Book Review: THE LAST OF THE WINE by Mary Renault

The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"No tyranny is safe while men can reason."

It sounds absolutely morbid, but if I were to summarize the entire DepEd curriculum for Intro.to Philosophy for Grade 11 students in one sentence, it would be this: "To prepare one to die."

And so, it isn't surprising that one of our Philo 11 class readings is an excerpt from the Phaedo detailing Socrates' death by drinking poison. Here is how a real man dies.

Cursory research reveals a few paragraphs outlining the tale: how the master was accused of fomenting treasonous thoughts in his students, how one of them (Critias) was the most bloodthirsty of the Thirty Tyrants who made a mockery of Athens' legacy as the birth place of democracy, and how a generation's worth of war whipped the city into a mad frenzy of scapegoating.

Teachers make easy scapegoats now and in 399 B.C.E. Never mind how unjust it is to judge a teacher by one bad student.

Mary Renault has yet another triumphant novel in THE LAST OF THE WINE. I have never yet read a book by her that disappointed. Renault's books reflect the arete (excellence) in soul, in form that her Greek subjects pursue. Her true passion was Alexander the Great, and it's wonderful how she connects this book and others to the Supreme Leader of all Hellenes, even tangentially.

This book is about Socrates' pupils, and how their debates on virtue, on love, on the best form of government fit for free men become matters of life and death in a dangerous, bloody era. It tells of one of the darkest periods in Athenian history, when enemy Sparta upholds Athenian oligarchs, and these so-called aristocrats turn into base tyrants. Think Reign of Terror but make it Ancient Greece.

Plato, Phaedo, Xenophon, and Alcibiades come alive as complex individuals, flesh and blood and saliva and all too human weaknesses. I only realized just now how difficult it must have been for Plato, born into privilege, when his uncle Critias became the most cruel tyrant of them all. Imagine being torn between your kinsman and your teacher, the father of your soul?

"What keeps the democracy alive at all but the hatred of excellence; the desire of the base to see no head higher than their own?... What is the People, that we should worship it? Shall we worship the beast in man before the god? ... What is the Demos but as a wave of the sea, that changes substance a thousand times between shore and shore?"

As school children we are taught that democracy is a good thing. But as adults we get to see the dark side of giving the masses so much freedom. This is the crux of the book's tragic tale of how a city full of light went dark, and killed one of its sources of enlightenment.

"Someday, they will make one regiment of us, and then we will conquer the world."

The book was also, surprisingly, a fitting read for Pride Month. When we think that Renault wrote this in 1956, it is all the more amazing to see how generously she wrote of what the Greeks themselves considered "the noblest" kind of love, as it spurred heroes of legend and reality into stunning feats of selflessness in battle (Achilles/Patroclus, the Sacred Band of Thebes, etc.).

It is absolutely breathtaking how she wrote a beautiful love story into the novel, and it just so happened that the two lovers were men.

Love of honor. Love of country. Love of freedom. There is so much to love about this lovely book. It is a true child of Renault's, who sets the standard for all historical fiction.

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Book Review: TIME SHELTER by Georgi Gospodinov (trans. by Angela Rodel)

Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"A nation was a group of people who have agreed to jointly remember and forget the same things."

Inconsolable.

That's the perfect one-word summary of this brave book that tried to explain today's mad world.

What if countries could vote not just for political parties or politicians, but also for what time period they want to live in?

Bulgarian author Gospodinov points out: "There was a certain injustice in that -- choosing the time the next generation would live in. As happens in all elections, actually."

It's a very scary thing when what is supposed to be a speculative fiction novel comes across as nonfiction in some parts.

"When you have no future, you vote for the past."

While Gospodinov analyzes Bulgarian history in detail, and expands his lens to include other European countries, the ebb and flow of the cycles of nationalism and the political ideologies of the 20th century have also impacted my country, and his observations ring true for the Philippines as it does to all nations. This had the potential to be a universally moving book.

Unfortunately, it does not provide any easy answers apart from "all things end, might as well find joy now because sooner or later we all suffer a kind of dementia."

As far as Booker Prize winners go, this was certainly unique. I also enjoyed the references to a literary life with books. They help anchor uncertain times in some kind of frame narrative that hopefully provides some meaning. But the romantic in me longed for a more hopeful ending than this book provided.

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Book Review: BUT FOR THE LOVERS by Wilfrido D. Nolledo

But for the Lovers by Wilfrido D. Nolledo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Lei the lovers. Petal all passion. Garlanded thus, the world was tolerable."

Exploding Galaxies' pioneer publication is an under-appreciated masterpiece, by any measure, that sets such a high expectation for their succeeding titles. Where do we sign up to pre-order Book 2?

The multi-sensory pleasure begins when one picks up the book. Exploding Galaxies is a new and local publisher that has somehow printed a book at an affordable price, but surpasses most local books in physical beauty, in every way. The thick paper, the smell of it, the font... they look and feel PREMIUM. And if I didn't know it was published locally I would have thought it was published abroad.

The heft of its some 450 pages was somehow at that perfect weight that feels substantial yet never tired the hands of its reader.

No doubt about it: this is a GORGEOUS tome.

And its insides matched its outside.

This book was a painful pleasure to read, bringing to mind my reaction when I first read Cormac McCarthy's BLOOD MERIDIAN. It was evident from the first page in both books that I was reading the work of a wordsmith, rare writers in the upper 1% of their published brethren who display such a dazzling mastery of the language, capable of telling the most brutal, evil tales clothed in the finest literary raiment prose/poetry can make. Nolledo does so with love, for each sentence is a miniature masterpiece unto itself.

But in the case of Nolledo versus McCarthy, the Filipino's achievement is all the more amazing because this is English-as-a-second-language, English weaponized as a literary middle finger to the oppressor who has decimated not just the most beautiful city in Asia, but also its people.

Let us not forget that it was the Americans who bombed Manila in 1945, causing it to be the second most destroyed city in World War II.

Nolledo writes of the war as only one who has lived through the actual hell can. But he does so with such beauty, and yes, such idealism despite the pages of melancholy. On one level the characters are all symbols, and yet these symbols are given such individuality, such unique voices, that they become real, that we care deeply whether they live or die.

Nolledo cast the Philippines as a beautiful lost girl-child that brings out the best in the men who seek to conquer her soul. The decrepit Spaniard who seeks to ennoble her, the brutish barbarian peasant who becomes human enough to serenade her with his guitar, the Japanese officer who gives her food and protects her day and night, the American POW who falls in love with one look ... all these join a dozen other characters living in a boarding house too close to a military facility, too near Manila Bay for safety.

Nolledo writes intimate details of how folks survived those days... the scenes about sisid rice (soaked in the waters of the bay that children and women nearly drowned to get) that caused manas (swollen body parts) will haunt my imagination for days. The tortures in UST, the private hells that ordinary citizens went through fill the pages.

"One revolution has failed, with more to come, more to fail. Hence the Filipino ... must be judged according to the malleability that informs his failures... But pray, how does one score the spirit?"

This book was written with love, for the ordinary man and woman who experiences love. Nolledo seems to say, forget the idealism, the propaganda behind warfare that makes no sense. The only thing that saves us, that is worth fighting for, is love. The love of a man for a girl he respects and wishes to save, transmuted into love for the Motherland. The burning passion to repopulate, re-educate a starving population, starved for purpose, for the light of civilization.

Is it too trite to say I loved the book? I loved the experience of reading it. I did not expect to enjoy myself that much, what with all the hype heaped on it in the foreword by Gina Apostol and the introduction by Audrey Carpio.

It's a beautiful thing when critics and the ordinary reader can agree: Behold, a masterpiece.

And can we please get Exploding Galaxies' second title out ASAP?

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Book Review: BANAAG AT SIKAT (Radiance and Sunrise) by Lope K Santos (trans.by Danton Remoto)

Banaag at Sikat by Lope K. Santos
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"The time of the great West has passed. Now it is the time for the East to rise from the shadows."

There has been a movement over the past few decades, a call to replace Jose Rizal's NOLI ME TANGERE and EL FILIBUSTERISMO in the school curriculum with this book. When I first heard of this several years ago, I remember promising to myself that, should the time come for an English translation to come out, I'd read it and find out why some folks think this is better than Ibarra and Simoun for our youth to read in class.

Fast forward the first Philippine Book Festival, where I found a copy at the Penguin SEA stall!

I dove into the novel in a comparative frame of mind, and could see a lot of similarities with the Rizal novels.

We have lovers from different social classes, a clash between haves and have-nots, characters who STAND FOR SOMETHING and have unnatural dialogues awkwardly set up as mini-debates about the pros and cons of socialism and the evils of inherited wealth.

In both novels we have the heights of the infamous Malay passion that are obvious predecessors to the melodramatic plots of teleseryes today.

Now the differences.

Rizal's novels served to unite Filipinos in their ire against the foreign oppressor.

Santos' novel, in contrast, seeks to set Filipinos against each other: the laborer versus his boss, the proletariat versus the bourgeois.

This is obviously the work of a very young man (Santos was in his early twenties when he wrote it in 1906). It reeks of dangerous idealism, untried, untested, impractical and impossible to implement.

I'll admit it was an interesting read, but only in the historic sense. This was, after all, only a few years after the death of Rizal. We had just exchanged one foreign oppressor for another. This was written before history had shown that the great experiment of socialism/communism was doomed to fail, before the Russian revolution and Stalin's infamous famine, before Mao's Cultural Revolution.

But in terms of the elements of "good literature," this book falls short and is one of those books that became famous because it was among the first of its kind, and not on the strength of its literary merit.

People fall in love at a glance. If this was meant to be a romance mixed with political propaganda, the lovers' dialogues are trite and nonsensical. One can predict what will happen in the plot chapters away. And the characters are obviously personifications of social classes, they do not change and seem like unrealistic individuals. The supposed hero and heroine's chief virtue seem to be hard headedness and not any other nobility in spirit.

The author is pedantic at times:

"From the way the two sisters dressed that day, the female guests saw how funny and ugly it was to borrow clothes from other lands, and how beautiful it was to wear dresses that belonged to one's own people. They learned that not all that was good in Europe or the United States should be borrowed and imitated by Filipinos. Whether in clothes or character traits, we should only borrow those elements that would not destroy what was beautiful in our own country and race..."

Rizal's novels, therefore, emerge superior not only in literary style, but also because of their characters. True, they are symbols, but Rizal managed to imbue them with a sense of epic majesty that captures the imagination. And his characters change. Ibarra becomes Simoun, and becomes something else towards the end.

In this regard, Banaag at Sikat fails to approach the standard that Rizal set. This teacher would support a movement to include it in the curriculum, but not to replace Noli and Fili completely.

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Book Review: THE HONORARY CONSUL by Graham Greene

The Honorary Consul by Graham Greene
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"In a wrong society, the criminals are honest men."

What would drive a priest away from the Church he fell in love with? What would make him kidnap a political prisoner?

This incredible novel takes place in Paraguay but could easily have happened in my country (the Philippines). So much of it is so familiar: the disparity between Christianity's teachings and the way Christians live out their lives, the material and spiritual poverty, the corruption found in nearly every sector in society.

As a fan of Graham Greene's other Catholic works, I found a lot of familiar themes and characters, but with a twist at the end that moved me deeply. Greene's genius is showing how Christ-like even the most fallen men are, when they transcend their sinful selves and show glimpses of the divine in all of us when put to the ultimate test. We have the ex-priest turned kidnapper-for-a-cause, the adulterous doctor-to-the-barrio, the lonely foreigner who marries a prostitute in order to save her, and a woman-child who falls in love with a handsome man who is not her husband.

Listing down the characters might give one the impression that this is a most tawdry tale, but you'd be wrong. This is Graham Greene, after all, and in his consummate writerly grace he sprinkles the darkest corners of our souls with redeeming Grace.

At the heart of the novel, Greene tries to explain the most terrible theological question of our age: how can God and Evil co-exist?

I found Greene's attempt at an answer most insightful: "The evolution of God depends on our evolution. Every evil act of ours strengthens His night-side, and every good one helps his day-side."

Greene was fully aware of how theologically contentious his idea was.

"All this is not in the catechism, is it?"
"No... but the catechism is not the faith... The Church is the world. The Church is this barrio, this room."

Greene wrote many other powerful novels, some of which I'm not ashamed to reveal have made me cry because they touched me so. But he considered this one his favorite because the characters start out bad and towards the end become worthy of Christ dying for them. And all done in a realistic, and unsentimental or romantic way.

The raves about Greene are truly justified. Get each one that you can, they're the type of books that make its readers better men. Wiser. Humbler. And yes... more good.

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Book Review: JOAN by Katherine Chen

Joan by Katherine J. Chen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"So stand up straight, boy, do not slouch or hang your head, and be glad of what you have, though it may be little. Be glad the earth you till is the same earth turned by the warhorses of the great French knights, for the ground you stand on, the very air you breathe is different because of what came before."

So what kind of book had me staying up late, weeping past midnight on possibly the most stressful week of the school year?

This incredibly life-giving, feminist re-telling of the life of a teenager who did so much in her short time on earth.

This historical fiction book is perhaps the best narrative of Joan of Arc out there, for it focuses on the historical Joan, the female warrior who, at seventeen, led her countrymen accustomed to loss into miraculous wins, to the point that the English were fleeing villages at the mere sight of her in front of her army. Refreshingly, it did not focus on the religious saint.

In fact, in this novel, Joan doesn't receive heavenly visions and visitations.

The irony of it is, this secular approach did not detract from the miraculous nature of her achievements. All the more, Joan stands out as the Incomparable. No one else can stand beside her. Not even other saints.

Author K.Chen herself wrote: "Faith makes us strong, but we cannot ascribe everything to faith, at the expense of human works. We must remember that God shows Himself in the world in many forms, and among these is genius, though the manifestation of genius is always in the concrete: in music, in art, in literature, in the sciences, and, in Joan’s case, in war. This was my interpretation of her life."

This is not to say that there is no mention of faith in the book. What is inside is faith of a different sort: how others place their faith in a heroine, and how that heroine, in turn, has faith in her capabilities, in the God who lent these graces to her.

And her vision? Not heavenly hosts, but a vision of a France that is free of English hands.

"“I believe God crafted the sound of a woman’s scream,” she says, “to pierce the heart and to test our humanity, whether we still have it or whether we have left it behind. “But there are men for whom a woman’s scream is as a fist that bounces off armor. I have thought to myself, What choices does a woman have for vengeance, for justice? For we cannot simply pray. I can’t stomach my mother’s prayers. We cannot afford to wait and be still. I won’t live this way—not anymore. So when I spoke to God that morning, I decided, if I am to scream, let it be in battle. There is no chance for peace except at the point of a sword.”

I suppose what moved me deeply was the description of Joan's journey from peasant seeking vengeance to being raised so high as to become a threat to the actual ruler of France. When she transformed her desire for revenge into a nobler cause. When she found a purpose for which to live and die, when that purpose was revealed to be Nation and Countrymen over King.

"What would I gain by being a man? ... I would not become stronger. I am already strong.”

Despite its very realistic storytelling, the book seemed to me to be very "catholic," in its emphasis on both prayer and human works, its universal truths on the virtues of loving one's nation above one's self.

Joan was a force unto herself, she threatened the social order with her martial grace and femininity. And she paid the ultimate price for it. And yet, though the worst befell her, she was never truly defeated.

This was one of the best books I've ever been blessed to read. Joan will stay with me for a lifetime!




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