Letters and Numbers

I haven't really posted anything public in quite some time, owing to the rather delicate nature of certain topics that only a select few can read. But lo and behold, I post once again. And of course, things will be numbered because I'm too lazy to write connecting paragraphs to each one.

1. So I'm apparently going to the Avril Lavigne Best Damn Tour concert on Sunday. O_o Now, you have to note two things: (a) I am NOT an Avril fan, and (b) I am only doing this because it's someone's birthday and I wanted to give a gift that is more than just the usual cake/ice cream/sweetmeat. I've always believed that part of what makes performances (concerts, musicals, etc.) great is the fact that you are paying for an experience, as opposed to something mechanical, something that can be put on repeat and allowed to go on and on and on until it's almost dead. So I would like to gift the birthday celebrant the experience, since they are just diehard fans of Avril and, despite all protestations, would have really wanted to watch if they had the cash. So tadah! Wish granted.

*pokes fingers through holes in pockets*

2. Yes, I have heard of the Eraserheads reunion concert and the surreal events that happened after. I would have seriously wanted to be there - the Eraserheads was such a defining Pinoy band that forever shaped the direction of Filipino music as well as the musical tastes of a generation. And they're timeless: it's been ten years, give or take, since they were together as a group and yet my younger sister Bea is hopelessly devoted to Ely Buendia and knows more Eraserheads songs than me. And she wasn't even in grade school when the band split up! It's really boggles the mind. And as for myself, there are still a number of Eraserheads songs that I will never get out of my head, including the following:

- my baby brother Louie singing "Overdrive" when I was in fourth grade (so that made him in first grade) during the Dans New Year's Eve celebrations. Do you guys remember that? Louie was in his funny blue shirt and it almost looked like he was eating the mic at Tito Butch's house. Oh yeah, and Cutterpillow was our first album, when they were still selling cassette tapes for something like 60 pesos a pop.

- Lin, Jilly, Kla, and myself singing "Sembreak" and "Pare Ko" in a deserted gym the night of the Turnover Ceremony in fourth year high school. I still remember Kla and Jilly on the stage while Lin held up a video camera and my friends sang to me because I was leaving for college the following schoolyear. Incidentally, this was also the year that Lin broke her ankle because of...certain dance moves which I cannot detail here.

- I remember watching the video of "Ang Huling El Bimbo" and thinking, Oh my God, this video is seriously fucked up and it's FANTASTIC. This was perhaps the first locally made music video that really made the hairs on my arms stand up and a delicious shiver run through my spine.

And because it's the -ber months, this is the song running through my head:

So take a bite. It's all right. ^_^

3. And I'm finally done with Avatar: The Last Airbender (thank you Hiyas!). I've already read the spoilers and even saw "The Ember Island Players" on YouTube, but nothing beats watching "Sozin's Comet" just for the sheer awesomeness that is Aang. Seriously, they delivered what was perhaps one of the best finales for a series ever. Everyone played their parts, were fantastic, and I am so happy that Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko managed to make everything cohere together without truly giving anything away and still retaining the precious balance of humour and emotional resonance that made Avatar more than just a kid's cartoon series, but a true piece of storytelling genius. And I'm sorry Zutara shippers but Kataang will beat you in all their happy, mind-blowingly sappy glory. ^_^

I read somewhere that true shippers will see that the OTP of the entire thing was really Appa/Momo...which disturbs me a lot. O_o

Oh, and here's a teaser clip of Book 4: Air of Avatar: The Last Airbender. It's aptly titled "Forbidden Love".

4. Finally: Happy 25th Birthday (tama ba?) Aster! ^_^ I'm sorry I'm not there for the dinner and the sleepover (meron ba?) but know that you're in my heart and in my mind. Thank you for crazy get-togethers in college and for giving us what's now known as "mga kwentong Aster" - for a fuller compilation, please look for Roja - and for sleepovers where you disregard all concepts of personal space and use me as a pillow (which is why no one likes sleeping beside you), for being there to comfort me in CCHQ when I broke up with my first boyfriend and couldn't eat fotr two days and you and Meia and to force-feed me food, and for all the bunny craziness and hoping that your latest pet survives the curse. Thank you for providing us with optimism and hope even during our most Sylvia Plath-like days and for persevering in law school where none of us ever dared finish. May you have everything good that you deserve in this life. ^_^

Believe it or not, wala tayong picture na magkasama, so kayo na lang muna ni Meia dito. Ayan, tingnan mo, nakapikit ka pa. ^_^

People Are Talking

An Open Letter to the Members of the Manila Critics Circle
Carla M. Pacis

This year's National Book Awards has once again been a major disappointment for those of us involved in the creation of children's and young adult books. This year, the members of the Manila Critics Circle have proven that the desire to encourage, support and uplift writing for children and young adults is not enough if it is not accompanied by a true understanding and appreciation of the unique requirements and structures of one of the largest sectors of the international book industry. Children’s and Young Adult literature is not to be treated dismissively or cavalierly as a kid brother or sister. It requires the same due diligence true judges give to any creative or intellectual work.

The winner for the Children's Book category was Sabrina's Cookbook Diary which was published in 2002 and therefore should have won in 2003. However, according to the critics, they had overlooked this book. (Last year, the Manila Critics Circle did not deem any of children’s book published in 2002 worthy of an award. Only two, Carancal by Rene Villanueva and Og Uhog by Christine Bellen were nominated out of more than twenty books published that year.) They went on to say, that of the children's books published last year, none deserved to even be nominated. To add insult to injury, they said that maybe this was a sign that the industry needed to improve.

I strongly disagree with that statement. The children’s book industry continues to grow with more and more titles published every year. The quality, design and content of the books have improved over the years, a fact that many parents, teachers and librarians have recognized. More and more children read locally published children’s books and libraries are stocked with books we can all be proud of. I can think of many children's books published last year that deserved to be nominated for this year’s National Book Award. There was Russell Molina's "Isang Dosenang Kuya" the Philippine Board of Books for Young Readers (PBBY) grand prize winner, Eugene Evasco's "Si Isem sa Bayang Bawal Tumawa", Lara Saguisag's "Tonio's Wishes", Tahanan Books and Jose Rizal’s "Monkey and the Turtle", Rene Villanueva's "Graindell" and “Teo’s Trash Can” by Grace Chong, all original and imaginative stories, all very well written and richly illustrated. There was also Lampara Publishing’s Aesop Fables which may not be original stories but have been beautifully illustrated by Jason Moss.

The winner in the Young Adult category was "Almost Married" by Tara FT Sering published by Summit Publishing, the same group that publishes Cosmopolitan Magazine. It is the sequel to “Getting Better” the first book in a collection that has been categorized as “chick lit”. In fact, “Getting Better” and all the little books that followed after, adhere to the Cosmopolitan Magazine philosophy. The title alone of this “winning” book already begs one to ask the question why a teenager would be interested in marriage or being married. The blurb of the book begins with the sentence "After a traumatic engagement to a man who eventually cheated on her, 28-year-old Karen is, once again...” It goes on. “And their year-old relationship rocks…the conversation is satisfying and the sex is great...” And it goes on.

Is this a book a teacher, a parent, an aunt/uncle, or thinking individual would give a teenager? Obviously, those who chose this book as the winner in the Young Adult category are completely and absolutely ignorant of what the term Young Adult means in literature. The key words in the citation were "it is young yet adult"; “adolescent yet sophisticated”, are evidence that they have their definitions of young adult all mixed up. They might have been referring to the "younger adult", people in their 20's and not the 12 to 16 year-olds (give and take a few years) that the local and foreign publishers have identified as young adults or adolescents.

The term Young Adult was coined by American publishers to distinguish the books written for children from ages 1 to 11 yrs. old (the board books, picture books, storybooks and chapter books) from those written for teenagers or those from ages 12 to 16 yrs. old. The age parameters vary and can go all the way to 19 yrs. old for the young adult category and are only meant as guides for writers and illustrators. I do not in fact agree with the term young adult as it can be misunderstood as has happened with the Manila Critics Circle. The other terms for this type of literature were juvenile fiction and adolescent literature. Both have been dropped for being derogatory. Teenage fiction may be a more appropriate term but may confine this literature to the high school audience.

Some examples of great literature for young adults are the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, I Am the Cheese by Robert Cormier, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle and Are You There God? Its Me Margaret by Judy Blume. Locally, we also have fine examples of this type of literature, some of which have been chosen by Reading Coordinators in some private schools as required reading. Some of these titles are Pedro and the Lifeforce by Joel Toledo, The Secret by Lin Acacio-Flores, Senior’s Ball by Rene Villanueva, Anina ng mga Alon by Eugene Evasco (which won the National Book Award in 2003) and Miguel and Una by Lilledeshan Bose. The protagonists of Young Adult books are approximately the same age as that of their readers and therefore share the same dreams, problems and issues as their readers. They are generally concerned with concepts such as coming of age, self-identity, heroes and role models. Sex is discussed in young adult fiction, but with more caution and sensibility.

The citation goes on to say "it (Almost Married) pushes the genre in the right direction with this light but profound novel about marriage, relationships, sex, oh yes, sex, women who are no longer girls, and yes, boys who will always be boys". It would have been absolutely hilarious if it were not so horrifying.

And speaking of horrifying, it seems the Manila Critics Circle, an esteemed group of literary writers, is now promoting "chick lit" as literature, which, and many will agree with me, it is definitely not. There is, however, a place for this sort of work but it should be properly categorized.

In all fairness to Tara FT Sering, who I think is a great writer, she wrote a wonderfully clever book for young adults called "All the Right Moves" published by Adarna House which was nominated in the Young Adult category last year. It was patterned after the Choose Your Own Adventure books that children and teenagers absolutely love. In this case, it was a “choose your own romance” and its inevitable consequences.

The National Book Award is clearly looked upon by many writers and authors, including myself, as confirmation of our good work. It encourages and supports the production of quality books in this country that sorely needs to build a population that reads. The number of genres, categories and types of books that have been recognized over the years have increased to include many that may be outside the expertise of the members of the Manila Critics Circle. To consult with experts in specific interests and fields can only be for everybody’s benefit. In the field of children’s and young adult literature, I would highly recommend Ms. Neni Sta. Romana Cruz, who represents the sector of reviewers in the Philippine Board of Books for Young Children (PBBY) and who contributes articles on locally published children’s book to the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Parenting Magazine, and Dr. Nina Lim Yuson, President of the Museo Pambata, founding member of PBBY and contributor to Baby Magazine. That the award is given by a body of distinguished and highly respected writers and critics give it so much more value. They owe it to all of us writers not to waste the goodwill that has been bestowed upon them.

*

And then one of the more outspoken detractors:

More Cohesive Thoughts on Summit Books and Tara Sering
Lilledeshan Bose

I'm sorry this e-mail is late, but while I agree that "Almost Married"is definitely not YA lit and did not deserve to win that category (asa writer of YA lit I am very insulted), I think that is the awardgiving body's fault and not the book's. I do, however, very strongly disagree with Carla Pacis' statement that chick lit is not literature. I think Summit Book's publications are the best books to come out ofthe Philippines in a very long time.

Before I expound, here are some disclaimers: One, Tara Sering is a very good friend of mine. However, I'm not writing this in her defense. Two: I used to work at Summit myself. I know these books were not written for the love of literature, but were, in fact, made to be marketed and sold as Chick lit. Knowing that, however, my personal bias (which I am proud to wear on my sleeve) regarding Philippine literature is I don't care what the Filipino audience is reading. It's enough that they're reading. Maybe they'll eventually develop good taste and maybe they won't. At least the books are in their houses. Three: Say what you will about Summit Publishing--that it is a purveyor of ad-driven, popular culture and the magazine content is sometimes crass, superficial, elitist, cheesy or misogynist--no one can deny that Summit has uplifted the Filipino taste. The quality of their publications--from the paper to the layouts to the content--has raised the bar so high that no other publishing house in the country can come close. Summit created the current aesthetic standard for print publications in the Philippines. More importantly, it has givenits market a venue to see themselves represented in media that isaccessible and affordable. Teenage girls, Filipino gamers, working stiffs, our titas who like to watch gossip shows on Sundays, andrepressed Catholic men all now have their own niche.

I remember life without Summit: glossy mags lived a year and died without anyone ever mourning them. Before Summit Books, before I studied English lit in UP, I never got to read Filipino writers. I never even knew Filipino writers beyond Jose Rizal, Amado Hernandez and my parents' friends existed. I never knew people were writingstories about lives like mine. None of my friends knew Filipinowriters eiher, and after I studied English lit, I found out most books (in English; I think Lualhati Bautista was the only exception) only got a print run of a 1000 copies, max. Most novels were about old men and farmers. It made me think: what was the use of writing the great Filipino novel if no one except students required to read it in obscure Comparative Lit classes had ever heard of them? Summit Books, however, is publishing books about single moms, baristasand coleigalas, girls who want to live on their own, twenty-somethingswho like to travel, have flings, get dumped. They're stories about girls like me, who live in apartments like my friends do, have boyfriends who take them to Tagaytay, just like mine did. Sure, they cater to a niched market. But they're well written stories of women who have their own minds and are fiercely independent. Not only are they empowering heroines, they're also inspiring many young writers who didn't know that we could produce this stuff. Now everyone knows who Tara Sering, Maya Calica, Abi Aquino and Melissa Salva are. Everyone can also afford to buy their books.

And why can't these books can't be considered literature? Is it because they're not about incest in barrios? Because they don't reprazent? Because their covers are pink? Because they're about middle-class girls who went to exclusive Catholic schools? Is it because they're sold in news stands as opposed to bookstores where sales ladieswho don't know the difference between a hairnet and a haiku are manning the shelves? These novels are laugh-out-loud funny, cleverly punny, sometimes cheesily emotional and given to inducing PMS tears. These books are definitely literature that I'd keep on my shelf, right beside my beloved Paul Auster, Lorrie Moore, Stephen Dobyns and Jessica Hagedorn books. The best thing about these books? They are alive. They're discussed in offices, passed around by friends, reprinted by the thousands. Their writers are being paid very good money from royalties. THEY'RE BEING READ BY A LOT OF FILIPINOS.

I also mind the condescending term "novellas" as a description for these books. Sure they're shorter than Vikram Seth's "A Suitable Boy," but I think this genre is in a stage of infancy. The Filipino writeris taking baby steps, growing with the reader and the book publisher at the same time. Everyone is just discovering what they can do, who the audience is (and that such a huge one exists!). Kudos to Summit for respecting the Pinoy reader enough to print on good paper, making sure that the text is typo-free, that the covers are very attractive, and trusting their writers to come up great stories backed with lots of marketing pesos all the way. As a result, you see Filipinos of all ages--whom everyone said "just didn't read"--saving their allowance, skipping lunch, to buy these books (The magazines sometimes have short stories in them too.) I'm proud to read them, I'm proud to be associated with a company that recognized the Filipino reader wasworthy of good books.

Summit Books has taken the stories of the age and put them on paper.They reflect the period that we live and love in. Her work may not beYA, but I think Tara Sering (who has impeccable taste) is the saviour of Philippine lit.

The Rambling (Posted at Last, Passed the Hard Copy of this to you on time Mr. K)

The Rambling
My Take on Paul Auster’s “The Locked Room”

If there’s one work I’d pound my head on the wall for, it’s no doubt Paul Auster’s “The Locked Room”. Yes, it was definitely peppered with universals (quotable quotes) about life minus the didactic voice, but its length didn’t prove worth all the hours of anticipation. I was waiting for the punch line; for the locked room; for the narrator to turn out to be locked up in an asylum where he recalls the story after months or years of swallowing bitter pills; for the supernatural to weave its way through the story. But all I got were a narrator who could quote blocks of statements as if he always had a tape recorder at hand, yet didn’t bother to mention his name, two male best friends who used to want to marry each other (now, how gay can that get), coveting thy neighbor’s wife, espionage (a.k.a. stalking), waves of unconfirmed psychosis, desire, coquetry, and sex (nothing beats having sex with your best friend’s mother), the financial anxiety of a writer vis-à-vis the financial freedom in getting published (in this case, having your best friend’s works published), and the unanimous question of the living, thinking human: why do I exist in this world? (Of course other versions exist: why am I studying?, why am I dating this guy and not his best friend?, and the like.)
With all the rambling and hodgepodge of themes--“…nothing is that simple”--the drift of 115 pages by an anonymous persona was basically the dissatisfaction with life of a person deemed by others as Mr. Almost-Perfect, if not Mr. Perfect, in his younger years--Fanshawe (probably a reshuffling of ‘awe of the fans’):

…one had the impression there was nothing he did not do well, nothing he did not do better than everyone else. He was the best baseball player, the best student, the best looking of all the boys...more ideally a normal child than any of the rest of us.

and the desire of his best friend to be just like him or to even be him:

If envy is too strong a word for what I am trying to say, then I would call it a suspicion, a secret feeling that Fanshawe was somehow better than I was.

To imitate him was somehow to participate in that mystery, but it was also to understand that you could never really know him.

Years of being apart probably faded this emotion, but wasn’t the narrator’s physical resemblance to Fanshawe, his marriage to Sophie, his adoption of Ben, his hand on the sorting-out and publication of Fanshawe’s works and the royalties he got from them, and both of them being writers too much of a coincidence? Why didn’t anyone gossip about Sophie and him when they got married? He seemed to be an extremely sensitive guy that he’d probably mention a phrase or two about these instances--if they existed--in ‘his’ 115-page work.
I must say that the narrator and Fanshawe even sounded alike. And that Fanshawe must have been the narrator as well; that everything was all in his mind:

At best there was one impoverished image: the door of a locked room. That was the extent of it: Fanshawe alone in that room, condemned to a mythical solitude – living perhaps, breathing perhaps, dreaming God knows what. This room, I now discovered was located inside my skull.

The Boston House ‘confrontation’ was probably a ‘confrontation’ with his subconscious once and for all. And that the whole story proved to be “…no more than the sum of contingent facts…of random events that divulge nothing but their own lack of purpose” – a mere rambling.

Weh?

I'm getting workshopped on Wednesday?

*pauses*

Okay.

Lack of the Surreal

Seriously, I don't know why I'm writing at all. I should be doing my thesis that, up to now, still doesn't have a title. Surrealism sucks...big time. What about the surreal do I have to write about except the fact that surrealist fiction is non-existent in the Philippines. Zit.
Maybe I should start writing surreal stories. After all, I'm always in that dream-like status, mind floating and wandering. Zit.

Truth and Fiction

Hello, class. I spent early Wednesday morning slogging home through thigh-high floodwaters after spending over 24 hours straight at the office, so you can imagine that the decision to cancel classes was something of a relief, not just to all of you who were spared a rainy commute, but to me as well. Still, we may have to schedule an extra meeting sometime to catch up. Anyway, next Wednesday, we'll workshop the stories we should have discussed this week: "The Second Coming" by Gabriela Lee, "11 PM - Onwards" by Kelly Mata, "Remembrance" by Anamer Menguito, "A Big Countdown (1, 2, 3)" by Charmian Lim, and "Received Messages" by Alicia Perez.

Speaking of stories, I was going through some of my old, uncollected fiction on my PC. Several years ago, I wrote a story called "Subterrania," about a girl who decided to cut herself off almost completely from the outside world, and just stay in her room, for presumably the rest of her life. At the time, I thought I was writing a quirky, CW 111-type story, to be classified under "stranger fiction." It was after the story was published that I learned that such extreme self-imposed urban isolation was, in fact, something of an epidemic in Japan.



The word for these "adolescents and young adults that feel overwhelmed by the Japanese society, feel unable to fulfill their expected social roles, and react with social withdrawal" is hikikomori. And now, well, there's even a movie based on the phenomenon. (Lord knows if it's any good; the plot doesn't seem promising. But then again I suppose many of my favorite films would sound stupid when reduced to a two-paragraph summary).

Anyway, rereading "Subterrania," it's kind of nice to recognize the state of mind I was in at the time I wrote it, to remember what inspired it (sunless weeks obssessing over an intractable thesis, accompanied by general withdrawal from most social activities), to know that the prospect of becoming hikikomori-like was once oddly appealing, and to realize that, for one reason or another, I don't feel like that at all, these days.

It has nothing to do with impoliteness :)

Hi! I just read Gabby's reply. Hmmm... They were both weak I think, but I just want to ask: Which of them was weaker? They both went through the process of having their memories of each other erased. We watched Joel from the start of the process, until later when he realized he didn't want his memories of Clementine be erased, pleading not to continue the process anymore. It's sweet, yes, but we will never see it as a weakness. Why would you decide to go through the process and eventually beg the eraser people to stop? It was all or nothing, and Joey should have known that. He would have saved himself from a lot of trouble (but of course, we don't want that because there will be no story, and we like watching men go through a lot of trouble and in the end, save themselves and their women because that would make them men.) Clementine was the first one to have him erased because maybe, just maybe, she wanted to move on. And if she did, it was a tough (very tough) decision to make, and I would have wanted to watch her go through the process and I wouldn't expect resistance from her because she felt she needed it and she would go through it and finish it for her own sake. Most of us are not like Clementine. We desire to move on, but a very few of us make the decision and even few actually make it through because others end up to what they were before - thinking about the person and realizing we're still not yet ready to move on, just like Joel did or what his character had shown. But hey, it's human nature. This weakness is naturalized (or normalized?), and so we don't see it as a weakness. Romantic pa nga di ba?

Don't Point Fingers, It's Impolite

It's not Joel's fault, Cris.

We all have those moments when we just want to start on a clean slate. And we can't really blame him now can we? After all, it was Clementine who had him erased first - and on a whim. That shows real weaknes of character just there; just because you fought with your lover doesn't immediately mean that you should erase him right then and there, right? I mean, you allow your anger to stew, and then try and see if the relationship is worth salvaging. And you have to admit that Clementine isn't also the easiest person to live with. Hell, none of us are easy people to live with.

I remember something Neil Garcia said to us in poetry class last year. Writers will always have the tendency to love more because we're all too damn emotional. And that will, more often than not, be our mistake. (Something which I'm also familiar with all too well.) But hey, if we're going to make mistakes, we might as well make them beautiful. Better to have had your heart broken into a million tiny pieces and living with that pain and moving on rather than a tabula rasa life where all our memories trickle down into oblivion and we've forgotten how it feels like to love someone.

Joel's actions were valid in their own right - the pain of losing Clementine through her own impulsiveness is something akin to a kick in the balls. And he had to forget. Don't we all have to forget some things in order to make room for new ones? But what the mind abandons, the heart will always cherish - even though it becomes something amorphous and nameless, it will still be there.

People are Strange

I’m not really sure how I’m supposed to react to this novella. Sure, I was pissed off by the characters, but that’s not what makes the story strange. I was really looking for the “strange” in this story, and the only “strange” thing that I got from this was the characters. Their behavior made the novella strange – Fanshawe disappearing and trying to find another husband for his wife; the narrator acting beside himself when he was looking for Fanshawe; Sophie thinking that she’ll lose her new husband once he writes Fanshawe’s biography; and, Fanshawe’s mother “punishing” his son through the narrator (and vise versa). If it is human behavior that makes this novella strange, then I might as well claim that every story presenting the different human behaviors are STRANGE stories. (Come to think of it, anything that deals with humans and their behavior is considered strange.)
The characters in the story were well developed, to the point that I (as a reader) already knew how the narrator would react to, say, an incident in the story. Given the way the characters were molded, it was not difficult for me to not understand Fanshawe’s reasoning at the end of the story. I had already been conditioned from the very beginning that Fanshawe was strange; it was further affirmed by stories of his peculiar behavior. Believing what Fanshawe said at the ending was not hard to do; it was already a given fact that he was different, and that his reason for disappearing should not at all be shocking.
How the narrator behaved throughout the novella was also expected. He lived in constant fear (if that’s what it’s supposed to be called) of Fanshawe, not because he had been threatened, but because he knew Fanshawe was still alive. He had to constantly lie to himself, to Sophie, to Jane Fanshawe, to Stuart, and to everyone else who had read Fanshawe’s works. This ‘fear’ also came from trying to understand why Fanshawe left.
An interesting part in the novella was when Jane Fanshawe and the narrator had sex. Both of them hated Fanshawe to some extent, and their way to get even was to hurt each other. Both of them had been part of Fanshawe, and in a way they saw Fanshawe in each other. The narrator hated Fanshawe – he disappeared leaving him with the burden of hiding the truth. The mother also hated Fanshawe – he never allowed her to be his mother.
Sophie’s behavior was also interesting. I could call her paranoid, but then she had a point in worrying about her new husband. The more the narrator researched about Fanshawe, the more he became like him. Sophie was worried that he might not come back too.
Still, I don’t know how to properly read this novella. I just know that the whole story is weird because of the way the characters behaved. I didn’t even like the ending. The narrator and Fanshawe meet, a locked door between them. The narrator tries to open the door – and understand Fanshawe – but Fanshawe stays inside the locked room.

It's Joel's fault!

First, I want to thank Kelly, Rica and Steph for convincing me to watch the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Second, I want to kill Rica and Steph for thinking that I changed after watching the movie. I still don't think that the movie is telling me something personal. You might laugh at what I'm going to say next but I can relate with Joel. The only difference is I didn't choose to erase my memories like he did. Therefore, I'm somehow fortunate :)

Anyway, since at the beginning of their relationship, it was Joel's fault because he wouldn't let know what he was thinking or feeling. He was nice, but being nice all the time didn't make the relationship last. Talking to would have made a difference. It would not kill him to say things other than "You're nice" to . How would she know he really loves her? Charades?

My most favorite part in the movie was when Joel became aware that his memories of were being erased and he realized that they were too special for him, and he tried to save them. (I just have one question to you guys: Was Joel trying to save his memories of because there were feelings that were too special, or he was saving them because Kate was there, even if what he was feeling was negative?) Again, it was his fault why he had to struggle (Men, men, men) but it was just the sweetest thing to do (Rica, please believe that I'm saying this.)

Overall, the movie was great.

One last question, would anyone want to marry Joel? I wouldn't. He was too secretive.

Free

“Hate is burden; life is too short to be pissed off at all times.” – American History X

I do not know where nor how to begin, I am not even sure if the aforementioned quote has anything to do with the story, but it seems so relevant. I was taught in my phenomenology class that memories to our lives are like anchors to ships, you cannot move on until you remove them. You cannot progress and grow as a person until you free yourself of memories, especially memories that remind you of the harm and injury done to you. Fanshawe was a burden to almost everyone. Sophie felt and knew it that was why she hurriedly freed herself of things that has anything to do with her ex – husband. The main protagonist however, took a longer time to unburden himself. He had intense feelings towards Fanshawe. He even went to the point of screwing Fanshawe’s mother out of anger. I think what made it difficult for him to forget was the fact that he had mixed emotions for his best friend. He admired Fanshawe, hence the clinging to the books. He was envious of Fanshawe, hence the desire to kill him. I also felt that there was something inside the protagonist that was bothering him and only confronting Fanshawe would end it.
In the end, the couple was able to let go and move on, along with their kids. They decided that though the published works of Fanshawe helped them a lot financially, the thought that Fanshawe was still living with them, inside them was too much of a burden. A professor once told me that people should never live in the past, for it is senseless. What’s important is now, what is.
Is the “Locked Room” Fanshawe? An enigma that the main protagonist was trying to solve and eventually understood in the end?
By the way, that Fanshawe dude maybe a genius but he’s a psycho, a total lunatic. though to have a friend like him would be interesting.

on "the locked room"

I thought the disappearance of Fanshawe was caused by some grand supernatural phenomenon. I even thought he turned himself, or was turned into his own manuscripts (an out-of-place speculation, huh?). In any case, I thought that was what made the story, that the text was driving itself to a revelation as to how Fanshawe disappeared. I read fast because I was excited to know what would have caused his sudden disappearance, and that was what I really mainly wanted to know.
The story turned out to be better, and more complex than just having to reveal how Fanshawe vanished. It could even have been realistic – no magic, no bizarre transformations, no enormous radios that broadcast the neighbor’s squabble. Nothing of that sort, actually. So I wondered what could have qualified this story to become part of the CW 111 strange fiction readings. I didn’t have to think it over long, though. The character of Fanshawe, and his sudden disappearance are bizarre enough. The narrator is even strange himself (I’m not too sure either if he has a name). Sophie, Fanshawe’s mother – all of them are creepy. The name “Fanshawe” alone is weird.
The story is eerie. But that’s what makes it interesting. And I love the anecdotes scattered throughout the story, especially that one of how the narrator faked questionnaires. There are a lot of things and insights about life (“Discretion has its role, but too much of it can be fatal,” is my favorite) that just come naturally out of the story and events. There are also striking thoughts on writing, I even highlighted some (“. . . be able to write something that would touch people and make a difference in their lives”).

Reading The Locked Room

I found the story very fast-paced. Perhaps the author’s knack for suspense had a lot to do with it. I felt myself drawn into the story once I started reading it (I couldn’t wait to get to the next pages) and, if not for pressing matters which I had to attend to, I think now that I would have finished it in one sitting. But that is entirely another story.
I found the premise extremely intriguing. Interesting would be the wrong word to describe it—it would be quite inadequate. The speaker’s obsession with Fanshawe was remarkable; so were the conflicting mixture of envy and admiration that the former had for the latter. I, myself, was fascinated by this kind of fascination. He felt these emotions quite intensely and this was conveyed with clarity in the text. It literally jumped from the pages to the reader’s perception. The man felt so strongly, and it showed.
Fanshawe was the quintessential angst-filled artist. He embodied the qualities of the deviant individual (redundant? I got carried away); so well tuned to his inner self that the rest of the world seemed—or was—abnormal for him. He very well knew that he couldn’t possibly bear to live in such a place; therefore, he ran away as much as he could, if little by little. In the end, he fulfilled this very strong need to ultimately run away from it all, under the guise of death. Yet it was also ironic that, for all the hiding he had done, and in spite of the disappearance he had staged for himself, his name and his writings had inevitably served to immortalize him. He had given away small bits of himself to the world he so shunned that in the end, he was never truly lost.
Sophie was the balance, the anchor to which the “I” could hold on in order for him not to completely lose sight of reality, the someone whom he could come back to after it all ended, the reason for him to come back at all. As I saw it, he did become a little mad in his pursuit of Fanshawe; when he felt that, in his desperate search for this person, he was actually the one being hunted down.
When I think about it, there was something spooky about the entire thing, something sinister. I wouldn’t go so far as to put the story under the horror category, but I have to say that there were certain parts in the story that sent shivers down my spine, pardon the hackneyed expression.

Tabula Rasa

May I just say that Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was amazinglybeautifulandohmygod Icant believethatthatfilmwassogoodIalmostcried? ^_^

I raved about it more in my blog. Hehe. Plugging.

Fanshawe in a Box

I just want to take this opportunity to exercise the approach I’m going to use to analyze the gay short stories in English and Filipino in my CW 199 thesis. Here I go.

In the story, the narrator tells us about his childhood with Fanshawe:

“…for several months Fanshawe kept the cardboard box in his room. He had always been generous in sharing his toys, but this box was off limits to me, and he never let me go in it. It was his secret place, he told me, and when he sat
inside and closed it up around him, he could go wherever he wanted to go, could be wherever he wanted to be. But if another person ever entered his box, then its magic would be lost for good. I believed this story and did not press him for a turn, although it nearly broke my heart. We would be playing in his room, quietly setting up soldiers or drawing pictures, and then, out of the blue, Fanshawe would announce that he was going in to his box. I would try to go on with what I had been doing, but it was never any use. Nothing interested me so much as what was happening to Fanshawe inside the box, and I would spend those minutes desperately trying to imagine the adventures he was having. But I never learned what they were, since it was also against the rules for Fanshawe to talk about them after he climbed out.”

In this whole passage, the image of the box was a derivative of the gay’s closet (and it doesn’t need to be sexual). The gay’s closet is a representation of a gay man’s experience in most societies, where homosexuals are not acceptable. Just like Fanshawe’s box, a gay’s closet is “off-limits” to anyone. It’s a caution, which every gay man has to have because of fear of discovery, and then of persecution, of rejection, of discrimination. It’s a personal space, “a secret place”, where one can be himself – “go wherever he wanted to go, could be where he wanted to be”. Its secrecy, “its magic”, will be lost for good because of public humiliation and false judgment. However, in this passage, the narrator’s character was showing curiosity not towards the box itself, but to the experiences Fanshawe was having inside of it. He was not a threat, but someone who wanted to experience something new. Outside, the narrator was doing mundane things – setting up soldiers and drawing pictures. Doing them was more rational than “out of the blue” going inside the box. The curiosity was driving the narrator to imagine the “adventures” Fanshawe could be thinking of inside the box – an onset of desire to cross the boundary from where he was to where Fanshawe was. But Fanshawe was keeping it to himself because it was his secret.

In terms of identity, Fanshawe’s character was a representation of the universalist-separatist dichotomy of gayness. He was described as someone who was a stand out among the crowd, but at the same time, blending in it. It was the very heart of the gay identity – the contradiction between being an individual, and being someone who was just like any straight men around. On one hand, he left because he realized he wasn’t meant to live with others; on the other hand, he kept on moving from one place to another, establishing relationships with different people, acting like normal people.

Sorry, this is too long because of the summary

WHAT WAS IT ABOUT?

Paul Auster’s Locked Room, to put it simply, is about the narrator’s best childhood buddy named Fanshawe who left his family, making himself disappear as what he had planned to do, because he realized he was not meant to live with other people. He entrusted his unpublished works to his wife Sophie (still in accordance to his plans), instructing her to give them to the narrator, “his best friend in the world”. Then, the narrator was surprised when Sophie wrote to him, telling him that Fanshawe disappeared and she wanted to meet him. He then met her, seeing how beautiful Sophie was, and met Ben too, Fanshawe’s son to her. Sophie handed Fanshawe’s work over to him, and he gave in to accepting the responsibility of reading them and finding a publisher that could take them in. He then fell in love with Sophie, without knowing that everything was a set up to make him Sophie’s next husband. After his discovery through a letter that was sent to him by Fanshawe, telling him it was all his doing, he was torn between telling Sophie about it and keeping it a secret. But of course, he kept it to himself, and everything normal followed then: the marriage, the honeymoon, Ben’s adoption and success of Fanshawe’s works. Also, he wasn’t writing anything big then, growing slack towards his work, until a convenient solution presented itself to him as he was dining with Stuart Green. He accepted the project of writing Fanshawe’s biography, and went on researching until he realized he wanted to see Fanshawe and terminate the latter’s hold on him. But going through it, he lost Sophie and Ben, and his insanity, until he came back to his right mind and realized, which was the very first sentence of the novel:

“It seems to me now that Fanshawe was always there. He is the place where
everything begins for me, and without him I would hardly know who I am.”

He learned that what he was looking for was not what he needed. He tried to win Sophie back, and he did, and this time he was prepared of Fanshawe, if ever he made himself present again to their lives. Fanshawe wrote to him again, telling him he wanted to talk to him. They talked, the narrator asking so many questions and Fanshawe trying to explain himself as much as he could. The former called him Fanshawe and wanted to tear down the door of the room where Fanshawe was, and the latter burst in anger and threatened to kill him. Eventually, Fanshawe gave a red, spiral notebook that would explain to the narrator everything that had happened to him, and the narrator walked out from the house holding it in his hand. At the train, the narrator read the notebook, which was full of questions that were answered by questions, and then he tore the pages from the book, throwing them to the trash bin.

HOW WAS THE STORY PRESENTED?

Though I think the novel resists to be understood fully, the whole story is one big irony. The whole idea of someone finding out he was being ignorant all along of something that was planned for him is effectively haunting; even more haunting and terrifying was when the narrator tried to find Fanshawe, thinking it was the most important thing to do, but he became insane for one month, losing the persons that mattered most in his life. Instead of putting to a stop everything concerning about Fanshawe by searching for him and killing him for everyone’s sake, it turned out to be worst, dangerous and futile. Quoting Stuart Green’s comments about Fanshawe’s Neverland below, The Locked Room too was one effective, strange story:

“I read the book more than two weeks ago, and it’s been with me ever since. I
can’t get it out of my head. It keeps coming back to me, and always at the
strangest moments. Stepping out of the shower, walking down the street, crawling into bed at night – whenever I’m not consciously thinking about anything… There’s something powerful about it, and the oddest thing is that I don’t even know what it is.”

Anyhow, the story has a lot of weird, disturbing scenes. Among these scenes, I find the sexual intercourse between the narrator and Fanshawe’s mother the most perturbing of all. It’s not because of moral reasons, but how this was used to convey the narrator’s hatred to Fanshawe. It was very real and sincere. On one hand, it was fulfillment of a young boy’s lustful fantasy; on the other hand, which I think more significant than the first, it brought the narrator’s realization of his hatred to Fanshawe to the surface, and was used as an act of revenge, or killing. Giving the word “fuck” in that part of the story another meaning – “screwing up” or “destroying”. It was therefore a very odd, but pertinent juxtaposition of pleasure and pain.

Among the three major characters in the story, Fanshawe was the strangest, even though he claimed that he was sane. He was unusual, a stand out in the crowd, but at the same time, he blended in. At times he acted as one of the gang, and all of sudden he wanted to be alone. He attached himself to people, and quickly detached himself from them. He possessed qualities that cancelled each other out. He was unpredictable and no one could get into him; he was right at all to tell that he was meant to live alone. For that, (thank God) Sophie chose to move on after he left.

At first, I thought Sophie was naïve not to think that Fanshawe had really left her and her son by themselves, but she wasn’t really being clueless at all. Fanshawe could probably have acted very natural, carrying out his plan to fool Sophie. As the story went on, Fanshawe, like any other men, was a good actor. It could have been the greatest performance of his life, and Sophie didn’t know she was in the role of the victim. Then it continued when she married the narrator, who was so condescending, and doubtful of her feelings to him, and untruthful. The only thing that was good on him was when he was tearing up the pages of the red, spiral notebook Fanshawe had given him. It shows how he wouldn’t give a chance for him again to mess up his mind. But still, he had to go on and chase after insanity. He was very fortunate he won Sophie back (Men. It always has to be the hard way. Tsk, tsk, tsk.)

Also, in presenting the story with disturbing scenes and images, the process is suggestive of the writing process itself. When you get to the part when the narrator tried to write a biography of Fanshawe, instead of going directly to the Fanshawe's life, the narrator did mention a lot of stories, weird stories to make his point that in making a story of someone, it had to be something "weird" or worthy to tell because if it isn't, why do you have to tell it in the first place? It's a justification that what the narrator was about to tell was something the reader should pay attention. It's brilliant for Auster to write about writing, and use it to tell the narrator's experience with Fanshawe, which was the main story.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

-- from Eloisa to Abelard, Alexander Pope 1717

I watched the movie yesterday. I wish the eraser guys would come and get me.

The Locked Room

This story is good at handling suspense and mystery. By the time I finished the first chapter I couldn't help but continue reading it till the end. I wanted to know everything about Fanshawe, I wanted to understand him, to know why he acts that way, to see what's inside that locked room. It helps that the story has that silent, ominous atmosphere (mood) because it piqued my curiosity as to what will happen to the narrator, to Sophie and Fanshawe. But (yes, there's a but) the ending seems to just fizzled out. After reading I told myself, 'Okay, so Fanshawe remains an enigma from start to finish. He's a genius and a bit of a psycho and a wicked person- because of what he did to his wife-so, what?' I'm not saying that the author should've explained to us why Fanshawe acts that way or that he should've given us a glimpse as to what's written on the notebook. No I don't want that (mmm...on second thought, giving us a glimpse of how Fanshawe's mind works is quite interesting). The thing is what happened to the silent, ominous mood?, to the "darkness is what surrounds me whenever I think of what happened"? , to the "In the end, it would probably not be wrong to say that everything was lost on me"? The story made me expect that something more than the tearing of the pages of a notebook would happen. But then it's Auster's prerogative as a creator to decide what will happen in the story, it's just that the mood and the suspense that he successfully built up, it seems to me, gone to waste.

About the non-fiction quality of the story (as mentioned by Kelly) I think it's a good thing because here fiction is able to create that illusion of realness. Isn't it what fiction ought to do (at least according to some critics)? To create an illusion of life, to let the readers feel that what's he is seeing inside his head is true.

Spotless Minds

"Like the greatest science fiction writers, Kaufman is using a bizarre futuristic scenario to tell us something about the here and now: about the loss of our most vivid loves to the impermanence of memory; and about the life we lose when, to go on living, we force ourselves to forget." -- David Edelstein, on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Saw the movie last night, and I'm very glad I assigned it to you all. Let's talk about it on Wednesday. :)