Photo from Vanity Fair

1st Diary Entry – Midnight’s Children

Despite the inclusion of characters who live in slums and wander the streets to make money, Salman Rushdie is chiefly chronicling the lives of the affluent Indians in Midnight’s Children. This is an important thing to note because while Saleem constantly proclaims that his story is the story of India, he is telling it from his position on top of the country’s socioeconomic pyramid. His own home–a compound that used to belong to an eccentric British man named Methwold–cloisters him and his family from most of the turmoil that occurs in Bombay after India’s independence from British rule. Not that the members of his household are protected from the political and social changes around them; no one is untouched by that.

The circumstances of Saleem’s birth has shades of soap opera-style scandal and mystery but the most important aspect is the time when it occurred. He is born exactly at midnight of August 15, 1947, the day of India’s independence. This ties him closely to the 1000 other newborn babies that entered the world on the same hour but only Saleem earns himself a letter from Jawaharlal Nehru.

The second part of the book goes on to focus on Saleem’s childhood. I am at the part where he has reached his tenth birthday and received the full gifts of being a Midnight’s Child. Not only is he connected with the children born on the same hour as he was, he can also read the minds of other people, a power which he uses to probe the different secrets that surrounds him.

The characters that populate Saleem’s childhood are legion, including a younger sister named Brass Monkey, a best friend named Sonny, and a nanny named Mary Pereira, who hold a terrible secret that involves Saleem. Rushdie’s capacity to sketch vividly drawn characters is quite extraordinary, considering that so many of them enter and leave the narrative stage at the same time. Saleem has a tendency to allude to events and people from the future even as he is telling stories about his childhood in Methwold Estate.

The density of the narrative hasn’t let up, but I’m having an easier time absorbing things here since my last blog post. I was initially afraid that I wouldn’t successfully connect with the characters on an emotional level, but even Saleem is starting to grow on me. The most compelling characters so far are Saleem’s mother Aminah, Brass Monkey, and an American Girl named Evie Burns. Saleem notes at one time that the women in his life seem to have the most impact on him, mostly because he has always been slightly afraid of them. A lot of domestic drama occurs within the walls of Methwold Estate. Saleem is aware of them because of his telepathy. Some are a little bit tiresome–the decline of Saleem’s father comes to mind–but I find my interest picking up whenever history begins to intrude their little cul de sac.

The thing struck me is the fact that despite the popular characterization of Midnight’s Children as magic realist in nature, it is vastly different from the Latin American stories that I have read of that genre. I’ve always had the impression that the stories of Garcia Marquez, Esquivel, et al. are suspended in time, despite alluding to historical events once in a while. They come off as kind of parables in that way. Rushdie seems pathologically incapable of leaving out the historical, literary, and cosmic significance of every plot point. Actually, the biggest criticism I could give is that I often feel the blunt insistence of symbolism and metaphor in narrative itself, like the writer cannot help but point out all the clever things he has included in it. But I guess this is also consistent with Saleem’s character.

I hope that the other Midnight’s Children will be fleshed out in the succeeding chapters. The brief description of the powers they’ve inherited themselves (lesser in magnitude than Saleem’s, of course) pithily hilarious. This is a book about loud characters and I’m getting the impression that since Saleem can now connect with a thousand other magical people, their voices are about to become louder.

I have tried reading Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children three years ago and stopped within the first 200 pages of it. Although I have read The Moor’s Last Sigh beforehand, I still found myself confounded by this noisy, brash, and difficult book. This is exactly the reason why I chose to limit my reading resolution to one doorstopper book a month for 2012, so I can finally find the time to finish this Rushdie.

First let’s establish the baseline for why I find this such a challenging work. It is told entirely in First-Person POV by Saleem Sinai, a man scrambling to commit his life’s narrative to paper as his body starts to deteriorate and come apart. “Life’s narrative” is a difficult thing to qualify here, however, since Saleem himself is so cosmically entwined with India that his recollection spans three generations’ worth of familial and national histories. Saleem constantly intrudes upon the narration, offering glimpses into the future and editorializing the events for both the audience and his lover(?) Padma (she also intrudes into the storytelling). Midnight’s Children is practically the definition of postmodern literature: fractured, subjective, and confusing. It upends the conceit of the bildungsroman, which focuses on the life of a single individual as he grapples with history. Here, the individual IS history, and he shapes it as much as it shapes him.

The book begins in Kashmir in 1915, a mountain paradise that will prove central to India’s ethnic and religious conflicts in the future. Aadam Aziz is Saleem’s grandfather, a German-educated doctor who returns to his hometown as an outsider. His difficult relationship with a smelly boatman demonstrates the tension between Aziz’s distrust of what he considers backwards thinking among his people and his defensiveness against accusations that he is somehow tainted by his contact with the West.

Aziz is also embroiled in a peculiar love story with a young woman named Naseem, a patient that he has to treat through a hole cut out from a white sheet. What was initially a measure to protect Naseem’s modesty ends up becoming a sort of Victoria striptease, as Aziz returns for checkups regularly and catches glimpses of ankles, stomach, ass, and face through the hole. This is my favorite part of the book so far, because it showcases Rushdie’s facility at humor. The small jokes that he constantly peppers throughout the story sometimes have an alienating effect on me but I found this romantic interlude quite charming. Too bad Naseem and Aziz’s married life turns out to be far from ideal–and by that I mean it’s a comedy of domestic horrors.

The couple moves from Kashmir to Agra, where the years bring them three daughters and a lot of trouble. Aziz becomes politically active, which angers the religious yet ultimately apathetic Naseem. Tied to their marital problems is the struggle on the streets for a free and independent India. Somewhere, Mahatma Gandhi is applying his lifetime philosophy of civil disobedience while Jinna and Nehru are coming to the fore of Indian politics. The conflict between the Hindus and Muslims is simmering beneath all this, as they struggle to define which faction will dominate the country once it’s free. There is an extended, metaphor-laden incident which involves an assassination and a fugitive that Aziz chooses to hide under his house.

So yeah, Midnight’s Children is basically chaos. I’m at the point in the story where the focus has shifted to Amina Sinai, one of Aziz’s daughters who is going to be (I think???) the mother of the narrator Saleem. There are so many jumps across time and space that slow reading is necessary, if only to prevent oneself from losing all the threads completely. Intellectually, I can grasp the basics of what this novel is trying to do–the narrative style, for example, is an approximation of the multiplicity and bigness of India itself. There is also an emphasis on smelling and scents, which evokes the in-your-face quality of the setting. I can’t say that reading is a pleasurable process right now. I have to stop reading every ten pages or so because I end up getting a headache.

I don’t begrudge the novel of its complexity and I can tell why this is considered the Booker of the Bookers. I just hope I can push through with finishing it by the end of February. I am starting to doubt myself a little.

Angelo Suarez was 19 when The Nymph of MTV first came out, the product of a young poet already comfortable with wordplay and surreality and the enviable assurance that what he has to say will be heard. His debut certainly made a splash, garnering praises from the likes of Ophelia Dimalanta (who wrote the foreword for Nymph) and Cirilo Bautista, giants of Filipino poetry–this collection inevitably won a Palanca Award. More than technical brilliance, however, Suarez’s poems exhibit a deep accessibility of feeling and a sensuality that belies any assumption of inexperience.

Many of the poems are incantatory in nature, inviting the reader to mouth or even shout the words out loud, engage in the sensory pleasure of speaking words and phrases. I feel similarly when I read Siken’s dense verses. There’s not only a great deal of irreverence and humor here, but also earnestness, a well from which anyone who was once young, once in love, once enthralled by the streets of UST-adjacent streets of Manila can tap. The strongest poems for me are the ones about love, with Suarez making connections between body parts and heavenly bodies. Not terribly original, sure, but very poignant in the way he employs them here. An example:

i’ve seen the moon change
phase to the form of your eyelid
a drowsy brow, or the sleek contour
of your cheek–now waxing full
to the pale of your nape, your
shoulder’s shape, your face
a lotus on an ocean of muck.

I’m not very experienced in critiquing poetry in the least but I really respond to Suarez’s poetry. One of my favorites is “Constellations,” where Suarez uses unusual typography in a way that I feel transcends the surface gimmickry. I also love the constant invocation of rain and flood because really, that is a conceit any poet from Manila (and UST at that!) should mine. If you’re looking for a good to introduce yourself to Filipino poetry in English, I think The Nymph of MTV is a good way to go.

*On a more trivial thing, I really REALLY love the book design. The orange of the cover really pops, and the photos used on the cover embodies the elements in the poems. The typography is also fantastic across the board.

(I wrote this review back in August for a challenge hosted by the Filipinos Group at Goodreads.)

1st Diary Entry – Wolf Hall
2nd Diary Entry – Wolf Hall

There’s a feeling of power in reserve, a power that drives right through the bone, like the shiver you sense in the shaft of an axe when you take it into your hand. You can strike, or you can not strike, and if you choose to hold back the blow, you can still feel inside you the resonance of the omitted thing.

The storytelling structure becomes more or less conventional once Thomas Cromwell becomes the top dog in the eyes of both Henry VIII and the Boleyns. In the early parts of the novel, Henry was a sort of misguided yet not entirely unlikeable character, but by the end he has become a right bastard. Is it weird that I still root for Thomas Cromwell despite the fact that he is largely responsible for Henry’s descent into assholery? That’s what a masterful command of point-of-view can do, I guess.

Cromwell brings about the final rupture between the kingdom of England and the Catholic Church through a series of laws, a significant historical turn in favor of secularism. One by one, he succeeds in turning not only the aristocrats, but also the moneyed commoners and scholars, into supporting his bills. Henry rewards every success with a lengthening list of titles: Master of the Jewels, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Viceregent for Spirituals. Anne becomes queen in a lavish ceremony, gives birth to Princess Elizabeth (the first “disappointment”), and miscarries another child (the second one). The novel closes with Anne pregnant with their third child, but we all know how that will turn out too.

The Rise of the Merchant Class

However, I found the happenings at court and the Parliament somehow less interesting than the effect of Cromwell’s rise to power on his family and the effect of England’s break on from the Catholic Church in English society. He becomes important enough to be painted by Hans Holbein (the portrait on this post is an important plot detail). Mantel has framed the circumstances to portray a class of intellectuals and merchants who have no debt whatsoever to the Church and felt that its leaders in England is stifling commerce and the growth of culture.

Thomas More’s refusal to acknowledge Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn causes him to fall out of favor, and he eventually gives up his position as Chancellor. This is strangely glossed over in Mantel’s narrative, though I suspect that is because More’s career and eventual death has been depicted endlessly in art and literature. It is quite telling that the novel itself ends at More’s execution, though–this situates More as the last bastion of Catholic scholarship in English soil in addition to his role as Cromwell’s archnemesis.

I do admittedly felt a little let down by the end of the novel, mostly because the story feels very much unfinished. The sequel, Bringing Up the Bodies, will be published this year, so that takes care of that. I’m not quite sure if I am ready to read about Anne Boleyn’s downfall, since it promises to be quite harrowing.

Speaking of Anne, she’s the one character whose characterization is difficult for me to grasp. I get Henry’s motivations for the most part but Anne’s specific brand of cunning and vindictiveness is hard to locate. She’s cruel to her sister Mary as well as to Henry’s daughter Princess Mary. She also lashes out at Henry, apparently. I just don’t understand why she’d do that–she has been very smart with her choices so far and antagonizing the king will (obviously) make life difficult for her. She relies too much on the idea that Henry’s affection for her is infinite and she is burning more bridges than she should. Henry, after all, once deeply loved Katherine of Aragon.

Oh Thomas! I know you’re going to die and I kind of don’t want to read that. Maybe I’ll just buy Mantel’s new book and not read it. :(

I almost forgot that Wolf Hall won The Morning News’s Tournament of the Books in 2009! While a lot of the criticism the reviewers brought up there are fair, I don’t truck with their ambivalence at all. I finished the book on February 2 and I still find myself thinking about Thomas Cromwell a lot. This book stays with you.

(I wonder if I should make another, much shorter review to post on Goodreads. Three posts’ worth of words is kind of too much…)

My personal assessment of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad changes each time I think back on it. Sometimes I think it’s a trifling thing, made up of airy stories that don’t really have any staying power beyond the act of reading them. Other times certain passages simply haunt me. I change my mind even further whenever I read other people’s reviews of it, especially since time and winning the Pulitzer seems to have turned some people into dismissing Goon Squad and its importance. But after hearing Slate’s Audio Book Club Podcast discussing the book I think that I can comfortably put a stake in the ground: I love this book.

The buzz surrounding this novel originally came from its stylistic inventiveness and subject matter. It is series of loosely interconnected short stories that track the lives of several individuals across space and time. Many of them, like Benny and Sasha, are heavily involved in the music industry while others are more tenuously so. People pop up and disappear all throughout, turning the entire novel into a a treasure hunt of sorts as you try to discover what happens to characters that you care about. Time is the goon that the title refers to, a shadowy figure that roughs you up and beats you down when you least expect it.

Marcel Proust is cited as one of its thematic inspirations, and there is indeed a heavy blanket of nostalgia encoded in each story, even in the last one which is set in the future. Egan uses pauses as a weapon or a bridge, an idea that becomes overt in the famous Powerpoint story. My favorite one is set in the safari, where Egan uses the omniscient narrative POV to in the style of the 19th century classics. A vacation in Africa, the narrative a freewheeling camera that jumps from character to character, peeking into their futures and finding them eventually torn apart by the steady march of time. While there are some moments of humor and even great absurdity (the one that featured the PR expert and the genocidal despot is particularly hilarious) but they generally act as a counterpoint the feeling of doom that hangs over most of the characters.

“I wanted to be too cool for this book but I really, really wasn’t,” I wrote over a month ago but it wasn’t the coolness that really bothered me. It’s the implication of sentimentality and buying into the brand of tragedy that Egan is trying to sell me. I still feel sad for these people despite knowing that they have created their own personal hells out of the illusions they have constructed around themselves and each other. I agree with the Slate podcast when it says the thing that Egan grapples with in this novel is the divide between hype and transcendence, which in many ways is a metacommentary on the kind of notoriety that Goon Squad has earned.

People go through life with their own agendas but there is still a layer of sadness over these small acts of self-interest. I’m not entirely certain that they are deserving of my sympathy, but I feel it for them anyway.

Nostalgia for a Manila slowly ebbing away lies at the heart of Blue Angel, White Shadow, the newest offering from one of the Philippines’ most renowned novelists, Charlson Ong. With references to Marlene Dietrich, John Coltrane, Old Binondo, World War II, dogfights and summary executions, his foray into the mystery genre results in a symphony about the constant push and pull between the old and the new, the artful and the brutal.

The story begins with an iconic noir image: the beautiful woman in a red dress. Rather than a seductive shift, however, singer Laurice Saldiaga was wearing a red cheongsam when she died in the upstairs apartment of the Blue Angel, a decrepit jazz bar in the middle of Chinatown. A Hokkien-speaking mestizo policeman named Cyrus Ledesma is brought into the investigation because of its delicate nature, even as he comes to terms with his own dodgy past. He encounters a list of people with motives and opportunities to kill Laurice. The implication even goes as high up as the Mayor of Manila himself, Lagdameo Go-Lopez.

I have always harbored the belief that the way to make cities real is to write about them. Charlson Ong succeeds in making this true with this novel, vividly sketching the melancholy, grime-filled streets of Chinatown in my head, using mellifluous turns of phrase to conjure up the perfect mood. I had trouble with the 3rd person ominiscient style in the beginning–I’m used to mysteries that are either in 1st person or the very tight, 3rd person POV of a single character–but it manages to lay out the inner lives of all the people who somehow intersect with the doomed jazz songstress. Particularly poignant are the memories of Antonio Cobianco, owner of the Blue Angel, whose fondness for Laurice and the bar puts his innocence into question.

There are elements of the supernatural here, with old houses haunted by spirits and two characters who see ghostly visions, but they do not detract from the logic of the mystery like I initially feared. They add a lovely gothic dimension to the story, in fact, emphasizing the extreme subjectivity of memory and the uncomplicated acceptance of the Chinese-Filipino worldview when it comes to the unexplained.

Suspects attempting to deflect blame or harboring their own suspicions complicate Cyrus’s search for the truth, with bursts of violence throughout the story culminating into a satisfying horserace of a climax. The crucial thing for me was whether to final conflict would be satisfying, and I have to say it was–very reminscent of the over-the-top confrontations in Pinoy action movies but elevated by Ong’s gorgeous prose. I found the denouement and the last two chapters dragging, however.

If Charlson Ong ever decides to write more of these, I’m definitely buying. You can hear him talk about this novel in a podcast by DZUP’s Quadro Kantos, with download links here. I highly suggestion listening to it because they also played songs that Charlson Ong considers the “soundtrack” of Blue Angel, White Shadow.

(I wrote this review back in August for a challenge hosted by the Filipinos Group at Goodreads.)

1st Diary Entry – Wolf Hall

I really need to buckle down if I am to finish reading this book by Tuesday. A big chunk of this post is full of spoilers so consider this a warning, though I’m not sure how I can possibly spoil a novel based on 400-year old historical events….

Halfway through Wolf Hall, Cardinal Wolsey is dead and Thomas Cromwell’s star is on the rise. The very people who orchestrated his patron’s downfall–the Boleyns and the Howards–have all turned their flowery attentions on to him. Even the king himself is intrigued by his seemingly foolhardy loyalty towards Wolsey, though Henry VIII gradually starts valuing him for his shrewd mind and candid attitude. From being a mere blacksmith’s son, Cromwell is now one of the most admired men within the king’s court.

Family Drama

His home life is just as eventful, though often for tragic reasons. His wife Liz Wykys and two daughters die in quick succession, succumbing to a fierce and mysterious disease called the English sweating sickness. Mantel does a great job in conveying how these deaths affect Cromwell without betraying his sardonic and taciturn personality. It’s all about the little gestures here, how he remembers that his daughter Anne wanted to learn Greek, how he had once created a lavish pair of angel wings for his little Grace. Aside from these tragedies, the Cromwell household also grows bigger with the arrival of some relatives, such as the family of Johane Wykys, Cromwell’s sister-in-law.

Mantel also explores Cromwell’s relationship with his two surrogate sons, Richard (son of his sister Kat, who eventually changes his name to Cromwell) and Rafe (his ward and protege). He is not as close to his own son Gregory, though that may change since Gregory is still fifteen. It’s obvious that Thomas is fond of people who rise above their ignominious origins and rise to power through sheer gall–Wolsey, Anne Boleyn, Rafe, and Richard. A reflection on himself? This is the common thread going through the people whom he chooses to help, despite seeming as if his alliances are merely matters of positioning.

Crackpot Notions

Since epidemics feature prominently in the story, I have formed this slightly hare-brained theory: Henry VIII is like a plague. I don’t mean this in the sense that people should be at all times running away from him (though I have no compunction whatsoever in making fun of ol’ Harry) but more that he is an unpredictable, devious, and often irrational force that governs peoples lives. Much like the way England at the cusp of the Renaissance still has people who believe that their fates are tied up with the stars. Henry is as changeable as the plagues that terrorize the English islands. Contrast that with Anne Boleyn, who is more of a scheming, thinking force.

She is still not Queen, but Anne is holding more and more sway within the court now that he counts Cromwell as an ally. Henry has sought the help of scholars in scrounging up biblical evidence that his marriage to Katherine is null. England’s notorious break from the Catholic Church is looming on the horizon, though from the way Mantel characterizes the atmosphere of England at the time, the king’s capriciousness is not the only thing causing the rupture.

England and Europe in the 1530s are kingdoms in flux, with the unquestioned supremacy of the Church losing ground to people like Martin Luther and other “heretics.” At the crux of this conflict is the right of the people to translate and read the Bible in languages other than Latin. Thomas Cromwell is very much at the side of the secularism here. He owns and smuggles illicit books himself, something that Thomas More, Lord Chancellor after Wolsey, suspects. More is the zealous guardian of the Church’s teachings and he does this by imprisoning, torturing, and burning every person that carries even a whiff of heretical thought. I think a showdown between Cromwell and More is coming.

So far, I’ve found the book to be monumentally engaging. Political machinations, oh my! Mantel is so good with dialogue and the way the courtiers insult each other is so deliciously evil. I know that Cromwell will become even closer to Anne by the end of the novel so I’m really looking forward to reading how Mantel manages that.

(Not the cover of my copy but I like this one a lot more!)

While I’ve known the basics of Henry VIII/Anne Boleyn saga, I have to confess that I only know of a few major players such as Cardinal Wolsey from what I’ve seen on the Bravo TV show The Tudors, which is wildly inaccurate to say the least. So Hilary Mantel’s depiction is informed and contradicted by what popular culture tells me about this historical moment. That Anne Boleyn is a seductress that almost brought an empire to its knees. That Henry will forever be known for having six wives and disposing of them in horrific ways. This is something that Wolf Hall takes into account without addressing it overtly.

Wolf Hall is surprisingly modern, but I don’t quite know how to convey that through textual evidence. It just feels that way to me. Part of it is the prose–it does away with leisurely sentences that writers often use to signal that a novel is historical. The juxtaposition of the pomposity and machination within the king’s court with the clipped, precise sentences that describe them can be jarring, but I find it incredibly effective.

The story focuses on Thomas Cromwell, a butcher’s son who joins the army to escape his abusive father. Smart and resourceful even as a boy, he picks up several languages and makes a name for himself in countries like Italy and Belgium. There’s a rather abrupt jump forward in the narrative where we see Thomas as a confidant and lawyer to Cardinal Wolsey, the most powerful member of the Catholic Church in England at the time. More a man of politics than of the Church, Wolsey has the responsibility of smoothing out the mess generated by Henry VIII‘s desire to divorce Katherine of Aragon after twenty years of marriage. At this point, Thomas is only at the periphery of the major events, only coming upon the details because Wolsey confides in him about the precariousness of his position in court. However, Thomas also has a large network of people who inform him of important details, a resource that he uses to help out Wolsey.

Mantel is doing something different in her storytelling. The intrigue presented so far are mostly hearsay–Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII has never even met yet, as far as I could tell–but the tension is already so tight. The prose is not bogged down by exposition despite the denseness of both the political and psychological ripples of the story. I think part of what makes it fresh is the jumps around the timeline. Very early on, she depicts Cardinal Wolsey’s fall from grace, his title of Lord Chancellor wrench away from him. A quick glance at Wikipedia can tell you about his ultimate fate but those scenes in Wolf Hall are especially arresting.

One thing that bothers me with the style is the way one paragraph can have dialogue from two different people. This becomes double confusing because Mantel often refers to Thomas (and there are a lot of Thomases here) as ‘he’ instead of his name.

That’s all for now. Off to read more!

In an attempt to improve my stamina when it comes to reading long novels, I’ve decided to focus on reading one doorstopper every month. That doesn’t mean I won’t be reading other books but sufficed to say, these twelve are my focus. To make this project more interesting I will also try to write journal-like commentary every 100 pages or so. I was inspired by what Angus of Book Rhapsody is doing when he reads large tomes. It’ll be interesting to note the difference in writing reactions as they happen versus my usual modus, which is to procrastinateruminate on a book after it is finished and encapsulating my thoughts in 500 or so words. The list is mostly set since I own most of these, but they are not listed in chronological order.

1. Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel (653 pages) – Diary entries: 1st, 2nd, 3rd
2. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie (647 pages)
3. The Pillars of Earth, Ken Follett (976 pages – Not purchased yet)
4. The Tree of Smoke, Denis Johnson (613 pages)
5. The Tale of Genji, Murasaki Shikibu (1182 pages)
6. The War at the End of the World, Mario Vargas Llosa (750 pages)
7. The Mandarins, Simone de Beauvoir (736 pages)
8. Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes (1072 pages)
9. Life Mask, Emma Donoghue (650 pages)
10. The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky (974 pages)
11. Drood by Dan Simmons (771 pages)
12. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (613 pages – haven’t purchased yet)

I’ll be typing up my thoughts on Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall either tonight or tomorrow.

“Hindi ka tuturuan ng librong ito kung paano magsulat. Buhay ang gagawa n’on” – Ricky Lee

Sana maraming bumasa ng Trip to Quiapo, kahit walang balak maging scriptwriter o manunulat. Magkahalong manual ng screenwriting at collection ng iba’t ibang anekdota at materyales na konekatdo sa Philippine Cinema, bumuo si Ricky Lee ng isang sincere at kahanga-hangang larawan ng industriyang pinaglaanan niya ng buhay sa mahigit tatlumpung taon.

Importante ang librong ito hindi lamang para sa mga cinephile kundi para sa mga naghahangad ng isang oral history tungkol sa Pinoy Cinema. Marami akong nakuhang insight tungkol sa paggawa ng kwento, at malamang ay babalikan ko uli ang librong ito kung sakaling magbabalak akong magsulat uli ng fiction.

Gamit niya ang pagpunta sa Quiapo bilang simbolismo ng iba’t ibang paraan sa pagbuo ng script–madalas na masalimuot at puno ng magkahalong saya at sakit. Isa-isa niyang pinaliwanag ang mga elementong bumubuo sa pelikula, tulad ng story line, sequence treatment at 3-act structure at kung paanong ang pagsunod o pagsuway sa mga kumbensyon nito ay nakatali sa magiging pagtanggap ng audience. Nagsama rin sya ng mga sample ng script mula sa mga pelikulang nagawa na upang ipakita kung paano na-translate ang kwento mula sa pahina.

Malawak ang nararating na impluwensya ni Lee. Nakatrabaho na niya ang ilan sa pinaka-importanteng direktor ng kanyang panahon (Bernal, Brocka, Diaz-Abaya, at marami pang iba) at patuloy pa rin syang sumusulat para sa cinema at TV. Nagawa niyang mag-likom ng napakaraming ng mga interbyu at sanaysay mula sa iba’t ibang direktor, producer, at scriptwriter, na para bang who’s who ng industriya. Isang pagsilip na hindi nabibigay kung kani-kanino lamang. Makikita din ang kanyang partisipasyon sa paghubog ng bagong henerasyon ng mga scriptwriter, sa pamamagitan ng kanyang mga workshop at lecture. Ang mga estudyante ni Lee ay nagiging mga haligi sa entertainment industry.

Ang tunay na yamang makikita sa librong ito ay hindi nagmumula sa kanyang instructions tungkol sa structure ng isang script. Maraming librong gumagawa nito nang mas malaliman at mas detalyado, ngunit namumukod-tangi si Ricky Lee sa pagbibigay ng tunay na estado ng industriya ng pelikulang Filipino. Hindi strikto at standardized ang moviemaking sa Pinas, madalas nahahatak ang scriptwriter sa iba’t ibang direksyon. May isang nakakatawang anecodte si Lee tungkol kay Mother Lily (producer ng Regal Films) at ang kanyang pagiiba-iba ng isip tungkol sa isang project.

Hindi rin sya natatakot pag-usapan ang mga mapapait na naging karanasan niya at ng ibang mga manunulat. Walang pagkakaiba ang ngayon at nakalipas na industrya–mahirap paring maging scriptwriter sa Pilipinas. Marami kang iiyakan, at hindi mo masisigurado na ibibigay ang nararapat na iyo. Kung iisipin hindi lang paghihikayat ang binibigay ni Ricky Lee. Warning din ito. Writing for the screen is not for the faint of spirit.

(I wrote this review back in August for a challenge hosted by the Filipinos Group at Goodreads.)