Customer Reviews

Robert Van Gulik: His Life His Work

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Van de Wetering (a Dutch) is a very interesting author of quite unique "mysteries", set in a very everyday Amsterdam and also writes interestingly about his experiences with Zen Bhuddism. Van Gulik was a Dutch diplomat (before, during and after WW II), and a scientist working on Chinese history and culture who could play old Chinese instruments and mastered calligraphy - and who wrote mysteries in an old Imperial Chinese setting. Gulik is clearly one of Van de Wetering' s "heroes" and he is very aptly portraited as an interesting person living in interesting times and doing interesting things.

Van Gulik was a unique personality -- a linguist, diplomat, scholar, historian, novelist and sensualist. He clearly was a hero and model and "ghost" for Van Wetering, an accomplished novelist in his own right. This book is an unusual biography of a singular man, as well as a conversation between Van Wetering and Van Gulik. There's nothing like it. If you read Van Gulik's Judge Dee novels, this is a wonderful appreciation of them. If you like Van Wetering's work, this is a fine insight into one of his most important inspirations. A thorough joy that can be visited again and again.

A Chinese gentleman once suggested that Robert van Gulik must be an incarnation of some illustrious spirit with a sense of humor. How else explain this giant blond Dutchman with the intellect and bearing of a venerable Chinese scholar?

Van Gulik comes alive with all his talents and eccentricities in this biography. It helps that his biographer is also Dutch, and also the creator of a series of superior detective novels. I can't imagine a more felicitous combination of biographer and subject.

Van Gulik had a distinguished diplomatic career, finally becoming Ambassador to Japan for The Netherlands. Despite his lofty position he was good at evading dull duties, devoting much of his time to things like shopping for art treasures, practicing calligraphy, working on Judge Dee novels and writing scholarly treatises in Chinese.

Only the most arcane subjects interested van Gulik, such as the Chinese lute, esoteric deities, and the sex life of the ancient Chinese. His last book was The Gibbon in China. Van Gulik had lived with these little monkeys all his life and even learned how to chant their songs. This biography abounds in such delightful details. It does lack details about van Gulik's Chinese wife and four children, but perhaps his biographer wished to protect their privacy.

There's a great chart by van Gulik included showing where Judge Dee was posted when, and what cases he solved at that time. We can follow the timeline to read the cases in chronological order.

Was van Gulik a highly realized sage hiding his wisdom behind scholarship? Van de Wetering, himself a Zen Buddhist, believed so. You can judge for yourself on this point!

I found the biography quite fascinating, and it impressed upon me how authentic the Judge Dee mysteries are. A real find for fans of the Judge.

This is a mixed review. I feel that Van de Wetering writes mystery novels better than he writes this biography of another author of mysteries. He has a quirky sense of humor that often detracts from his work, and his personal agenda, including a bit of self-promotion, often shifts the focus away from van Gulik and Judge Dee. Some of his chapters are quite strong while others are weak, but since chapters are untitled and the book lacks a contents page or index, it is hard to summarize them. For example Chapter 6, on sexuality in pre-Modern China plus van Gulik's interest in it plus Judge Dee's involvement with it, is remarkably weak. I have read all of the Judge Dee novels as well as van Gulik's major works on the art and history of Chinese sexuality, and in my opinion van de Wetering simply misunderstood what he read, especially with regard to the complexity of the multiple roles of women as primary and secondary wives in elite households, princesses and priestesses, concubines, courtesans often with a great deal of power, singing girls (almost geisha), prostitutes, and middle to lower class women who worked as servants and in shops and fields. On the other hand, Chapter 13 is a sensitive review of van Gulik's last published book, an essay on the gibbon in China, focusing on that animal's importance in early Chinese literature and in van Gulik's personal life. And van de Wetering's interpretation of Buddhist and Taoist characters and ideas that appear throughout the Judge Dee novels is consistently insightful and informative. I find it difficult to evaluate a book whose quality is so uneven.