Steve Donoghue answers one of my questions on his Q&A video

7K Answers - Part 2!



I discovered Steve Donoghue years ago (via Phil's recommendation) back when Steve was primarily writing reviews on his website.  Since I've discovered his Youtube channel, I've gotten addicted to watching it (as I've mentioned here), and particularly enjoy his Q&A sessions.

The fun of the Q&A sessions is that Steve has read everything, has strong opinions on everything, and is a very intelligent guy.  (Which is not to say I agree with him all the time--I frequently disagree with his assessment.  But I recognize his intelligence nonetheless).
So ask Steve about any obscure subject, and he'll have read about it, and have strong opinions on it.  Which is why people love querying him about his thoughts on all kinds of varied subjects in the Q&A section, and is what makes these Q&A videos so fun to watch.

After watching several of these videos, I decided to jump in on the fun when Steve announced his next Q&A.  After pondering which obscure subject I wanted to hear his opinion on, I settled on the Chinese Classics of Literature.

I had mentioned in a blog post 5 years ago that I thought it was an interesting omission that these books don't get talked about at all in literature classes at university. 
In my experience, when we talk about diversifying the educational curriculum, opponents often have this image of getting rid of Shakespeare and replacing it with the folk tales from some hill tribe nobody has ever heard of.  But China isn't some hill tribe that nobody has ever heard of.  And especially when you consider that these Chinese classsics are also influential in many other South East Asian countries, it's almost half the world's population.  It probably deserves a place in the curriculum.
I thought this would make an interesting question especially since I often watch Steve talk about essentially reading on his channel, but have not heard him mention the Chinese Classics.  (Although I may have missed it.  The guy puts out a lot of videos.)
So I asked my question.

Steve hits my question at 2:29

Joel Swagman says "I never read the four great Chinese classics but have been debating adding them to my TBR (The Romance of the Three kingdoms, Journey to the West, Water Margin and Dream of the Red Chamber.) Have you ever read them?" ... I have. In translation, in English. "If so what are your thoughts? Are they necessary reading for a Western person, or can they be skipped?" They're not necessary reading, there's no necessary reading, there's no wrong way to read. So they can be skipped. Anything can be skipped. But they're really good. They're really entertaining reading and they give you a wide open door to a totally alien literary culture. Those two things alone are worth... I mean "Can they be skipped?"...is like there's some sort of... is this going to be on the exam or something like that and that's not how this works. So you can skip them of course, but I don't recommend that you do. I recommend you find a really spirited English language translation and read them. Who knows if you might not love them. I love The Water March. Just love it.

As you can see, Steve disagreed with the premise of my question somewhat.  But in my defense, I think he does often talk about essential reading on his channel, so that is what I was going for.