Great Book Finds from 2008

Posted by Jayvee at January 5th, 2009

Literary upstart and miscreant Adam David barrages through the bookshelves of 08’s local literature and reports back his choice findings.

Writing to the Future: Poetika at Politika ng Malikhaing Pagsulat
edited by Rolando Tolentino (Likhaan: UP Institute of Creative Writing, 2008)
A collection of essays on the poetics and politics (duh) of pa-young writers like Mike Coroza, Roberto Añonuevo, and Mario Miclat, young-ish writers like Luis Katigbak, Ian Casocot, and Vince Serrano, and the really truly earnestly young writers like Mark Cayanan, Raymond de Borja, and Yours Truly. It paints a very accurate picture of the Whys and the Hows of contemporary Pinoy writing, where it was a few years ago, where it is as of today, and where it’s possibly headed for in the near future. It’s the first of its kind here, writers owning up to a lot of things both embarrassing and praise worthy about their creative processes, their politics or lack thereof, their antecedents and quite possibly their descendants. Its only sin is that even in its current state of 250 pages of thirty-four writers, it is still woefully incomplete. This is indispensable. Available at UP Press bookstores. 

Soledad’s Sister
by Jose Dalisay, Jr (Anvil, 2008)
A detective novel set around the death of a domestic helper whose body goes missing only a few hours after arriving at the airport. I shed a metaphorical tear when I finally read this as a book after seeing early bits of it printed in other places back in the Early 2000s as the story was still as amazingly good as how I remember it, and I think it’s really very depressing that Dalisay is still word for word the best fictionist around. I actually believed that this sort of writing–how Dalisay actually physically wrote the book–would have been something someone young would do, someone around my age, but no, everyone around my age is bent on writing like how Dalisay wrote several eons ago when he did Sarcophagus and Killing Time In A Warm Place while Dalisay is writing things that are already lightyears away from that. The story sort of deflates towards the end, but it’s still top notch writing like no one else does it. Available everywhere. 

Parang
by Mesandel Virtusio Arguelles (High Chair, 2008)
A father’s death is lived and relived under the pain of grief and acceptance of an absence that will never be filled. A book-long epitaph of controlled hysteria, a testament to the capacity of Art to temper high emotion, Arguelles’ economic poetry–to borrow a phrase–blazes with the intensity of an eclipse glimpsed through a pinhole. This is writing as way of coping, but without the usual greeting card sentiments or parabley moral lessons. This is the song we sing to ourselves while we wait for sleep in bed in our room as mom and dad shout and fight downstairs and break fine china on the floor. There should be more of this sort of writing. Available at the Filipinas Heritage Library, at UP Press bookstores, and at Mag:Net Katipunan. 

Trese
by Budjette Tan and KaJo Baldisimo (VisPrint, 2008)
A series of slick done-in-one stories, exactly like CSI only it’s steeped in traditional Pinoy monsters and mythologies and the main protagonist is a goth chick with guns and emo hair. It’s working off of the more common vein of action horror comic books and once you really read into it there is certainly a formula to the construction of the stories themselves but Trese manages to rise above it all by simply resorting to the most obvious thing: it spins us a good yarn page in page out. Tan and Baldisimo show us what can be done with formula, why formula works, how formula can work for you, all the while not making it seem like formula. Komikeros all over should not only read this for the words and art but also study it for its craft as there is certainly craft at work here There are currently two books out, both utterly smooth, available absolutely everywhere (with good reason). 

Pepsi Tastes Funny When It’s Christmas Eve & You’re Alone Eating Canned Tuna
by Mads Bajarias (self-published, 2008)
And so while everyone is too busy being broody and sensitive and whinily introspective in their poetry and prose, Bajarias opts for the more perilous path and tries to be funny and actually succeeds in it without resorting to the usual green Bob Ongish cutesy everyman pitfalls of other such efforts. Some poems are still whiny here, but it’s a GenXy whininess, a duh ennui, haikuy Brautigan, a morning-after-the-overnight-drink-up-hangover assessment of life as it was lived last night: a lot of pukey mixings of gin and sardines, a lot of quiet moments spent while contemplating wakedom from bed and it’s already lunchtime. The book smells of alcohol and tobacco and gastric juices and stale saliva. A lot of animals are mentioned, almost always cats. Occasionally there are plants, and interchangeably, a girlfriend. These are poems that we haven’t been seeing too much of since the salad days of Ricky de Ungria. Being self-published, there are only 200 copies of it, and last time I checked the book is sold out, so you’d have to contact the author via HYPERLINK “mailto:madsbajarias@gmail.com”madsbajarias@gmail.com for details about the further print runs he plans to do. 

Dagta: Antolohiya ng Erotika
edited by J Luis Camacho (Fox Books, 2008)
I’ve always maintained that what Erotica is to Sex should be what Science Fiction is to Science Fact, that is, its feet are firm on reality, but its head is up high in fantasy, which means, in short, Erotica as a genre should be more like Quiapo DVD Pornography in its approach than its current more Catholic Romantic Guilt mode, a holdout from our more puerile patronised past under the Cross and Belt. In this book, Sex is a hairy, sweaty, smelly, strenuous, exhilaratingly devouring thing that frequently leaves nasty telltale stains on the sheets and your legs wobbly and weak and worn. In this book, the moon is not a lover’s face. It is not even her breast. In this book, the moon is the moon whose light is reflected on the constellations of fluids on your lover’s body. Available absolutely everywhere. 

Elsewhere Held and Lingered
by Conchitina Cruz (High Chair, 2008)
Our true transgressions in writing will be measured not on the basis of the chosen topics’ inherent potential to transgress societal norms but in these topics’ seemingly mundane normalcy and how they proceed to screw around with our expectations and wants. Cruz’ second book is an erotic novel in verse about the current state of marital affairs in our modern world, the frustrations, the compromises, the necessary fictions. This book spits on the face of chicklit’s overwhelmingly thin-blooded Jane Austen-lite output as it demonstrates again and again how the hysterical-cosmopolitan-woman-crazy-in-love genre could and ought to be written in the Early 21st Century: maturely, intelligently, and with much love. Available at the Filipinas Heritage Library, at UP Press bookstores, and at Mag:Net Katipunan. 

Windmills #1: Breakdowns
by Josel Nicolas (Monkey Versus Squirrel Comics, 2008)
A Batanggueño bear named Bear suffers from child abuse, chronic existential melancholia, and urban despair as he ponders upon such things as Jeffrey Dahmer, Adam Sandler movies, and Ganesha in this stylised fictional autobio from nineteen-year old UST komikero Josel Nicolas. The entire 29-page book is written and drawn with youthful exuberance and verbosity and frenetic anxiety previously never seen anywhere in komixdom. This is beyond Arre or Drilon or even Alanguilan. An account of a brain slowly and surely going down the drain. Only about forty copies of it are available and it’s already sold out but there’s an online version of it floating around in the Interweb somewhere so you’ll have to contact the artist through ajora_metalanger (at) yahoo (dot) com to point you towards the right direction. 
 

Doveglion: Collected Poems
by Jose Garcia Villa (Penguin, 2008)
A heartbreaking book. A complete collection of Villa’s poetry is certainly something that has been a long time coming and really all the local publishers ought to be ashamed of themselves that international publisher Penguin Books beat them to the punch, and they released the book in their “Classic” line, too, but this is not complete complete as there are probably about ten or so here and there that aren’t included in it but all of Villa’s previously unpublished brilliant things ought to make up for their absence, but really, the most heartbreaking thing about this book is how everything in it is about seventy years old and yet everything seems so damn New, so new that they’re not even contemporary, they’re all still very Out There, and it’s really a very sad thing that’s it’s only this year that we actually get to see them all side by side doing their work exploding our minds. A much-belated celebration of undeniable genius. Available where Penguin Books are sold. 

Ah, 2008: it was a good year for books. It certainly feels like a turning point of sorts for a lot of things in book publishing and just plain writing itself. Finally, things that we can actually label as “new” are coming out, and in such great quality, too. Previously unavailable venues are opening up, a lot of new writers are getting recognition (I’m not even talking about awards here), and old writers are flexing muscles previously believed to be already atrophied. A lot of new things are being done, have been for quite a few years, but now they’re being given their own places in our shelves. Hooray for books! Here’s hoping 2009 will be even better than this. 


// Article by Adam David, originally from UNO Magazine’s Jan-Feb 2009 issue.