to consolidate power is bad. I think everything involving translation is brilliant, and she must have done a massive amount of research into a wide range of languages, not to mention linguistic theory. THAT is genuinely remarkable, and I'm deeply impressed by Kuang's imagination.
 

But there's also sloppiness, and ... I dunno. The book opens with an incredibly defensive foreword by Kuang, defending her right as an American to write about Oxford and highlighting certain ahistorical choices she made. As it happens, "Americans romanticise Oxbridge" is one of the literary genres I despise, which is why I'm only NOW reading Babel, and it's probably unfair of me to complain about such anachronisms as "upperclassman" sneaking in.
 

I think I'm within my rights, though, to complain about the contemporary dialogue. "I'll bite," says one character, who later goes on to say, "Sometimes, things that are [incredibly specific description] ... are bad." I didn't know they had Tumblr in the 1830s, but here we are.
 

And the defensiveness of the foreword carries over into the narrative, as if Kuang expects her audience to disagree that racism is bad. The didactic tone is perfect for a book set in the 1830s, but no one likes being scolded.

Having said all this, there's a very, very big space between "this book is outstanding" and "this book is bad, actually". I think Babel is very good, and I'm definitely interested in reading Kuang's fantasy Opium Wars/Chinese Revolution trilogy. But I feel like Babel is more of a B-plus than an A.
 

(To address the elephant in the room: it is frankly ABSURD that the Hugos Committee decided to toady to the CCP by rendering Babel ineligible for, you know, reasons. Setting aside the ethical issues, Babel's view of history is pretty compatible with the current version favoured by the CCP.)
 

(One of my friends was like, "Isn't it enough that you can't put it down? Do you need to make a judgement on whether or not it's good or bad?" Look, I have never NOT made a judgement in my life, I'm not starting now!)'

If I were a reviewer scoring Babel, at that 53% point, I'd have given it three and a half to four stars.

Unfortunately, I went on to keep reading, and it comes down to two stars. I second everything in this review, and also note that "the Black woman suffers and suffers and suffers but is also the glue that holds everyone together" is a very specific racial stereotype, and Kuang revels in it.

HOWEVER. I had nothing else to read, but I kept going. I figured I'd finish it on the train home on Thursday evening ... until I slipped on a bit of uneven pavement outside the train station and broke my ankle.

Now, I thought it was sprained. I had suffered a very mild sprain of that ankle ten days earlier, and I thought, "Oh no, this is so embarrassing. I should get an X-ray in case it's an avulsion fracture." And then I hobbled to the train platform (about 500m) and onto the train, and spent 40 minutes blasting music and trying not to cry. Then we pulled into my station and I hobbled another 700m to the urgent care next to the station.

That was all very hard. But I have a high pain threshold. So I collapsed into a chair and waited for triage and pulled out my book.

Spoilers, but Babel has a Tragic Ending. (It's Profound.) And I'm a sucker, so I cried, even though I was also thinking, "This is so manipulative and also not very good."

Have you ever cried in an urgent care? Just like that, the triage nurse cut her break short, gave me a wheelchair, and ensured I was seen quickly. I still had to wait overnight for x-rays, which was a horrible and painful night, but the x-rays the next morning showed a clear fibula fracture, and then the urgent care gave me oxycontin. (Which I haven't needed, but it's nice to be taken seriously.) And now I'm in a moon boot for four to six weeks, not allowed to drive, and peacefully rereading some books that won't let me down.

Comments

[muccamukk]

Wow. This whole post was a fucking voyage. I hope your ankle heals swiftly!

I feel like Empire is Bad is more of a mind blowing revolutionary concept in some circles of SF than it ought to be.

[lizbee]

Wow. This whole post was a fucking voyage. I hope your ankle heals swiftly!

Thank you! I wasn't really going to write this up, given that I'd already had a nice ramble about it on Facebook (I wanted the opinions of a specific friend, you see...) but then I made the connection between "having a cry" and "getting medical treatment".

I feel like Empire is Bad is more of a mind blowing revolutionary concept in some circles of SF than it ought to be.

RIGHT. Just last week, I got into a fight on Reddit with a guy who was very angry when I said the Federation is an empire. A benevolent, volunteer-members-only empire! But it still has a homogenising effect on the universe, and that's worth talking about.

(I also feel like Babel's premise may have felt more revolutionary to people outside the Commonwealth. Like, we touched on the Opium Wars and the conquest of India in school. Only the magic was new, and honestly, the worldbuilding around that was pretty weak.)

[muccamukk]

I will say that last time I cried in the ER, it didn't really get my anywhere, but turning green and being about to throw up was pretty effective (different trip).

I get that Outside the Commonwealth (aka the Americans) might not know about the Opium Wars, but generally the British Empire not being great seems to have hit cultural osmosis? I'd think?

I am glad that I waited until this year to read Ancillary Etc, as I think I'd have gotten hit with overhype at the time, and really liked the books now.

[kore]

I also read those books a while after they were all out, which was good, because I could binge them and not have to wait. Otherwise I might have died of impatience!

I'm usually so far behind the cultural curve I miss buzz, anyway. I think one of the few times I got in on the ground floor was Murderbot, and I wasn't on Tumblr much then so I missed all the hype. I wish it was still eligible for yuletide.

[aella_irene]

I feel like there's a tendency to make 'the British Empire was Evil' the end of the conversation, rather than the start, if that makes sense, which is a shame.

[kore]

OWWW DAMN

Babel was kind of an odd reading experience in that I didn't think it worked as a novel (flat characters, lots of mouthpieces, very contrived plot) but the emotional experience of Robin struggling with love and hate over the privilege he was inducted into was gripping. It resonated with how I felt when I was very young and studying the classics. But that part seems to be more the author's experience? So it felt like she didn't fully transmute the story into fiction. But a lot of the passages about translation and Oxford and learning were very beautiful. I loved the idea that the tension between translated words was a source of power. I don't think I'll reread it, though.

[lizbee]

Yes! This was why I couldn't put the first half down, it was such a compelling (and old-fashioned) story.

(It's funny that Kuang tells us several times how much she hates Dickens, because Robin's upbringing is positively Dickensian.)

[kore]

It really was gripping, probably bc that was the part most informed by her own experience. The revolution stuff felt much thinner, and more....rushed?

[lizbee]

The revolution stuff felt much thinner, and more....rushed?

Yeah, and various people asking important questions like "what happens next" and "what will the colonised powers do with the silver we send them" are dismissed. (The British Empire was very bad, but historically speaking, any time it pulled out of a territory, things didn't actually improve.)

[kore]

It was my understanding the ENTIRE economy in Britain running on magic would collapse, which um! Not a good thing!

[lizbee]

The working class (famously all-white in the 1800s) doesn't count!

[kore]

Yes, it was represented by one white dude I think? And a poetically described dead girl.

[shati]

And I'm a sucker, so I cried, even though I was also thinking, "This is so manipulative and also not very good."

lol, I had the exact same reaction, although not as conveniently timed.

I assumed a lot of the book's fans are aware of the evils of the British Empire (at least the praise I remember seemed to be), but are used to books that aren't -- I'm pleasantly surprised by anti-monarchy TV, but it's because I watch a lot of palace dramas and not because I'm shocked by the idea.

[lizbee]

I'm pleasantly surprised by anti-monarchy TV, but it's because I watch a lot of palace dramas and not because I'm shocked by the idea.

YES. Actually, I think Babel would work incredibly well as a drama -- it has the scale to be a visual feast, you wouldn't have the narrator constantly telling you how to react to everything, and the right actor would make Robin feel subtle rather than flat. I'd watch that in a heartbeat.

[whimsyful]

Babel's been optioned to be adapted into live action! I'm of two minds - it would be great to drop the narration beating you over the head with how you're supposed to feel, but I don't know if the nifty scenes about translation would work as well in a visual medium.

[shati]

Oh, nice! I do think it could make a compelling drama -- I don't know how well the translation and silver magic would work, but audio + visual at the same time gives some room for creativity.

(To be honest I'd also like it if there was a voiceover narrator and it was Victoire -- I wanted an in-universe reason for the narration to be so intrusive more than I wanted to the narration to be more neutral. And I wanted Victoire to have more of a presence. But I don't think it's likely, and it would have ripple effects I haven't spent more than two seconds thinking about...)

[kore]

Hell, they made Foundation into an actual good show, why not....

[whimsyful]

I hope your ankle heals quickly!

I had a lot of the same feeling about Babel. I find Kuang's writing very engaging and hard to put down, and I loved the parts about learning languages and Robin feelings of being caught between two worlds, but all the anachronisms were incredibly annoying to me. All four main characters sound like modern day Western liberals despite being from different countries and social backgrounds. There was also a part where Robin made a pun out of die/爹 after doing something really dramatic and it completely threw me out of the story...because the pun only works if you use pinyin romanization...which wasn't invented until the 1950s. A part of me just couldn't take the book seriously after that.

It also didn't help that I read this shortly after a re-read of Les Miserables and right before The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen, the latter of which had much better prose and more nuanced handling of some of the same themes, and the former of which was also really didactic and unsubtle, but Hugo somehow makes it work.

[lizbee]

All four main characters sound like modern day Western liberals despite being from different countries and social backgrounds.

Yes!

And the recurring references to unseasoned British food really threw me out -- because (a) this was the era when the British were discovering curry, albeit in a bastardised form; and (b) native British food WAS seasoned. Not spicy, but they used a wide variety of herbs and other flavours, many of which are no longer part of the modern palate. Not to mention the rich variety of strongly flavoured cheeses.

Like. Give me Rami's take on kedgeree, or Robin being too lactose intolerant to appreciate a Stilton. Do some research, instead of just relying on memes.

[kore]

All four main characters sound like modern day Western liberals despite being from different countries and social backgrounds

Oh ghod, I forgot to mention that, but yeah, they sound incredibly like 20th century undergrads. I kind of ignored it for most of the book but 2/3 of the way through I made a note that just said "Come ON."

[sabotabby]

I hope your ankle is okay!


I don't think it's overrated because no one I know actually liked it. Though, oddly, everyone has different reasons for disliking it.

[lizbee]

I don't think it's overrated because no one I know actually liked it.

This is THE sickest burn. But SOMEONE was out there nominating it for Hugos! It probably would have won if McCarty hadn't been a donkey!

[kore]

don't think it's overrated because no one I know actually liked it.

Call the BURN UNIT as we used to say in 7th grade. True tho!

The anachronisms and lack of real political problems did big me, too, I should say, it's just that I primarily read for characters and those were pretty disappointing (down to a Strong Black Woman and a bitchy white girl who Just Doesn't Get It and there's an ACTUAL white woman's tears scene). And it wasn't homo enough for an Oxbridge historical! Anyway. I really enjoyed reading it and parts were beautiful, but it's odd that I wouldn't rec it, bc I have no qualms about recccing all kinds of things. It was just....deeply unsatisfying.

[sabotabby]

Oh no. Like I kind of want to read it so I can participate in Discourse but also life is short and 100% of the people I know who read it disliked it.

[garpu]

I'm enjoying Babel, but...my problems with it are also yours. I think back to books like the Broken Earth trilogy, and it's not as good. It's still enjoyable, though. Then again I took a break from the Wheel of Time series to read it, so *anything* is going to be better than the last half of that series.

[lizbee]

Then again I took a break from the Wheel of Time series to read it, so *anything* is going to be better than the last half of that series.

I keep wondering if I should read that series, and the universe keeps gently telling me, "No."

[garpu]

They're very dated. Parts have aged like milk, while others are still OK. If he had an absolutely bloodthirsty editor, they'd probably be very good. As it is, I'd say watch the Amazon TV series, because I'm really enjoying that.

[garpu]

OK, finished Babel. First two thirds are brilliant. Last third was completely telegraphed by the first 1/3. I don't think the ending works. It feels very manipulative, and I think she could've made her point with a different ending. I think seeing how colonialism and the struggle changed them over time would've been much more horrifying than what actually happens.

[starlady]

I suspect you may not like Kuang's first trilogy, which has engaging writing but which is similarly full of poorly stitched-together anachronisms (yes, it's a secondary world, but she combines stuff from 21st, 12th, and 20th century China very obviously) and endorses the protagonist happily committing genocide. Kuang also relies a lot on Iris Chang's discredited account of the Nanjing Massacre, which imo is unfortunate because there's no need to exaggerate the Nanjing Massacre, and rolls that up with Unit 731 in a way that doesn't really allow those horrible events their full consequence. As a writer, I think she bit off more than she could chew. And as someone with a terminal degree in the field, her calling herself a historian when she hadn't even finished her BA seemed…presumptuous. I didn't read the other two books in the trilogy because I wasn't really interested in where the book went after the protagonist happily committed genocide/fulfilled Kuang's historical revenge fantasies (worth noting too that Mao's crimes were against his own people rather than Japan).

It's interesting to hear her defending being an American writing about Oxford because in the promo for the first book she was pretty anti-American (despite being American herself by passport? Unclear). I think the defensiveness comes through in that she thinks she's pitching to a middle of the road American, when really I suspect her audience agrees that racism is bad as a general baseline (the devil of course is in the details). And yes, this is basically the view of history that the CCP endorses, so it's very ironic that Dave McCarty DQ'd this book because…he thought it would offend people? When it has a Chinese publisher? He's an idiot on top of being a corrupt toady. Insert obligatory foreign devils joke.

I'll probably read Yellowface though. Hopefully she's less antagonistic towards her audience in that book, but I won't hold my breath.

[lizbee]

My FB commenters universally said the same thing about the first trilogy, even the people who are normally big fans of grimdark fantasy!

And as someone with a terminal degree in the field, her calling herself a historian when she hadn't even finished her BA seemed…presumptuous.

Oh dear. (I have a BA in history, and accordingly call myself An Enthusiast.)

I think the defensiveness comes through in that she thinks she's pitching to a middle of the road American, when really I suspect her audience agrees that racism is bad as a general baseline (the devil of course is in the details).

One GoodReads reviewer described her as writing for the bad faith Twitter audience, and I think that's apt.

[kore]

Oh dear. I have heard Yellowface is pretty good?

[kore]

Yeah, she was born in China but her family emigrated when she was four.

[reynardo]

You're the third person I know who's broken their ankle by tripping over stuff in the last 2 weeks. It must be contagious. (Take it easy, look after yourself)

[lizbee]

GRAVITY IS A MENACE. A woman I follow on Insta and Tumblr also just shattered her patella. It's rough out there!

(I highly recommend the water bottle bag that Kmart sells for $5 in their camping section. It holds my bottle, it has a pocket for my phone, it's a real lifesaver.)

[laurenthemself]

Oh shit this means you're booted for Continuum, right? Damn shame it's so inaccessible and all that. If only we'd taken Nalini's autobiography suggestions on board...

[laurenthemself]

In all seriousness though I hope it heals fast and smoothly.

[lizbee]

Yeah, you know Continuum: the last safe space for people who hate the disabled.

(In seriousness, I'm having a rough time -- did you know you can take two Panadol and half an Endone safely? But I go to the fracture clinic on Thursday and will hopefully know what to expect in the future. Like, I'm going to Sydney for work the weekend before Continuum? That might be challenging. Or maybe I'll be fine, just a bit slow! Who knows?)

[dolorosa_12]

I felt a really strong sense when reading Babel that it was written in fear and paranoia, with an ever-present defensiveness in the face of the perceived threat of a Twitter mob that might mistake depiction for endorsement. That, to me, was what seemed to lie behind the tendency to overexplain things in footnotes and spell things out so that there was zero doubt of authorial intention (the most egregious example being a self-important white academic stating that 'of course Africans enslaved each other as well,' in an attempt to deflect from the shame of European enslavement of Africans — and a footnote is then immediately inserted to make sure that readers knew that Kuang knew these weren't the same thing; the idea that anyone could possibly think Kuang shared the sentiments of this contemptible character was absurd).

Like you, I felt the book had some interesting ideas, but was let down by this pervasive defensive didacticism.

I find it very telling that Kuang's next book was Yellowface, which, among other things, absolutely nails the sense of loneliness and fear (of criticism via social media) that seems to pervade contemporary publishing.

[havocthecat]

I hope your ankle heals quickly!

As to RF Kuang, I believe that she is a good writer, but her writing vibe is a little ...not my vibe.

[skygiants]

Oh dear, I hope the moon boot period trends towards the shorter end!

(I have peacefully accepted at this point that Babel is one of those books that I won't ever read because I can't be bothered to have an opinion about it.)