![]() The translator starts with a 90-page intro written in high academic, parts of which I judge worth having plowed through. The translator's English prose is smooth and clever, and he does an elegant job on the many interspersed poems, as well. Some of the footnotes are also pretty amusing in their own right, particularly when the translator vents his despair at translating the Chinese puns and wordplay in the original. Besides the instant large print available on my tablet, the footnotes system (and boy, does this need its footnotes and annotations) is brilliant: just click on the little blue number, and the footnote appears as a handy popup, departing at the next click. So rather than rereading to refresh my failing memory, I poked around Amazon and found this. I had read, some years ago, the now-classic abridged translation by Arthur Waley titled Monkey, which gives the gist of the tale, but I was curious about what all had been left out. I also see by my Netflix that there is a new Chinese movie of The Journey by the same director who gifted us with the also deeply gonzo Kung Fu Hustle. I was led back to this by revisiting, this month, an anime/manga version from the early 00s of the adventure, Saiyuki by Kazyua Minekura, which may not even be the most gonzo version ever, though I suspect it's up there. The star rating system is really not appropriate for classic books of this sort, read for curiosity and education as much as pleasure, but have a somewhat random 4.
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