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Single Pebble
The story of an American engineer and his trip on the great Yangtze River aboard a one hundred-foot junk provides a touching human drama played out against the awe-inspiring grandeur of the river
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1956
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About the author
John Hersey
115 books868 followersJohn Richard Hersey, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer, earliest practiced the "new journalism," which fuses storytelling devices of the novel with nonfiction reportage. A 36-member panel under the aegis of journalism department of New York University adjudged account of Hersey of the aftermath of the atomic bomb, dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, as the finest piece of journalism of the 20th century.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 79 reviews
July 30, 2021
This novella is absolutely gripping. It tells the story of a 24-year old American engineer who sets off to explore the Yangtze in order to draft plans for a major dam - an undertaking which, as we now know, wasn't actually completed until 2008, nearly a century after the events imagined by Hersey. The young man travels up river on a junk owned by Old Big, an experienced mariner who has had his share of misfortunes, and in fact lost a boat on a previous journey. Old Big is married to Su-ling, a pretty girl half his age. The crew also includes a cook and, last but by no means least, Old Pebble, the head tracker of the expedition. The young foreigner, who has learnt Mandarin, spends a fair bit of time with Su-ling, who seems to be under orders to tell him all sorts of legends about the areas they go through. He is attracted to her, while surmising that she is in love with Old Pebble, who is in fact young and amazingly athletic. His other title is Noise Suppressor, because part of his job consists in singing to cover the groans of the trackers as they pull the junk up river against the fierce current. From the very beginning, the American is fascinated not only by Old Pebble's strength, agility, and beautiful voice, but also by his declared contempt for money and all the other signs of success the American believes in. For instance, when he wins at some game and his fellow trackers accuse him of cheating, he throws all the coins he's won into the river. Hersey does a marvellous job of describing the narrator's complex feelings towards the Chinese. He is deeply ambivalent towards Old Pebble, whom he admires tremendously, yet would like to convince of his own superiority as a scientist. He doesn't know how to interpret the superstitious rituals in which the tracker and the cook take part with both deep conviction and manifest irony. He's very proud of thinking that, thanks to himself and others like him, there will soon be no need of trackers. He fancies himself a great liberator of mankind, while being reminded at every turn that junks have gone up the Yangtze for thousands of years, and that these incredibly brave, sturdy and skilful people are justly proud of what they can do. The themes of this book are universal: youth versus maturity, modernisation versus tradition. The American has a Western sense of time, and nearly loses his rag when he suspects Old Pebble of having stolen his watch, in retaliation for his boasting about the future dam and the likes of Old Pebble becoming redundant. A further irony being that the narrator's watch was already broken. Eventually, in a particularly tricky bit of the gorge, Old Pebble loses his footing and has to be dropped into the raging waters to prevent a more serious accident to the team and the loss of the junk itself. The owner first seems to rejoice over the accident, then takes enormous risks in a doomed attempt at rescuing the drowning man. While the narrator believes Old Big dead, the junk arrives at destination. Feeling sad at parting with people he's spent so many weeks with in sometimes life-threatening circumstances, the engineer invites Su-ling and the rest of the crew to a banquet, but when they show up at his inn, where he's had time to change into clean clothes, he's shocked to see how ragged and unkempt they look. The precarious conviviality he experienced on the junk cannot be replicated on land, and the cultural gap between them yawns wider than ever. At this point, Old Big reappears, and forces the engineer to compensate him for the loss of the head tracker, which the young man half believes to have been a form of suicide. This is one of the densest and meatiest studies of communication problems between people of different cultures I've ever read, among many other things. WOW.
May 12, 2010
John Hersey is a good writer. He creates characters well, his stories move along with great energy and he makes a reader care deeply about what goes on. But sometimes, despite all those qualities, he just misses. This is one of those times.
A young American engineer has been sent to China in the 1920s to inspect the Yangtze River for possible locations on which to build a dam. He travels up that unpredictable and powerful river on a junk, through gorges, rapids and whirlpools. Surrounded by the junk's owner and his young wife, the cook and a large crew of trackers, who literally pull the junk, the young man tries to reconcile his American belief in progress with the legends and ways of a primitive culture. He becomes obsessed with understanding Old Pebble, the head tracker, who takes on the personality of almost a river god.
The story of the journey is gripping as the extreme adventure of prevailing over all the river's dangers is told. Hersey excels in writing the detail and realism of such a foreign location and people. Obviously the theme is east meets west, a theme which is shown by the events of the story contrasted with the young American's reactions.
Unfortunately we are rather hammered over the head by the engineer's attempt to come to grips with the contrasts, which feels like being lectured to instead of being allowed as a reader to draw one's own conclusions. Possibly such a tone was needed in the mid 1950s, but reading the book in the 21st century, knowing that the dam got built, puts it in a different light.
A young American engineer has been sent to China in the 1920s to inspect the Yangtze River for possible locations on which to build a dam. He travels up that unpredictable and powerful river on a junk, through gorges, rapids and whirlpools. Surrounded by the junk's owner and his young wife, the cook and a large crew of trackers, who literally pull the junk, the young man tries to reconcile his American belief in progress with the legends and ways of a primitive culture. He becomes obsessed with understanding Old Pebble, the head tracker, who takes on the personality of almost a river god.
The story of the journey is gripping as the extreme adventure of prevailing over all the river's dangers is told. Hersey excels in writing the detail and realism of such a foreign location and people. Obviously the theme is east meets west, a theme which is shown by the events of the story contrasted with the young American's reactions.
Unfortunately we are rather hammered over the head by the engineer's attempt to come to grips with the contrasts, which feels like being lectured to instead of being allowed as a reader to draw one's own conclusions. Possibly such a tone was needed in the mid 1950s, but reading the book in the 21st century, knowing that the dam got built, puts it in a different light.
April 1, 2021
This book was certainly not my usual fare: it was a book club read. On the other hand, I did find a few factors I enjoyed. I liked the folk tales told by Su-ling, the Chinese view of progress, and the rhythms related to the men who moved the boat up the Yangtze.
Also, it was nice and short. That helps. 🤓
Also, it was nice and short. That helps. 🤓
April 1, 2022
This unusual and unforgettable 1956 novel fell into my hand by accident. It might seem dated to a modern reader and the American pov on the Chinese characters would offend some in 2022. I loved so many things about it, from the crystalline writing and the simple/not-simple storyline, to the utterly convincing mix of an almost dream-like memoir with biting naturalism.
October 24, 2015
This is a lovely book. A simple and brief story, told in hindsight by an engineer sent as a young man to China in the 1920's to identify a potential site for a dam to be built by his American firm. Journeying up the Yangtze River, he finds himself on a primitive vessel hauled by hand up river by forty "trackers" to the Three Gorges. The men stoically pit their strength pulling the junk with bamboo ropes against the raging river in a terrifying scenario that has been unchanged for centuries. There is a timelessness about the journey. The young man's experience broadens as he witnesses the drama and tragedy that is almost inevitable but accepted almost without notice by the trackers. It is beautifully and simply told. Now the Three Gorges Dam has caused the river to rise and cover the path worn in stone by the bare feet of thousands of haulers for hundreds of years. You could see where the ropes had worn grooves into the mountainside. It is a time gone by, but the story is unforgettable.
January 3, 2025
This book filled my head with all sorts of wonderful visions and ideas. I found myself looking up images and history of all these staggering vistas and places described along the Yangtze. Hard to imagine that for thousand of years groups of men literally had to be tethered to and pull boats through rapids and gorges
It was interesting getting the perspective of an arrogant young American engineer. Viewing Eastern history and culture with a Western mindset. It made me wonder what my own reaction would be when I go back to china.
Left me with a lot to think and dream about, and I will definitely be embarking on my own voyage along the Yangtze someday
It was interesting getting the perspective of an arrogant young American engineer. Viewing Eastern history and culture with a Western mindset. It made me wonder what my own reaction would be when I go back to china.
Left me with a lot to think and dream about, and I will definitely be embarking on my own voyage along the Yangtze someday
August 5, 2007
Exquisitely done. This book still makes me think, many years after reading it, how significant and insignificant each of our lives can be, depending on perspective.
March 16, 2020
The story follows a young American engineer who boards a Junk for a trip up the Yangtze river in order to scout for sites to build a dam. It's an excellent story that describes the hardship and danger involved in such a trip and the men whose job it was to, literally, pull the boat up through the rapids.
October 11, 2008
I originally read this book in about 1960 but it is cited by many of the authors of books on China that I have recently read. I liked it very much as a metaphor for the cultural, social, political clashes and changes awaiting China as it entered the world scene. I particularly liked the idea us all trying to navigate up a huge river with steep massive gorges and impossible rapids using old techniques and wondering about how new technologies might help or might not and even more difficult being the gorge of understanding each other.
I read this at the same time as I was reading 1491 and the two books were an excellent compliment to each other.
I read this at the same time as I was reading 1491 and the two books were an excellent compliment to each other.
January 29, 2023
Una lettura insolita per me, consigliata da una collega/amica con cui condivido la passione libresca.
Un romanzo di poche pagine, quasi privo di dialoghi, tutto incentrato su descrizioni della natura e degli uomini, che sono tutt’uno con quella natura, dominata e dominati dal potere del grande fiume Yangtzee.
Il conflitto tra l’uomo e la natura scorre parallelo al conflitto tra gli uomini e le loro diverse culture, in un intreccio di amore e odio: incantamento, ammirazione, esaltazione da una parte; incomprensione, presa di distanza, rifiuto dall’altra.
L’incontro fra due mondi così diversi si concluderà con un fallimento che genererà sgomento, amarezza e malinconia nel protagonista, il quale non vedrà mai la realizzazione del suo progetto, la costruzione della diga che avrebbe reso un grande servizio alla popolazione locale; verrà meno, invero, l’intero progetto di vita del giovane entusiasta ingegnere, che si era messo in viaggio per scoprire il grande fiume e dargli un nuovo corso.
Ed è così che il viaggio sulla giunca diventa metafora nera della vita, quando questa ci appare solo come una sconfitta.
Tre stelle e mezzo di gradimento.
Un romanzo di poche pagine, quasi privo di dialoghi, tutto incentrato su descrizioni della natura e degli uomini, che sono tutt’uno con quella natura, dominata e dominati dal potere del grande fiume Yangtzee.
Il conflitto tra l’uomo e la natura scorre parallelo al conflitto tra gli uomini e le loro diverse culture, in un intreccio di amore e odio: incantamento, ammirazione, esaltazione da una parte; incomprensione, presa di distanza, rifiuto dall’altra.
L’incontro fra due mondi così diversi si concluderà con un fallimento che genererà sgomento, amarezza e malinconia nel protagonista, il quale non vedrà mai la realizzazione del suo progetto, la costruzione della diga che avrebbe reso un grande servizio alla popolazione locale; verrà meno, invero, l’intero progetto di vita del giovane entusiasta ingegnere, che si era messo in viaggio per scoprire il grande fiume e dargli un nuovo corso.
Ed è così che il viaggio sulla giunca diventa metafora nera della vita, quando questa ci appare solo come una sconfitta.
Tre stelle e mezzo di gradimento.
November 4, 2021
Nice and simple in a way that gets to its point quickly and makes it well, but ultimately lacking in longer term resonance. From chapter 1 the reader likely knows that the dam is not really the intent of the book, but rather a brief mediation on the difficult and praise-worthy lifestyles of others.
October 1, 2011
This is a deceptively simple story about a journey up the Yangtze River in a junk. In the hands of John Hersey, it becomes a small masterpiece. With clear, concise prose, he captures the drama in the lives of the river workers and their daily challenges. For me, it was a memorable journey.
April 28, 2019
Having enjoyed my random purchase of 'The Child Buyer' some time ago, I thought I'd give 'A Single Pebble' a go when I saw it for 50p.
I read it in a day, a testament not so much to its length (126 pages) as to its readability: a story of self-discovery and apparently unbridgeable cultural difference cultural compellingly told.
This compelling quality lay for me in the effects of the first person narrative - a record of what the fiftyish narrator remembers about his younger twentyish self - and the incidents that take place and to which he and the Chinese boatmen (and one woman) respond on a journey up the Yangtze on a junk hauled by 'trackers'.
The narrator recalls with some pain his weaknesses and errors as an American engineer exploring, in the early 1920s, the possibility of constructing a dam on the Yangtze. (A Yangtze Cruises website even quotes a passage from the novel in which Hersey describes Old Pebble, the ‘Noise Suppressor’ or chief navigator and the novel’s hero, guiding the junk up a particularly dangerous rapid, and we may assume that Hersey knew his river well.) The narrator is made conscious of a system of managing the river that is not only effective though dangerous, ages old, and humanly admirable. At the same time, he is aware of what his own skills as a Western engineer, skills that could benefit Chinese people by providing electricity and a measure of flood control – which exists now, of course, in the Three Gorges Dam, a little downstream of the place which, at the end of the novel, is revealed as the site chosen by the narrator. His experiences are complicated by the presence of Su-Ling who is married to the junk’s owner but who is secretly in love with Old Pebble: the narrator is hopelessly attracted to her, though she gives him no encouragement.
Underlying his shifting feelings is, as I read it, the youthful narrator’s loneliness which makes him emotionally volatile and renders him unable to manage his culturally challenging situation consideringly. For me, this depiction of inadequacy and vulnerability, exacerbated by the inability to recognize it and respond thoughtfully, is what was most interesting about the narrator. My own experiences when abroad of my sense of anxiety, cultural otherness and a self-protective tendency to assume a Western/British sense of superiority were brought to the fore: I found my own feelings of inadequacy quite tenderly near the surface while I was reading the novel.
The variety of incidents and the description of them in what I think is probably best described as limpid prose were very enjoyable and often, I thought, thrilling. The passage through the rapids is one such, but the occasional tensions on the boat maintain a sense of edginess as well. There is tension also between the narrator and the Chinese. For much of the time he is treated with great courtesy and the natural kindness that exists between people of all races when they are not confronting each other. This is helped by his having taken the trouble to learn Mandarin for a year before his trip, and having an awareness of how some things are ritualised rather than to be taken at face value. At other times it is evident he is regarded as an outsider, as when he asserts his ability to change the river, or discovers his food ration places him just above the trackers in the hierarchy on the junk, or when his watch is stolen and everyone denies any knowledge of it or seems at all concerned – they don’t tell the time by watches, but by the sun and the seasons.
The novel reminded me of ‘A Passage to India’ and of J.G. Ballard – an odd mixture, perhaps. But Forster’s vision of there being an unbridgeable gap between East and West was there, and the junk comes to represent one of Ballard’s small worlds in which everything over time shifts towards disaster caused by abnormal circumstances that create struggles for leadership. Ballard also, I find, likes to look at how ordinary people respond in suddenly and radically different situations. In this novel, the narrator is effectively constantly in such a situation, and he makes a bit of a hash of it because of his inexperience.
A very different novel to ‘The Child Buyer’, but it has enhanced my knowledge of Hersey as a versatile and sensitive writer who can address serious questions accessibly.
I read it in a day, a testament not so much to its length (126 pages) as to its readability: a story of self-discovery and apparently unbridgeable cultural difference cultural compellingly told.
This compelling quality lay for me in the effects of the first person narrative - a record of what the fiftyish narrator remembers about his younger twentyish self - and the incidents that take place and to which he and the Chinese boatmen (and one woman) respond on a journey up the Yangtze on a junk hauled by 'trackers'.
The narrator recalls with some pain his weaknesses and errors as an American engineer exploring, in the early 1920s, the possibility of constructing a dam on the Yangtze. (A Yangtze Cruises website even quotes a passage from the novel in which Hersey describes Old Pebble, the ‘Noise Suppressor’ or chief navigator and the novel’s hero, guiding the junk up a particularly dangerous rapid, and we may assume that Hersey knew his river well.) The narrator is made conscious of a system of managing the river that is not only effective though dangerous, ages old, and humanly admirable. At the same time, he is aware of what his own skills as a Western engineer, skills that could benefit Chinese people by providing electricity and a measure of flood control – which exists now, of course, in the Three Gorges Dam, a little downstream of the place which, at the end of the novel, is revealed as the site chosen by the narrator. His experiences are complicated by the presence of Su-Ling who is married to the junk’s owner but who is secretly in love with Old Pebble: the narrator is hopelessly attracted to her, though she gives him no encouragement.
Underlying his shifting feelings is, as I read it, the youthful narrator’s loneliness which makes him emotionally volatile and renders him unable to manage his culturally challenging situation consideringly. For me, this depiction of inadequacy and vulnerability, exacerbated by the inability to recognize it and respond thoughtfully, is what was most interesting about the narrator. My own experiences when abroad of my sense of anxiety, cultural otherness and a self-protective tendency to assume a Western/British sense of superiority were brought to the fore: I found my own feelings of inadequacy quite tenderly near the surface while I was reading the novel.
The variety of incidents and the description of them in what I think is probably best described as limpid prose were very enjoyable and often, I thought, thrilling. The passage through the rapids is one such, but the occasional tensions on the boat maintain a sense of edginess as well. There is tension also between the narrator and the Chinese. For much of the time he is treated with great courtesy and the natural kindness that exists between people of all races when they are not confronting each other. This is helped by his having taken the trouble to learn Mandarin for a year before his trip, and having an awareness of how some things are ritualised rather than to be taken at face value. At other times it is evident he is regarded as an outsider, as when he asserts his ability to change the river, or discovers his food ration places him just above the trackers in the hierarchy on the junk, or when his watch is stolen and everyone denies any knowledge of it or seems at all concerned – they don’t tell the time by watches, but by the sun and the seasons.
The novel reminded me of ‘A Passage to India’ and of J.G. Ballard – an odd mixture, perhaps. But Forster’s vision of there being an unbridgeable gap between East and West was there, and the junk comes to represent one of Ballard’s small worlds in which everything over time shifts towards disaster caused by abnormal circumstances that create struggles for leadership. Ballard also, I find, likes to look at how ordinary people respond in suddenly and radically different situations. In this novel, the narrator is effectively constantly in such a situation, and he makes a bit of a hash of it because of his inexperience.
A very different novel to ‘The Child Buyer’, but it has enhanced my knowledge of Hersey as a versatile and sensitive writer who can address serious questions accessibly.
April 10, 2021
This book was okay. I really wanted to like it, but didn't. "At length we erupted from the gorge. The limestone formations fell away, and we moved all at once into a region of plutonic rocks. In a valley nearly a mile wide huge boulders of gneiss and granite, larger by far than our junk, lay strewn about, and straight across the line of the river, relenting only enough to grant it a shallow channel, curious dykes of greenstone and porphyry rose up out of the other stone. It was a primeval landscape, and it seemed to have been arranged by some force of fury. I was deeply moved and humbled by the sight of the trackers scrambling like tiny, purposeful crickets over the rough and intractable banks." The book is short, but with wording like this, it took forever! This passage was on page 15, when I was still willing to reference my dictionary or Google - I looked up plutonic, gneiss, greenstone and porphyry, dyke, and intractable. By the end of the book, I stopped looking up anything, I just didn't care and was happy with getting the gist of what he was saying. Not only did he use words I didn't know, he used words I knew, but in ways I didn't know, like dyke - not as the wall built to hold back flooding, but the geological definition of an intrusion of rocking cutting across strata. Was his point to talk about the beauty of the landscape or to show off his vocabulary and his knowledge of geology terms? I was in it to hear of the beauty of the landscape and the culture of the people. This book is about a young man taking a journey down the Yangtze River on a junk for the purpose of finding a good place to build a dam. In so doing, he has the opportunity to learn about the native people, their beliefs, their culture, their lives. Instead, he spends his time being a whiny, judgmental, childish, prejudiced man. This would have been a much better book if he understood the beauty of the people he was with, and if the author could tell the story and describe the surroundings in vocabulary that would allow the reader to immerse themselves in.
#abookwithagemmineralorrockinthetitle
#abookwithagemmineralorrockinthetitle
January 2, 2023
The syntax structure and diction usage enlisted in this story were elegantly done. The story itself was not very compelling until the last 20 pages or so and left the story feeling unfinished and me as a reader unsatisfied. The climax of the book was worded oddly and I needed to reread it a few times before I understood it’s significant. The story ends with the main character’s life feeling empty and himself useless in society. Quite a depressing end, but great to see a book like this as we don’t often see shorter books like this. Some of the translations from Mandarin into English were odd. As a speaker of both languages, I could decipher the meaning of the Chinese phrases but the translations used by the author seemed slightly off. For example, the ending farewell phrase the main character says often the author translated to as “Again meet”, which is technically correct as the word in Mandarin is 再見(zai jian), 再 meaning again, and 見 meaning to meet or encounter. However, such an awkward phrase as “again meet” is not employed by English speakers and the word 再見(zai jian), or “Again meet” is translated as the word for “goodbye”. The author could have also translated it to say “till we meet again” as the word also indicates that meaning as well. The clunkiness of the translations were disappointing as the author grew up learning Mandarin as a son of Christian missionaries in China, but the English translations were not always equivalent to the English meaning. I also wished there had been more description of the areas the character encountered but the analogies the author created were very original and well-organized. Also, the hint of a romance seemed to be hinted at and then quickly abandoned as if the author changed his mind half way through the story that the main character wasn’t good enough for the female character.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 16, 2024
I'm new to Hersey. I've known of him for years This book fits my mental image of him, an image I formed more than fifty years ago. That image is of an author who took a major historical event and gave us a human perspective on it. After looking at Wikipedia I learned about his career in Journalism and his teaching writing at Yale. I was amazed to learn Hersey was born to missionaries in China and spoke Chinese before English.
In A Single Pebble we get insight into China before the Three Gorges Dam was built. It does not deal with the displacement of 31 million people but it does show how life before the dam was so different. We never learn about life after the dam. Instead we see life before the dam from the perspective of a young American engineer as the only passenger on a Junk. The Junk is pulled up the river. There is no time reference that I found but it appears as though this would have been in the 1920s or 30s. The young engineer's mission is to assess potential sites for a future dam. Rather than taking measurements he's doing more seat of the pants observations, such as, at this gorge there's lots of rocks that have fallen in to the river in a very narrow passage so the river is made treacherous by rapids that might change as the rivers rises and falls with different precipitation levels.
Most of his time he's observing the people on the Junk. It's a very slow moving journey as they're going upstream and only as fast as forty men can pull them against the river's unrelenting push back. He focuses on the boat's owner and his wife, the leader of the crew, and the cook. He is dismayed that they cannot see how a proposed dam would improve all of their lives, eliminating the inhuman conditions based on the need to employ physical labor rather than machinery. Slowly he begins to appreciate how the river gives their lives meaning which a dam would only destroy. There is tragedy and triumph, all belonging to the bygone era which we can barely appreciate today.
In A Single Pebble we get insight into China before the Three Gorges Dam was built. It does not deal with the displacement of 31 million people but it does show how life before the dam was so different. We never learn about life after the dam. Instead we see life before the dam from the perspective of a young American engineer as the only passenger on a Junk. The Junk is pulled up the river. There is no time reference that I found but it appears as though this would have been in the 1920s or 30s. The young engineer's mission is to assess potential sites for a future dam. Rather than taking measurements he's doing more seat of the pants observations, such as, at this gorge there's lots of rocks that have fallen in to the river in a very narrow passage so the river is made treacherous by rapids that might change as the rivers rises and falls with different precipitation levels.
Most of his time he's observing the people on the Junk. It's a very slow moving journey as they're going upstream and only as fast as forty men can pull them against the river's unrelenting push back. He focuses on the boat's owner and his wife, the leader of the crew, and the cook. He is dismayed that they cannot see how a proposed dam would improve all of their lives, eliminating the inhuman conditions based on the need to employ physical labor rather than machinery. Slowly he begins to appreciate how the river gives their lives meaning which a dam would only destroy. There is tragedy and triumph, all belonging to the bygone era which we can barely appreciate today.
May 15, 2020
This book was interesting to read, but not one of my favorites. It follows this American engineer who was hired by a company to survey the Yangtze River in China. This river brought a lot of problems to Chinese people of that time, so he's sent to find a solution to make it better. He ends up observing and speculates these Chinese ship tracking people. It shows what he's thinking throughout the entire book, so you didn't really get to see the perspective of the other people on the ship. He doesn't ever get to convince these people about his solution in the book, but he's confident that his solution will happen one day. For me, the American engineer was not my favorite to watch. He can be a bit annoying at times, but is interesting to follow throughout the book. A theme from this book is getting over lives challenges, and accepting a different view than yours. This can relate to my life in many ways. Everyone has challenges that they have to overcome, and we all have different views. Accepting those views and understanding where the other person is coming from so you can help the overcome those challenges.
June 17, 2023
As I read this book I kept seeing images from a film starring Steve McQueen. I looked on IMDB and found nothing. Tried Mr. McQueen and found: The Sand Pebbles is a 1966 American epic war film directed by Robert Wise in Panavision. It tells the story of an independent, rebellious U.S. Navy machinist's mate, first class, aboard the fictional river gunboat USS San Pablo, on Yangtze Patrol in 1920s China. The film features Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough, Richard Crenna, Candice Bergen, Mako, Simon Oakland, Larry Gates, and Marayat Andriane. Robert Anderson adapted the screenplay from the 1962 novel of the same name by ******Richard McKenna******. The Sand Pebbles was a critical and commercial success at its general release. It became the fourth highest-grossing film of 1966 and was nominated for eight Academy Awards and eight Golden Globe Awards, with Attenborough winning the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor. Title and story are way too similar for me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Recommend both the book and the film Kristi & Abby Tabby
May 4, 2018
First of all, I found the young engineer/narrator to be arrogant and insufferable. He exhibits the perfect example of Western pretension in the way he assumes that the way things have been done for a thousand years is inferior to new fangled machinery and thinking. He is unaware that his dam project will ultimately be built a hundred years or so later, and is depressed at the prospects of it ever happening. The author does a good job of describing the fantastic landscape of the Yangtse River, some of which does not exist anymore because of the dam. It seems he is not well liked by the Chinese who accompany him on his journey up the river, but he does attempt to make connections however clumsily. When tragedy befalls the endeavor, he does not seem to know how to reconcile himself with the reactions of the people around him, and is confused and traumatized. This book was on my list of favorites once upon a time, but I can't remember why.
May 7, 2021
This 1957 short novel by master author John Hersey is a deceptively simple story. A young American engineer takes a trip up the Yangtze River in 1920 on a junk literally pulled upriver and through rapids by a group of trackers walking on paths sometimes hacked out of stone mountains. This ancient practice would be ended if the engineer and his employer's plans to help China build a dam on the river moves forward. The engineer speaks Mandarin but the cultural gulf is wide between him and those on the junk. The journey is dangerous and the descriptions of the river are fascinating. The dam was not built until decades later. Pictures of the amazing paths hacked out of stone can be found on the internet, but they were drowned when the Yangtze dam flooded the river depicted in the book. This was a magical book.
May 7, 2021
This 1957 short novel by master author John Hersey is a deceptively simple story. A young American engineer takes a trip up the Yangtze River in 1920 on a junk literally pulled upriver and through rapids by a group of trackers walking on paths sometimes hacked out of stone mountains. This ancient practice would be ended if the engineer and his employer's plans to help China build a dam on the river moves forward. The engineer speaks Mandarin but the cultural gulf is wide between him and those on the junk. The journey is dangerous and the descriptions of the river are fascinating. The dam was not built until decades later. Pictures of the amazing paths hacked out of stone can be found on the internet, but they were drowned when the Yangtze dam flooded the river depicted in the book. This was a magical book.
June 7, 2022
I found this book through another book I was reading about China and wanted to learn about the ancient way of life of the trackers who would pull junks through the gorges of the Great River. For learning about that, the book was worthwhile, but I really did not like the narrator very much. He was an American engineer on a junk going through the gorges to try to find a suitable place to build a dam. Though I kept reminding myself that he was young, 24, it didn't help much. He was very judgmental and arrogant. At the end of the journey, he was ruminating on all that he had seen and experienced and commented about the people he had come to understand. I don't agree. I don't think he tried to understand their way of life or them as people at all. And, at least for me, it took away from the beauty of the novel.
November 26, 2018
Beautifully written story of a trip in a junk up the Yangtze River in which a young British man tries to communicate with the Captain of the Junk and the Crew. Not only was language a barrier but the whole outlook on life was very different. Trying to make peace and understand his companions on the journey was at once beautiful and sad.
June 15, 2019
A wonderous book about an engineer traveling by boat up the Yangtze river looking for a place to built a dam. He learns that the people of the river love their hard lives and feel that he is the stupid one. Hersey's descriptions are breathtaking and dynamic. Many new vocabulary words for me. He is surprised by the calmness to the loss of human life in China.
March 21, 2020
Wild water, wild journey, and wild rules frame the journey our young American engineer takes in China. Dreams of building a dam on the Yangtze collide with traditional customs of the Chinese in the course of their travels up river together. In the end, East meets West without resolution of nature's challenges.
April 16, 2020
Short first-person account of an American engineer journeying up the Yangtze River in search of a likely site for a dam. Takes place in in the 1920s; setting is on board a junk over a couple weeks. The characters are inscrutable but well-drawn and the plot has action without melodrama. A reminder that interpretation of an unfamiliar culture is difficult and even dangerous. Well written and easy to read. Simple tale but not simplistic. Call it 3.5 stars.
May 10, 2020
Captivating, intense, Hersey describes a ride up the Great River, the Yangtze, on a Chinese junk, a barge hauling cotton. The struggle to move the cargo against the flow revealed centuries old practices of boatmanship. Hersey writes with the delicacy of a flower surviving the power of a hurricane. This short read leaves the reader raw, exposed, and yet, exhilarated.
October 6, 2020
Great story, and tension-filled, as a headstrong young American engineer accompanies the crew of a Chinese junk carrying freight up the Yangtse River through the deadly series of massive gorges by pulling it, inch by inch using ropes. This would seem to be a impossible task, and it is nearly just that, requiring the skilled services of Old Pebble who hauls and sings and stamps his feet and lives for nothing else than to do the Sisyphean work of leading the hauling crew. The story, setting and characters are brought vividly to life and made unforgettable through Hersey's detailed and direct prose.
May 24, 2021
A wonderful short novel capturing the sense of China from western eyes 100 years ago. The east-west culture clash centers on the tie of the population to its natural environment over centuries versus the desire to harness that natural environment for the 'benefit' of a variety of interests. Rather timeless story.
July 15, 2022
One of Hershey’s lesser known books, and there’s a reason for that. The novel is too symbolic, the engineer too western, the Chinese too Chinese. For such a short novel it’s very long, very turgid, very heavy. The language can be good, even very good, and the engineer’s inner monologue convincing. It still left me completely unmoved.
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