Ugh. That review was even worse. Or maybe it was a perfect review and the book is not very good (my birthday is coming, so I hope to make a more full report soon.) I realize of course that NYT is not the Journal of Asian Studies, and there are audiences to write for besides China scholars, and I am fine with that. Still, when a reviewer compares a historian to Italo Calvino (who wrote fiction) there is something wrong with either the historian or the reviewer. This particularly bothers me in Chinese history where there is such a long tradition of orientalist fantasies that scholars should not be adding to. I suppose once I get a copy of the Spence book I can sit down with it and with Brooks’ Confusions of Pleasure and write a joint review, but for now I am sort of expecting to not like the Spence book.

Actually, I guess these reviews are doing their jobs. They are supposed to be telling me if I want to buy the book, and if I will enjoy reading it and they are doing that pretty well.

Owen’s understanding of historiography is … odd. I’m going to have to go back and reread it and think about it, but it seems like he’s got a mental image of a dichotomy between a humanistic tradition — Confucian and old-fashioned Western history — in which autonomy and agency are paramount and a deterministic tradition — Marxian, though he doesn’t say so, and the social science trend in general — in which individual agency is irrelevant to the workings of great trends and processes. His use of a literary trope — the simplistic plotting of social science, versus the engaging and complex performances of Confucian humanism — is interesting, but betrays his failure to understand or engage with historical theory, social science or social history.

There’s a real problem in this review, too: I have a hard time figuring out, at least on first reading, what’s in the book and what’s Owen presenting context (or contrast; that’s unclear, too). It’s a weak review, in the sense that a review is supposed to tell you (at least this is what I tell my students!) whether and why a book is worth reading. Aside from the fact that Spence hasn’t deviated from known fact and writes well, I can’t make heads or tails of this.