Tag: Books

New Year, New Eyes

New year, new eyes: This has become an annual theme for my first book of the year, and it has usually involved non-fiction that prod me to look at history, music, literature, life, or the world with a set of new eyes.

This year, I was not able to plan my first book. My younger brother was home for the holidays and reading was not part of the itinerary. We spent most of our time adventuring in the kitchen and binge watching shows that I would normally forgo for reading if left to my own devices.

And it was on a brief solitude after lunchtime when I realized that it was already 2024 and I was without a reading plan.

Then these two books that haven’t yet made their way into my shelf caught my eye, presents from a dear friend who recently traveled to Japan. They came with a note that said, “Our hotel in Kyoto had a bookstore right across it…”

I flipped through There Was a Knock by Shinichi Hoshi because the author is not as widely known here in the Philippines as Natsume Sōseki. The next thing I knew, I was at the last page wanting more!

The few times I felt this entertained by a writer’s cleverness it was with the likes of Queaneau’s Exercises in Style and Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler! But rather than being variations on a theme, each of Hoshi’s fifteen stories are unpredictable and different, and they only have one thing in common — the first line: There was a knock. Needless to say it’s a literary gem!

Botchan by Natsume Sōseki, on the other hand, took me more than halfway to warm up to the main character whom I found rather judgmental and cynical. It was Sōseki’s humorous and engaging writing that kept me going, but only to make me understand in the end that this is ultimately a book about human nature.

At first glance, I wouldn’t have considered any of these two as candidates for my annual first book of the year theme, but here we are and I do not regret it!

Perhaps that’s what having new eyes is all about, too!

Happy New Year and Happy New Eyes, dear fellow readers!

Patricia Evangelista: Some People Need Killing

“Ikaw si Peter?!” It was more verdict than question. 

They insisted he was Peter over and over again as they beat him up mercilessly.

How did his late evening drive to 7-Eleven turn into a nightmare? It all happened so fast.

The last thing he remembered was stopping at a corner to respond to a message when several men grabbed him, one on each arm and one on each leg. They thrust him into a van and assaulted him. 

He was only certain of one thing: He was not, never was, never will be, Peter.

He was not Peter, but the men turned out to be cops on a buy-bust operation. And they forced him to admit, forced him to be Peter.

He who was not Peter was locked up for two days in one of those horrible Philippine detention cells until he was able to contact a good lawyer and apply for bail. The cops raised a case against him. They claim he was caught buying drugs from another man. They accused him of resisting arrest. They put him on the watch list. 

He is not Peter. I would know. I’ve known him since forever, and he’s been one of my dearest friends almost right from the moment we met as kids. Alongside his best qualities, I know his sins and his faults. The use of illegal drugs is not one of them. But don’t take my word for it. Trust the two drug test results, urine and hair follicle. Both turned out negative. 

Despite that, the case continues. It has been going on for over a year. He has had to go through every single hearing, tremble in his seat each time and listen to the cops pile lies upon lies, even on his birthday. There are times when he would be at court by 8:00 a.m. and the hearing would start at 11:30 a.m. Sometimes he would wait half a day, only for it to be cancelled. He who is not Peter has had to put so much of life on hold because he was mistaken for Peter.

It’s unfair. The trauma is taking a toll on him. I laugh with him to get his mind elsewhere, but I cry for him in private. But for some twisted reason, I am grateful.

I am grateful that he was mistaken for Peter on October 2022. The other Peters between 2016 to mid-2022, the real ones and the ones mistaken for them, could not even put life on hold. There was no life to put on hold. Life was not an option.

“Forget that their name is Marcos. Forget that their name is Duterte. Forget that their name is Aquino. Duterte the First begat Duterte the Second. Aquino the Second begat Aquino the Third. Marcos the First begat Marcos the Second begat Marcos the Third, presidents begetting presidents, begetting vice presidents, rotating and revolving and rotating again. Their names live in airports and amphitheaters, on paper bills and street signs, along the highways where the corpses are still being found. Forget the names of their sons and daughters and remember their dead instead.”

Marga Ortigas: There Are No Falling Stars in China

“After this time in the Middle East, I learnt what it was like to carry the weight of people’s stories — and the role that journalists play in bearing witness. Our job was to serve as a funnel, a conduit, and in so doing, hopefully remind viewers across the world that we’re all the same. To elicit even a smidgen of empathy for those who might seem different to you.”

A piano student of mine is studying Debussy’s Claire de Lune, and I recently explained that being emotionally connected to a piece makes it more difficult and exhausting to perform, but (un)fortunately, life and music can only be meaningful that way. And it is this balance between technique and emotional connection that we spend our whole lives trying to master.

After reading this book, I realized that the aforementioned is not only true for music, but for journalism as well; and these pages are a record of a journey in probing and understanding that balance.

I love the unpretentiousness of this book. It does not claim to be a powerful journalistic work. Sometimes it tells you something as simple and true as, “The world turns. And that is what matters. It turns — and we humans keep going. Through conflict. Through inhumanity. Through heartbreak.”

Yes, there is nothing in the passage indicating that this Filipina journalist is vying for the Pulitzer, at least with this book; but it is powerful and heartwarming in the sense that it speaks to me of things that I need to take note of, not only when I read it from cover to cover on the most restful Sunday I’ve had in months, but throughout life, especially when things get tough.

That’s what you will find here: Life lessons from a recovering journalist. There is a certain universality to it, for aren’t we all recovering from something?

Claudia Piñeiro: A Little Luck

The phrase “a little luck” appears nine times in A Little Luck, just as “Elena knows” appears nineteen times in Elena Knows.

Does it matter? Not really. Maybe noticing those details says more of me as a reader than Claudia Piñeiro as a writer. One thing is certain; she does not repeat herself because she is running out of ways to say things. She is consistently unpredictable. 

Elena Knows, which I read much earlier, is exceptionally written and translated. The choice to highlight a specific incapacitating disease that isn’t limited to women — to effectively confront every reader with what it feels like to lose bodily autonomy — is, I believe, the most impressive allegory that should be uncovered from under the many brilliant qualities of the novel. There are other apt adjectives for Elena Knows, but beautiful is not one of them.

But for the soulful strains of Piazzolla that wove through A Little Luck’s narrative; for how a woman damaged found the first steps to healing through literature; for how I thought it would all be about pain only to discover that it was principally about happiness; and for the sheer deftness of Piñeiro’s writing — this one is beautiful.

Just as unputdownable, just as suspenseful, just as affecting… and this time, beautiful. 

Cheon Myeong-Kwan: Whale

This book does not say anything about Egon Schiele. But it very well could have been written by him, had he been a novelist instead of a painter.

An unexpected turn inside the Belvedere Museum in Vienna once brought me face to face with enormous paintings by Schiele. When you go to a place for Klimt and be confronted by Schiele, it is a staggering experience you will not easily forget.

Haunting eyes, naked and exaggerated anatomies, comical expressions, grotesque scenes, and dark humor — whether you like it or not, you cannot look away. Even if you eventually manage to, you will be forced to take another look, and another.

Because by some bizarre and compelling artistry, the artist wraps you around a strangely proportioned finger, the way Cheon Myeong-Kwan does in this whale of a tale.

So, do not let the cover design of the Archipelago Books edition with its happy colors fool you. Or maybe, let it fool you; so that it startles you, the way some skillful art and literature should. Maybe take that turn and be confronted by something you normally would not seek out.

Oftentimes, the art that we find grotesque are missives from a mind sensitive to how the world truly operates. For isn’t this book a critique on justice, economic, and social systems; and even on American influence through Hollywood? And aren’t these political caricatures in the guise of troubling characters and a metafictional storyline?

I would think twice before criticizing this book for what it seems on the surface, lest I become akin to that judge in 1912 who set fire to one of Schiele’s drawings at a trial wherein Schiele was accused of indecency.

“Reader, you will believe what you want to believe. That’s all there is to it.”

Prying the lid of the Pandora’s Box that is Chinese Literature

I call it my Fertile Crescent and Silk Route Reading Project and yet there is a glaring dearth of Chinese writers in my literary diet. Maybe because I know that Chinese literature is a sort of Pandora’s box disguised as an ornate lacquer case. One that would release a curse upon the reader. The curse of wanting to read and acquire more.

Unready for another full-blown obsession, this is me prying the lid of that box ever so gently.

Dai Sijie’s Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstrees is closer to Chinese fast food and so much easier and more pleasant to swallow than Ma Jian’s Stick Out Your Tongue; and I can only be glad that I read these two in succession so they could balance each other out. 

Stick Out Your Tongue is the slimmer volume and yet its morbid stories of sky burials, incest, and disturbing Buddhist initiation rites juxtaposed with Tibet’s harsh landscape shakes one to the core. I cannot even think of recommending this book. But it is the afterword that I find especially striking as it draws attention to the destruction that the Chinese government has wrought in Tibet, or the fact that over a million Tibetans have died due to political persecution or famine — yet another case of a people denied control of their lands and destinies by a powerful bully.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, on the other hand, offers more heartwarming and comic imagery as two bourgeois teenage boys navigate their “re-education” in the countryside during China’s Cultural Revolution. They were among the millions of China’s youth who were sent to the rural areas to be re-educated by peasants from the mid-60s to the mid-70s. Their lives take a turn when they meet the little Chinese seamstress, but these lives are truly altered when they unexpectedly encounter French literature at a time when “ignorance is in fashion”. It may not be classified as a literary masterpiece but it is a celebration of the transformative power of literature; and I can’t blame you if this book made you scour bookshops and the internet for a definitive English translation of Romain Rolland’s Jean-Christophe. That’s what it made me do.

Adania Shibli: We Are All Equally Far from Love & Touch

Adania Shibli is the queen of stark but poignant and powerful prose. I’d feel pretentious if I tried to say more than necessary.

Having read Minor Detail already, I downloaded these books in response to her unjustly cancelled award ceremony at the Frankfurt Book Fair that was supposed to take place on October 20, 2023. Shibli’s first two works are described as non-political. I disagree. But maybe they are, if one compares them to Minor Detail, her most famous work, which exposes the rape and murder of a Palestinian girl by Israeli soldiers.

In these two books there is no talk of occupation or governments, most characters do not have names, locations are vague, they recount ordinary lives; but I don’t think it takes a genius to notice that the dismal lives depicted in these earlier works are consequences of systemic trauma and oppression.

For books such as these, it is not the reader’s duty to offer literary analysis, or to say whether they liked it or not. It is the reader’s duty to empathize. Because today, even empathy is hard to come by.

Ian Rosales Casocot: Heartbreak & Magic

A writer who merely sits behind his desk or peers at his city through a tinted car window could not have written this.

The person who has written these stories is well-acquainted with the nooks and crannies of Dumaguete (or “Dumaguet” until it becomes “Dumaguete” again in page sixty), he has sought refuge under its acacia trees, he has gone to the market for puto maya and native cocoa, has frequented the chicken inasal places, he has walked its streets, he is burdened by its secrets, he is intimate with its ghosts and the living, and knows his city like a lover knows his beloved’s face.

Wasn’t this supposed to be a collection of fantasy and science fiction? Doesn’t Neil Gaiman’s blurb on the cover further suggest this? 

Yes, it is; and yes, it does. But I recognize in this book what I recognize in favorite writers like Khoury, Pamuk, and Mahfouz. Their works are celebrations of their cities. The love affair they have with their cities seep into their stories regardless of genre. And yes, it is a book of heartbreak and magic, horror and fantasy, but look deeper and see that it is a celebration of Dumaguete — it’s landscapes, seascapes, its food, and the loves lost and found on its soil.

Beirut has Elias Khoury, Cairo has Naguib Mahfouz, Istanbul has Orhan Pamuk, Dumaguete has Ian Casocot.

Someone give this guy multiple awards.

Oh, wait…

Jorge Luis Borges: The Book of Imaginary Beings

Mr. Borges acknowledged in the preface that a book of this kind is unavoidably incomplete, but I can’t help fantasize about how he would have enjoyed adding Filipino lore to this updated menagerie of a hundred and twenty had our creatures traveled to South America and entered the perimeters of his consciousness. 

An earlier edition invited readers to send names, descriptions, and conspicuous traits of their local monsters. I would have nominated the Tikbalang, the Aswang, the Manananggal, the Sigbin, and one Filipino president or two. 

Although the latter species probably wouldn’t have qualified owing to being non-fictional.

Rose Macaulay: The Towers of Trebizond

“I felt as if I had come not home, not at all home, but to a place which had some strange meaning, which I must try to dig up. I felt this about the whole Black Sea, but most at Trebizond.“

Feeling like I was not ready to tackle heavier themes than those in real life, I took this “adventure” novel out for a spin. It took me a while to warm up to it because it also took me a while to realize that this is not exactly a regular travelogue.

I see it as something else disguising as an adventure book. For beyond the mirage of exciting escapades in Turkey and the Middle East, it is a humorous critique on religion — different kinds. That being said, it is not a travelogue for the easily-offended. After all, Laurie is an agnostic narrator who admits to having a difficult relationship with religion, but sometimes has an outsider’s advantage of seeing through the hypocrisies and bigotries of the seemingly religious. 

As our adventuress and her unlikely companions go deeper into the direction of historic Trebizond (Trabzon in modern Turkey) on camel-back, the ruminations on morality also deepen. 

“I do not remember when I was in Cambridge we talked about such things… though we talked about everything else, such as religion, love, people, psycho-analysis, books, art, places, cooking, cars, food, sex, and all that. And still we talk about all these other things, but not about being good or bad.”

The ending confirms my hunch that while there is a literal Trebizond of which she writes, there is also another figurative Trebizond to which she refers. In a way, I am glad that this book did not turn out as I expected, and that it turned out to be so much more.

While I debate whether to order the NYRB edition solely for the Jan Morris introduction, I leave you with this poignant and relevant passage about Jerusalem:

“But what one feels in Jerusalem, where it all began, is the awful sadness and frustration and tragedy, and the great hope and triumph that sprang from it and still spring, in spite of everything we can do to spoil them with our cruelty and mean stupidity, and all the dark unchristened deeds of christened men. Jerusalem is a cruel, haunted city, like all ancient cities; it stands out because it crucified Christ; and because it was Christ we remember it with horror, but it also crucified thousands of other people, and wherever Rome (or indeed anyone else) ruled, these ghastly deaths and torturings were enjoyed by all, that is, by all except the victims and those who loved them, and it is these, the crucifixions and the flayings and the burnings and the tearing to pieces and the floggings and the blindings and the throwing to the wild beasts, all the horrors of great pain that people thought out and enjoyed, which make history a dark pit full of serpents and terror, and out of this pit we were all dug, our roots are deep in it, and still it goes on… And out of this ghastliness of cruelty and pain in Jerusalem that we call Good Friday there sprang this Church that we have, and it inherited all that cruelty, which went on fighting against the love and goodness which it had inherited too, and they are still fighting, but sometimes it is a losing battle for love and goodness…”