Ex Libris Philippines: Paperback Pokémon

If money were no object, what books would you buy?

For avid book collectors, let's rephrase the question: which book collection would you buy?

There's a trend nowadays amongst book collectors not simply to gather books by author or series. There's also the question of buying certain editions above others. The easiest way to spot these discerning readers is what they pay attention to. They won't care about the brand of your bag, nor your shoes. They will, however, ooh and ah over your Fitzcarraldo, or an even rarer NYRB edition! 

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Ex Libris Philippines : Bookstagram and its Contents

(Excerpt from our book club's first Instagram entry)

Actors in movies speak of book clubs with a hint of derision, imagining some kind of group therapy for bored suburban housewives plying each other with alcohol before noon.

But for some, myself included, book clubs can be a source of deep joy, and even a life-affirming sense of identity! Our book club helps us live lives in pursuit of truth and beauty, and if that isn’t the definition of art, then I don’t know what is...

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Book Review: A CHANGE OF CLIMATE by Hilary Mantel

A Change of Climate by Hilary Mantel
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"It is the one we don't have that dominates our lives. It's what missing that shapes everything we do."

Readers the world over are mourning the death of one of our greatest contemporary authors... Dame Hilary Mantel of WOLF HALL fame, whose books on the French Revolution and the Tudors are some of the finest examples of the written word anywhere. Am astounded at the outpouring of devotion and creative tributes written by her most ardent fans. There is a void, and people all over the world are filling it up with beauty.

On this dark weekend, I felt compelled to read A CHANGE OF CLIMATE, one of two Mantel books I had on my TBR pile. And I am reminded once again of the distinct combination of pleasure and awe she inspires in her readers.

"Try to relate everything to God... try to work on the scale of eternity, otherwise, the daily frustrations will cripple you," spoke the Bishop to the young English couple fresh off the boat, newly arrived to be missionaries in South Africa in the 1950's, at the height of apartheid.

But what the couple encounter there will uproot even the most devout professional Christian's faith. For there is nothing worse than the betrayal of one's most deeply held values, the ones that define our very core.

"I decided to do a good action and by it my life has been split open and destroyed."

Partly a criticism of the White Man's messianic complex, mostly an examination of families and secrets that tear them apart ... Mantel is a surgeon whose skill in slicing open the human heart is pretty much near Graham Greene's. To read her is to begin to understand just how complex we humans can be.

Mantel speaks to us of the importance of choice: "Each choice breeds its own universe... we must always choose, and choose to do good. In choosing evil we collude with the principle of decay... the universe the devil owns."

Am filing this under "DARN-THIS-WAS-GOOD-BUT-IT-HURT-TOO-MUCH-THE-FIRST-TIME-SO-I-SHALL-NEVER-REREAD." This was my sixth Mantel, and I wouldn't recommend it for first timers. My favorite book by her remains to be A PLACE OF GREATER SAFETY. It's a safer read, for sure. But oh, her language! Each page is a delight!

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Book Review: DUTY KA BA? by Tepai Pascual

It is a truth universally acknowledged that

1) a lot of Filipino families have lost loved ones during the pandemic, and

2) there are SO MANY good looking doctor-hunks in Philippine General Hospital (there must be something in the water?!)

AHAHAHA HUHUHUHU. I say these two facts with the confidence that comes from personal experience.

Like thousands of others, my family endured heart break and loss during prolonged stays in hospitals. Which makes me all the more grateful to the incredible Tepai Pascual (of Maktan 1521 fame) for creating this amazing series in the middle of a pandemic! When one is surrounded by so much heartbreak and pain, books that bring joy become unutterably meaningful.

DUTY KA BA? started out as a webcomic, but Vol. 1 was recently launched at the 2022 MIBF and fans just can't get enough!

The series focuses on Melba, the patient who falls in love with her cardiologist whom she calls "Tomato" because he turns red whenever he gets "kilig." (Argh, there is NO English equivalent for this unique feeling of romantic joy/embarassment!)

DUTY KA BA? is uniquely Filipino. Written partly as tribute to amazing health care heroes, the humor is full of heart, the flirtation witty and relatable. We are all Melba! Oh to be as brave as her in voicing out her admiration for whom she loves. In the midst of death, there is still (love) life.

"E ano kung hindi maging kami? Ang mahalaga ay nagkakilala kami."

(So what if we don't end up together? The important thing is that we met.")

* cue tears *

It is an altogether joyful blend of romance, profound wisdom, and above all, INCREDIBLE artistry. Tepai Pascual makes you fall in love with all the characters, and she draws them so well! There is incredible nuance in their expressions, which is not easy to do! And how she managed to capture the voices of various nurses and doctors is GENIUS. I can't wait for Vol. 2, I hear new eye candy... I mean, residents... are in town.

DUTY KA BA? is a gift to the Filipino literary community. 5 stars isn't enough! Just order your copy already, you'll thank me for the reco!

P.S. It should come with a warning: read a few pages sparingly, at a time, because you need to space out the laughs that will burst forth from you, after each page! Asthmatics, be cautious!

(Rated MUST READ 10 out of 5 stars!)

Book Review: JOSEPH ANTON by Salman Rushdie

Joseph Anton: A Memoir by Salman Rushdie
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"The bazaar of conflicting views was the place where freedom rang."

I write this praying for the recovery of the author, who only last month was stabbed in Chautauqua, New York, before he was to give a public lecture, attacked by a man trying to carry out a fatwa issued way back in 1989. It is incomprehensible to any decent human being how someone can behave so barbarously, how a religious fundamentalist can love "a particular interpretation of faith more than human life," so much so that he will charge onstage to execute a man condemned by a dead leader's edict 33 years ago.

The best bits about the memoir are the first 150 pages, where Rushdie the author writes of the events leading up to the fatwa, and the immediate aftermath. Salman the man takes over then, until the book's end at page 636. A major theme in the book was the fact that the man and the author are two distinct beings. The book certainly felt and read that way. Critics will find much to criticize in the longer second part, but the book's value lies (for this reader) in the beginning.

Here there is great beauty, like the explanation of his name. It comes from Ibn Rushd, known to the West as Averroës, the medieval Spanish-Arab philosopher. "From beyond the grave his father had given him the flag under which he was ready to fight... which stood for for intellect, argument, analysis and progress... the freedom of philosophy and learning from the shackles of theology, for human reason and against blind faith, submission, acceptance and stagnation."

Rushdie goes on: "Nobody ever wanted to go to war, but if a war came your way, it might as well be the right war, about the most important things in the world, and you might as well, if you were going to fight it... stand where your father had placed you."

His discussion of the conflict between forces that seek to limit humans' perceptions and identities (exclusively identifying one's self by one's religion or one's political party, for instance) casts literature and art's opposing mission in a new light. While political and religious labels try to make infinite souls narrower, art and literature seek to expand our humanity.

Rushdie warns: "The narrower their identities became, the greater was the likelihood of conflict between them."

Let the conflict remain in the realm of ideas, he entreats. Let this right to free speech be defended by all civilized people.

The true enemy is rage. "Rage killed the mind, and now more than ever the mind needed to live, to find a way of rising above the mindlessness."

Rushdie observed how a vast majority of those who called for his death and persecution had never even read the book that inspired such hatred. This reader can attest to how difficult it is to get a hold of a copy of these books, but we need to try. Because we cannot, we should not, ever make the dishonest mistake of condemning something we have not seen, nor read for ourselves.

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Book Review: DEEP RIVER by Shusaku Endo

Deep River by Shūsaku Endō
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"God has many faces. As do I... the real dialogue takes place when you believe that God has many faces, and that he exists in all religions... I don't think God exists exclusively in the churches and chapels of Europe. I think he is also among the Jews, Buddhists and Hindus."

Endo fascinates. Like forces of nature, his books go beyond liking or disliking, they simply ARE. To read them is akin to bathing in a boiling hot spring: both painful and cleansing, and always UNFORGETTABLE. This sixth one I've read has got to be the most powerful thus far (arguably even more than his most famous book, SILENCE). It's also the most "catholic," in the universal sense, and certainly the most ambitious as he sought to reconcile Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity like three streams originating from one source that flow back to the Mother Ganges, the river of rebirth. For Endo, this deep river IS God: "A deep river of humanity and we are all part of it... this river embraces everything about mankind... so deep I feel as though it's not just for the Hindus but for everyone."

It begins with a bus full of Japanese tourists on the eve of Indira Gandhi's assassination in 1984. Despite their outward homogenous appearance, each one harbors unique past trauma: some have lost life partners and are seeking their reincarnations, others have survived death marches in Burma by eating human flesh and seek redemption. The more fortunate of them wrestle only with a bone-deep search for love and meaning, in a post-war era that brought greater prosperity with the advent of consumerism, but a matching emptiness of soul.

Endo brings us to the ancient Indian city of Varanasi, which predates Christianity, where pilgrims go to die, where the faithful bathe in waters freshly strewn with the ashes of their beloved dead. All seek enlightenment and rebirth. All find a version of what they seek, though perhaps not in the form they were expecting.

Endo writes scathingly of the ignorance of those who view the rites handed down throughout millennia, through the lens of their narrow life experience, then proceeds to take us into the inner workings of three of the great faiths in a truly awesome display of literary imagination.

One of the main characters, a priest-in-training, responded to a nihilistic young woman by telling her that it didn't matter what name she called Jesus or God. He alternates between calling our Lord "Onion" and "Love," as if to underscore that the name of God doesn't really matter, as it changes with each of his different faces shown to different races.

I was particularly struck with the parallel Endo drew between Christ who gave all out of love, and the Hindu goddess Chamunda: "The mother of India... an old woman reduced to skin and bones and gasping for breath. Despite it all, she was still a mother... She is ugly and worn with age, and she groans under the weight of the suffering she bears.. She offers milk from her withered breasts to the children who line up before her. Her belly has caved in from hunger, and scorpions have stung her... enduring all these ills and pains, she offers milk from her sagging breasts to mankind... She displays all the sufferings of the Indian people."

We revisit a familiar Endo theme: that God is to be found in the suffering of sinful men, and that "even if I try to abandon God, God won't abandon me."

Endo effortlessly quotes from French novelists, the Amida Sutra, and the Book of Isaiah. The result is a tapestry that no other writer has dared to weave in novel form. To achieve all of this, to explain complex theological concepts while using accessible language and maintaining the tension required in all great narratives, is truly inspired.

No wonder that, out of all his many works, this is one of only two books that were buried along with the author (I can't find any mention of the second book... perhaps it was SILENCE?).

Love. God. Warmth of life. If you loved Thomas Merton and Graham Greene, you will love Shusaku Endo, and especially this particular novel (which was apparently made into an award winning film in 1995!).

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Book Review: THE BASTARD OF ISTANBUL by Elif Shafak

The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"Let's start with the basics. The facts. If we can make it through the facts we can then talk about other things."

There is something rather horrid in this controversial novel. I knew it before picking it up, based on the real life lawsuits filed against the author in her native Turkey (which made me all the more anxious to read it). I can confirm the book's need for trigger warnings upon finishing it.

But then, there is something horrible in human nature, as our capacity for genocide shows. The book touches on the Armenian Genocide after World War I, a truth so well suppressed, that it is something I only heard of after a dear friend shared her Elif Shafak books with our book club. It chilled me to my core, to see a map marked black where 100% of its Armenian population had been forcibly marched to the desert, and/or wiped out with outright murder, decades before Hitler and his death camps.

There is horror, yes, but also much to savor. Like poison hidden in the sweetest dessert, the final chapters of the book hit this reader with a force similar to an emotional sledge hammer, precisely because I had been lulled to complacency in the earlier chapters.

Shafak coats her politics and feminism with seeming airiness and a light prose touch, which makes the message hit all that much harder when she chooses to finally deliver it.

"Am I responsible for my father's crime?"
"You are responsible for recognizing your father's crime."

To be honest, this is partly the reason why it took me a few months to get through the book, but now I'm glad I finished it.

Read at one level, it is a twisted family drama: a teenager is pregnant, and no one knows who the father is. But then as national history merges with the personal, we see that the characters are meant to be metaphors for sectors of society, all in one melting pot of a city and country.

Shafak's love for Istanbul shines through. She starts and ends with the saying "Whatever falls from the sky above, thou shalt not curse it. That includes the rain." It reminded me of another author (Juan Villoro) who wrote about Mexico, but with a similar sentiment: "You belong to the place where you pick up the trash. It's easy to be proud of a city's palaces and glories: The true test of belonging is being willing to deal with its waste."

It's worth pondering, as a Filipino in 2022, over Shafak's example of patriotic love that includes being brave enough to look at a country's past, ALL of it. And then dealing with the aftermath as courageously as one can. "Without knowing your father's story, how can you expect to create your own story? ... Being a bastard is less about having no father than having no past," she reminds us. She risked imprisonment because this book was accused of "denigrating Turkishness," but was thankfully spared.

When a country's authorities crack down on the most basic freedoms of human expression, then all the more, that is when its people should carry on. Discussion can only bring about progress. Enforced homogenization based on fiction and lies brings about its withering.

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Book Review: A TIME OF GIFTS by Patrick Leigh Fermor

A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The title comes from a poem by Louis MacNeice: "For now the time of gifts is gone - O boys that grow, O snows that melt, O bathos that the years must fill..."

From the very start, we are swept up into the bittersweet nostalgia mixed with rapturous delight for "a thousand wonders awaiting."

What a wonderful little gem of a book! Apparently this is the most famous of Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor's books, because he wrote it in his sixties, reminiscing about the time when, as an eighteen-year-old school drop-out, he decided to walk to Constantinople ON FOOT. ON A WHIM. I mean, who does that?!?

A TIME OF GIFTS is the first book in the trilogy about his epic journey. I think the main thing that makes it truly unique is because it's a REMEMBERED journey, begun in December of 1933 and ending in January of 1937. It's a tribute to memory, because it shows how much more clearly we see our past experiences using the lens of experience and worldly wisdom (the hazy fog of time be darned). Good thing our dear old Paddy Fermor kept journals!

I don't think I've ever read anything quite like this, and probably never will again. Paddy Fermor describes how he travelled through Holland, Germany (in the year that Hitler came into power!!), Vienna, Prague, and ends with him on a bridge about to enter Hungary, on the banks of the Danube. He sleeps in barnyards, police stations, and the occasional schloss (castle), experiences his first serious hangover and wakes up with rucksack and passport stolen, earns some pocket money by sketching strangers, makes friends with both noble and peasant, recites poetry when feeling lonesome and bored while trudging the pathways heading to Constantinople... always depending on the generosity of the warmhearted Europeans he meets on the way, and describes everything he sees with such beautiful prose! At times it's rather purple and screams "oh-look-at-how-well-educated-I-am," but the over-all tone is one of a soul aflame with the passion of remembered youth, of a war hero remembering beautiful treasures that were later bombed and lost to posterity.

I was struck by his description of walking into Germany in the year that Hitler was newly enthroned as Chancellor. The swastikas and brown shirts were everywhere, and so were his posters. He describes meeting Germans from opposite camps: those who adored the Chancellor and had rooms that were basically shrines to Hitler, and those who disagreed with him and his goons' tactics. Fermor writes: "It was as if an entire civilization were sliding into calamity and taking the world with it... it was a time when friendships and families were breaking up all over Germany."

To read Fermor elevates the reader's spirit, while simultaneously making this tired worker's blood pressure drop. To experience Fermor's past is to view a moving, talking painting. It brings to mind the difference between the best of animated films versus reality TV: to (re)visit Europe with Fermor is to see only what is beautiful and immortal.

"I lay deep in one of those protracted moments of rapture which scatter this journey like asterisks. A little more, I felt, and I would have gone up like a rocket... why should the thought that nobody knew where I was... generate such a feeling of trimph? It always did."

There's no place like home, but for all who seek to travel safely from their armchair (or in my case, my desk LOL), I can't imagine a better guide than Paddy Fermor.

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Book Review: THE MAN WHO INVENTED HISTORY - TRAVELS WITH HERODOTUS by Justin Marozzi

The Man Who Invented History: Travels with Herodotus by Justin Marozzi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"History is one of the fields where, if you teach it badly, you produce serious damage way ahead in the future."

It's a rare book-about-a-book that can make the reader frantically look for a copy of the original that inspired it, after only 40 pages!

Inspired by the first historian and author of the first prose work, British author Justin Marozzi set out to see for himself how much has changed in the last 2500 years since Herodotus penned THE HISTORIES. Beginning with Bodrum, Turkey (formerly Halicarnassus, the hometown of the first historian), Marozzi brings us with him to Iraq, dodging bullets and being under armed guard as he visits Babylon and Baghdad. Next he takes us up the Nile in Egypt as he visits Memphis, Thebes, and Cairo, marveling at pyramids and museums. Most of the book takes place in Greece, where he visits ancient temples and tunnels, and (the highlight of the book) has lunch with THE Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor himself!!!

Another highlight of the book for this teacher was Marozzi's interview with Nenad Sebek, former head of the Centre for Democracy and Reconciliation in Southeast Europe (CDRSEE), whose NGO undertook a comparative study of how history was taught (Clio in the Balkans) and then came up with a revolutionary series of history textbooks for high school (secondary) students, called the JOINT HISTORY PROJECT (http://jointhistory.net/). To my surprise, the English textbooks are readily available for download at their website! When Marozzi published this book in 2008, only four volumes were available, but now there are 6.

A quick scan of the World War 2 textbook confirms Marozzi's joyful observation that this was Herodotus' legacy thrown in the classroom, this is "history as an active force, with a message and a moral voice."

The textbooks give primary sources and "provide multiple perspectives. We say, this is what people wrote at the time. You have the grey matter. Figure it out. We don't give conclusions... it's history as an ongoing dialogue, not a final verdict."

The CDRSEE got 60 historians from 11 countries to write the books, "presenting differences and conflicts openly instead of painting a false picture of harmony, stimulating critical thought by presenting different versions/interpretations of the same event, promoting an ability to evaluate human acts and make moral judgements."

A cursory look at the World War 2 volume of JOIN HISTORY shows that it is VERY engaging because it shows the human face of history. Filled with writings from ordinary people as well as leaders of the time, full of pictures that show the brutality of conflict... but also, it is short (144 pages). This is a history book meant to be savored, with a manageable length that a teacher and a class can cover fully. It's also full of colored highlights that promote discussion: "Is it necessary and correct to always equate “German” with “enemy”? Why did some Germans operate against other Germans?" or "Comment on the differences between the perspective of the soldiers and that conveyed by
the press. Why did the press distort reality? Was this distortion justified?"

Wonderful stuff! How I wish we had this equivalent in Philippine history textbooks! But that is fuel for a different (and very long and controversial) discussion...

Back to Marozzi's charming book! Another highlight was the exorcism he accidentally witnessed while innocently taking in the sights at Thessaloniki's Basilica of Aghios Dimitrios, only to be told that the victim was "a doctor who comes every Monday." O.M.G.

Marozzi delighted in less famous but equally amazing feats of ancient engineering, such as the incredible Tunnel of Eupalinos built around 600 B.C. by slaves who started on opposite sides of the mountain!?! What kind of math did they possess, to ensure they met in the middle??

I loved the interviews Marozzi conducted, ranging from authorities in the Orthodox Church (whom he admits, historically, has a strong claim to being "the origin of the Christian faith" ever since we Catholics mucked things up in the schism of 1054), to the Grand Mufti of Cairo's Al Azhar Mosque himself, who said: "In dialogue we search for common ground. Where there is knowledge, there is better understanding, and wherever we find ignorance, we find blind fanaticism."

What a wonderful reminder to go through life with open minds and hearts! I'm grateful for this thrilling introduction to Herodotus, and now I'm off to read the original! Wish me luck!

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Elizabeth: A Portrait in Humanity

 One person can be many things to different people. To some, she was a symbol of an ancient form of government that has no place in modern society. To others, she was imperialism (and all its evils) personified.

But for my mom, she was simply another woman whose fame made her private pains public, who tried to bear it with dignity.

One of my clearest memories of my mother was her reaction upon seeing the newly widowed Queen Elizabeth II at her late husband's funeral. "Look at her, alone yet so brave," Mama said, herself still fresh from mourning Papa. I remember thinking how powerful that photo was: a woman alone in her pain, yet soldiering on.

Pictures and portraits are remarkable not only for the emotions they bring out from the viewer, but also for what they show about the subject.

Today I found out that the late queen had sat for a portrait by the (in)famous artist, Lucian Freud.

Author Stephen Millar, in his book LUST, LIES AND MONARCHY, wrote: 

"Lucian Freud’s portrait of Queen Elizabeth II was the most controversial royal painting of recent times... His portraits were unflinchingly brutal in their depiction of their subjects–often ordinary people he met in bars who were persuaded to sit for him over endless sessions. By the time the Queen posed for him, Freud’s paintings were selling for tens of millions of dollars, and he had no need to risk his reputation on such a commission.

However, Freud waived his fee, and agreed to the restrictions that came with painting a monarch ... One reason Freud agreed to paint the Queen was because he was repaying a favour his family owed the royal family. Years before, his famous relative Sigmund Freud had used his influence with the King’s younger brother to help Lucian’s family escape Nazi Germany and live in England. The resulting portrait was poorly received by most of the media and the public, but it remains a testament to Elizabeth’s willingness to take a risk and Freud’s uncompromising approach to art."

I was reminded of some lines from director Floy Quintos' immortal play, FLUID, which also had a Freud-like artist:

"They are the walking and talking vessels of that one singular emotion that's defeated them all their lives... The anxiety. The insecurity. The desire to be accepted. To be loved or adored."

Elizabeth knew what Lucian Freud's paintings were like:  more bent on truth than flattery. And yet she sat for a portrait by him. This single instance shows much of her character, especially when one remembers Winston Churchill, who destroyed his portrait by Graham Sutherland because he thought it was too "unflattering."

To me, this one anecdote shows her brand of quiet courage. 

She didn't choose to be a symbol of imperialism and all its evils. In a sense, she was born to a trade. To duty. And she tried to do it all her days.

Elizabeth was flawed, like the rest of us. But she offers hope for us, too. That despite all our sins and failings, we can someday be inspirations to others, for being brave enough, strong enough for the drudgery of daily life.

In an era when "silent quitting" is celebrated and people resign after only one day/week/month, this one day offers a moment for us to reflect on what this lady's life can teach us about commitment to a cause greater than one's self. And how a leader's clean conscience fears nothing, not even a critical eye. 

Musings on Nick Joaquin's A QUESTION OF HEROES (Part 4 of 4)

                                     (Apolinario Mabini)

                                       (Antonio Luna)

                                 (Gregorio del Pilar)

                                      (Artemio Ricarte)



The final part of this important book concerned Apolinario Mabini, Antonio Luna, Gregorio del Pilar and Artemio Ricarte: a crippled genius, a raging general, a dandy, and the last Filipino revolutionary who never swore allegiance to the American oppressor. Two of these heroes were featured by director Jerrold Tarog (showing on Netflix! Heneral Luna in 2015 and Goyo in 2018), which count as among the best of locally produced films; we need more films like these!

For most part, the book felt very contemporary, but its 1977 publication date became evident when polio wasn't mentioned as the reason for Mabini's crippling (information that only came out in 1980 after an autopsy). 

Despite being published 45 years ago, A QUESTION OF HEROES is still timely! And it's shocking to me that the information within isn't much discussed nor written about in textbooks.

When Nick Joaquin wrote this paragraph below, he touches upon a theme he revisits in CULTURE AND HISTORY (1988):

 "We resisted becoming 'Philippine' or 'Filipino,' we would revert to petty kingdom, tribe, clan, barangay. Our deepest impulse has ever been not to integrate but to disintegrate. We seem to have a fear of form, especially of great form... it's this old native impulse to revert to a smaller condition that was at the root of what we call the crisis of the Malolos Republic."

When Joaquin quoted what Mabini wrote harshly about Aguinaldo, we are set up with the final theme of smallness of soul at the top, condemning the fate of a country: "The Revolution failed because it was badly directed... because instead of employing the most useful men of the nation he jealously discarded them. Believing that the advance of the people was no more than his own personal advance, he did not rate men according to their ability, character and patriotism, but according to the degree of friendship or kinship binding him to them."

This theme is continued in the depiction of Antonio Luna's betrayal by "cavitismo fused with egoism and the thirst for authority" by men loyal to Aguinaldo (a second hero murdered in the name of our first President!), and in the portrayal of the inept leadership of an Aguinaldo favorite, Gregorio del Pilar, who fell at Tirad Pass most uselessly.

"Tirad Pass, like Bataan, is a bad shrine for Filipinos, because there we feel absolved of the faults that lead to such disasters... if we bungle and botch, never mind, we do fall gloriously... a few more Tirads and we'll be the most heroic people in extinction."

Detractors might accuse Nick Joaquin of muddying reputations of some of the few role models we have (because there are too few of them still alive in the halls of government). But this reader does not detect the malice of the petty soul who seeks to seem superior by making others seem lesser. In Joaquin we seem to hear a prophet warning his countrymen from committing the same mistakes that our heroes made. 

If "character is destiny" (as Joaquin keeps repeating), then isn't our individual and national character best formed by written truths, no matter how unflattering, never mind how harsh?

The title is very apt. When we call someone a hero, we reveal what we deem worthy of honor. Some heroes seem pre-chosen for us, whether by incomplete textbooks or their being buried in the Libingan ng Bayani, but Joaquin's book thrusts back the responsibility of choice to us, forcing us to re-examine not only their lives, but our own values. In the words of Jerrold Tarrog's film, "Bayan o sarili?" (Country or self?) Do we even dare answer?

This should be required reading in every college history curriculum, for every teacher!

P.S. I thought the ending was particularly praise-worthy, from a literary standpoint: Joaquin summarized the Revolution WITH JUST ONE SENTENCE that spanned 2 and a half pages!!! 

He began with "It had been a long day, beginning deep in the small hours, in a silence secret with strange noises" and ending with "for, now, with none to hail another crack of doom at dawn and, now, with the dawn forever in suspense until it break, again, with a cry, a crash, a clamor (and a coil of smoke from a battlement), the nameless faces now sinking into darkness but seem a waste of history, the toll of time."

Musings on Nick Joaquin's A QUESTION OF HEROES (Part 3)

                                                       (Jose Rizal)

                                                   (Andres Bonifacio)

                                                      (Emilio Aguinaldo)


"What is the use of independence if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow?"

Jose Rizal, Andres Bonifacio, and Emilio Aguinaldo. Even if one weren't familiar with the Three "Biggies," the fact that author Nick Joaquin wrote two chapters for each of them is a clear indicator of their importance (he reserves the same honor for Apolinario Mabini, but that will be part of the next post).

Our national hero wrote books that inspired a revolutionary movement, which in turn inspired our future First President.

What fascinates me about Nick Joaquin's book is that it offers an alternative interpretation of events, while always sticking to the facts. Joaquin quotes primary sources, usually words penned by the heroes themselves.

These six chapters could best be summarized by the word "anti-hero."  Nick Joaquin recounted how these three failed to live up to their idealized versions in different ways: Jose Rizal's denial to join the Katipunan and his application to serve Spain as a doctor in Cuba ("Rizal, when the Revolution came, chose to disown it and to enlist on the side of Spain."), Andres Bonifacio's failures as a military leader and his proud, domineering escapades that cost him his life in Cavite ("The revolutionaries had closed ranks behind Aguinaldo, and the price of unity was Bonifacio's blood."), and Emilio Aguinaldo's lack of foresight that made him trust in the deceitful American leaders who used him so the Americans could "conquer" Manila ("His was a politics of convenience.").

To be honest, I found Joaquin's account rather distressing, as I have been taught by pro-Rizal and pro-Bonifacio teachers. Then again, there is a kernel of truth to each side of the story, and having known one version, I count myself enriched by learning the other side. 

What rings true are Joaquin's penetrating psychological descriptions. The descriptions of our heroes' weaknesses resonate with me culturally. When Nick Joaquin describes the inferiority complexes, the small-minded naivete, and provincial loyalties, he could have very well been describing ANY Filipino and not the best of our race.

"The Revolution was inopportune, because it cost the lives of the very men who could have made a true Filipino nation work," mourns Nick Joaquin, whose regard for the ilustrado is evident in every chapter. He maintains that "from a larger view, there was only one revolution in 1896 -- and it was not Bonifacio's... the entire period from the Propaganda Movement to the Philippine-American War as a single: the Revolution of the Ilustrados." He was referring to the educated elite who sought enlightenment through education, uplifting the masses so they could be worthy of self-governance. Rizal belonged to this group; Bonifacio and Aguinaldo did not but were inspired by it.

"Each failure was one more stone added to the construction of the nation." 

Then as now, the soul and future of our country depends on how well its citizens are taught, and if they take these lessons to heart.