Mawrdew Czgowchwz - James McCourt

Fiction; ISBN 0-940-322-97-8; New York Review Books, 1971.

This is a story of an opera diva, impossibly named Mawrdew Czgowchwz (that's 'Mardu Gorgeous' to you) - her debut, rise, semi-fall, comeback, and then finally happy ending. I'd like to say more, but that's all there is to the story.

This is my first NYRB book. Considering that many of my book club friends love NYRB, I hope I won't disappoint them too much if I said that I didn't like it.

Not that isn't not engaging. It is. The cast of characters is also quite lively. And there's the farce too: all those catty and humorous things James McCourt wanted to to say about high society, artsy snobbery and fanaticism, and what-have-you.

It's just that the book is too much: of words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and even interjections), of linguistic tricks (yesiree, this is witty, with a capital W), of characters (too many and each too colorful, like a cramped zoo cage full of peacocks).

Let me pick this quote:

"The libretto told (in details as intimate as the knowledge flesh succeeds in gaining of flesh, in metamorphic cunning transparent as windows, in plotted dramatic incident obvious as mirrors, in a denouement as inverted as words beyond mirrors) of the capitulation of twin brother and sister through a whirlwind into salvific madness, of their headlong retreat from this world of causes and effects into that silent, mute, subworld paradise where all affect is abandoned."

Is it really necessary to tax the readers' patience? Do you need to make the readers work hard when all you really want to say is this: 'the libretto is about a twin's descent to madness'?

So anyway, during the course of reading this book, a half-formed suspicion germinated in my mind regarding NYRB's choice of so-called 'classics'. I'd like to be proven wrong, of course; that would mean I need to read at least one or two NYRB books again. Uh huh, my enthusiasm is killing me. -_-

So to those who had read other NYRB books, any suggestion on which ones to get next?

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This blog post is not about books. It mostly contain boring pictures of an empty house. You've been warned.

Last year, I moved out of the city and bought a house in the countryside.

To say that everyone was surprised is a big understatement. You see, I'm a city girl through and through. I know Metro Manila almost like the back of my hand. I never had a province to go to during the summer break. I know how to cross a street filled with vehicles by the time I was seven. By the time I was in elementary, I sometimes go to school without adult supervision via public transportation. And my school was in Tondo, Manila two and a half miles from my home in Valenzuela, near Bulacan.

So anyway, I had always dreamed of having a place of my own, at least someplace to stash all my stuff away. The story of how I got this new house can fill out two or three long blog post, and would probably bore you to tears (actually even *this* post is probably going to bore you tears). I'm just going to show what the place looked like when I first moved in.

The stairs and my uber-mini kitchen from the living room. And since the kitchen is small, I'm going to do my actual cooking in the dirty kitchen at the back of the house:

I have two toilets: one for myself and one for my cat. How cool is that? :)

The partial view of the living room from the top of the stairs.

Second floor: On the left is the room I'm using now as the main (i.e. my) bedroom. On the right is a small room that's supposed to be a guest room but I won't since it's embarrassingly tiny. I'm currently using it as a storage room. In between these two room is the stairs to the attic.

The attic. Which I've now filled with books in their nice new bookshelves. After I solve the problem of making this space less stifling hot during the afternoons, I intend to stay here for the rest of my spinsterish life. Yeah, maybe I'm serious. Or maybe I'm not. Who knows?

The exteriors. This is actually a duplex (if only I have enough funds to take over the other half!). Taken from the space that's supposed to be the garage. It will be filled with a brand new car, hopefully soon.

I dedicate this blog post to Blooey who said I should write something about my new home, sort of like a blog of the (mis)adventures of a "city girl moving to the countryside setting up a house of her own". Oh come on, I'm not anything like Max Skinner (the protagonist of Peter Mayle's A Good Year - I suggest reading the book to know the connection). And I think it's too early to say that the province of Rizal is going to be my personal Provence.

What do you guys think?

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Street-Bound: Manila on Foot - Josefina P. Manahan

Non-Fiction, Travel; ISBN 971-27-1135-9; Anvil Publishing, 2001.

(Thank you to Anvil Publishing for my complimentary copy. Thank you to Honeylein de Peralta for coordinating this. :))

(Disclaimer: In this review, I’m going to use the word ‘walk’ in every way possible, in the acceptable form as noun and verb, but also as adjective and adverb. Microsoft Word tells me that it’s grammatically wrong. So sue me.)

In Street-Bound: Manila on Foot, Mrs. Josefina Manahan asserts that Metro Manila is a walkable metropolis. Yes, despite the dust, noise, heat, speeding vehicles, and carbon monoxide poisoning. And indeed, up to a certain point, I agree with her. So lower your eyebrows for a moment, please.

Like Mrs. Manahan, I do walking tours within Metro Manila too: sometimes with friends, and sometimes alone. But many of these are haphazard travels (especially the ones I do by myself), often without plans and often requiring asking for directions. This in particular is why I find Street-Bound pretty useful. She organized the walks in such a way that next time I can go from one spot to the next in a more systematic manner.

But there are also tours in Mrs. Manahan’s book that I haven’t done, mostly because I didn’t have the time, but also because I wasn’t aware of the potential walkability of the place. For every tour entry, she neatly arranged the information into the following: type of tour, duration, sights, what to wear, background, how to get there, the different sights, and the map of the place. There’s also one or two delightful pictures of what one might expect to see in that tour (the maps and pictures were illustrated wonderfully by one Ms. Joanne de Leon – kudos!).

The best walking tour entry in the book (for me anyway) is the Rizal Park walking tour(s). Mrs. Manahan realized that one cannot see everything in just one day so she thoughtfully divided the sights in two tours: the first one is touring the park itself, starting at the Halamanang Pilipino and Philippine relief map from Taft Avenue, all the way to the Quirino Grandstand, to see the famous Manila Bay sunset; the second one is touring the museums dotting the park, from the National Library up to the Museo ng Maynila near Roxas Boulevard. The first one I did a lot with my family when I was a kid; the second one, I’m chagrined to admit, I haven’t done yet but I’m promising to do this year.

(My friends Edrose & Joseph, looking lost in Plaza Miranda, Quiapo when
we did a Quiapo-Binondo walking tour last year.)

Sadly, Street-Bound badly needs to be updated because I believe that some of the tours have become slightly irrelevant. Partly because a lot of tourist spots have deteriorated, disappeared, or changed completely in the past nine years since the book was published (take for example, Greenbelt Park which is barely a park anymore). Some, I think, are a bit redundant; there are new and even old /tours that are better representative of that type (for example, I think Divisoria is a better market tour place than Kamuning Market). Some tours I also believe that would be better grouped together into a single tour – for example, the tours around the Quezon Memorial Circle would have been better done in one go.

So anyway, even if it’s outdated, the book is still pretty handy if you’re going to do walking tours in Metro Manila, just be prepared to be a bit disappointed. It’s probably going to be awesome if they brought it up to date, as well as add more tours. I suggest adding the CCP complex, Chinese Cemetery, Ayala Triangle, Divisoria, and La Mesa Ecopark. Plus, Rizal Park is currently undergoing renovations; better to update the Rizal Park entry in parallel with that. I do urge Anvil to do it soon, as Filipinos, especially the younger generation, are becoming more conscious and appreciative of our glorious but slowly vanishing heritage.

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Letras y Figuras: Business in Culture, Culture in Business – Jaime C. Laya

Non-Fiction, Culture, History, Slice-of-Life, Filipiniana; ISBN 971-27-1143-9; Anvil Publishing, 2001.

(Thank you to Anvil Publishing for my complimentary copy. Thank you to Honeylein de Peralta for coordinating this. :))

“Ordinary people live through all these grand events, against the broad sweep of history. Their names do not appear in history books, but theirs was the labor (and much of the money) that built churches and convents, roads and public works… With all of these, one can say that a town’s history can be viewed through the eyes of its residents who were players in the events of the past.”

There is not one genre to firmly categorize Jaime Laya’s compilation of essays, Letras y Figuras, except perhaps under that rather too-encompassing word, Filipiniana. While he had roughly organized his articles in six chapters (Times & Places; Rituals & Celebrations; Past & Present; Artists & Craftsmen; Possessions; and People, Words & Numbers), the essays’ topics are very diverse. Many are about history, but there are also some about culture, about places, about people – let’s just say about everything that is Filipino. But some are also autobiographical; there are vignettes about the author’s life, his work, his hobbies, and even his ideas. It’s hard to believe that these multi-faceted pieces were written by a cut-and-dried accountant and businessman (although a very successful one) and, if one believes the blurb, a hobbist that only dabbles on the culture and arts in his spare time.

Although I ought not to, it is difficult to resist comparing his historical essays with my other favorite historian, Ambeth Ocampo. While Ambeth Ocampo writes history with the gossipy pizzazz of a teacher (which he is) that deftly knows how to grab today’s attention-deficient generation away from their cellphones, iPods and laptops, Jaime Laya writes history like a grandfather (the look-at-my-mole grandpa from a Bear Brand commercial in the 80s comes into my mind) who feigns exasperation and finally sits down to weave the stories of a younger, cleaner Philippines to his delighted grandchildren. This translates into the most entertaining and assorted Filipiniana trivia and miscellany I’ve ever read outside of an Ambeth Ocampo book. My favorite one is an entry about how people relieve themselves during the Spanish times and up to the turn of the century - apparently ladies, did the deed, when necessary and hidden under their saya (and need I say, free from any frilly impediments too?), standing up. Gross and tacky, yes, but it’s not something that Agoncillo or Zaide would insert in their texts, so I like it.

The heroes of Mr. Laya’s essays are the ones taken for granted: the common folk unwritten in books, the places and locations now ignored and suffocating in pollution and urban blight, the ordinary people’s rituals, traditions and heritages that are now slowly vanishing. The pieces almost lack the usual dramatis personae – Rizal, Bonifacio, Aguinaldo – except via passing mentions. Mr. Laya did feature known historical art personalities such as Luna, Hidalgo, Amorsolo, as well as a few lesser known artists such as Damian Domingo and Ang Kuikok. It is as expected, considering his work in various cultural, artistic and historical organizations, museums and collections. The pieces about bahay na bato and other traditional houses were delightful, and were begging to be read while touring that new historical resort in Bagac, Bataan (Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar is the name, according to Google).

(Image: Malacanang of the North, Paoay, Ilocos Norte)

Indeed, the initial impression I’ve got reading the first chapter is that of a travelogue. His footnotes in his Intramuros and Malacañang essays inform us that these are abridged versions of lengthier guidebooks (of which I’m now hunting). The book is best read while traveling - I imagine myself consulting the essay in Malacañang, while walking from door to door of that palace (barring rooms unauthorized to the public, of course).

Perhaps Anvil can release two further editions of the book? The first one is an illustrated version, in full color, perhaps into one of those pricey coffee-table books (I’ll probably see it in a bookstore and then sigh in yearning). But the version I’ll appreciate more is of a pocketbook size, as I had decided to include in my new year resolution making time to (re)visit and (re)experience those places and celebrations mentioned in his articles.

His personal essays were the most lyrical. While the piece about his childhood home in Sta. Cruz was very vivid, my favorite is a short one about his wife, titled “A Valentine Story”, as this woke the romantic in me:

“The wind was in her hair, he remembers, as he pointed to the city, the bay and the ocean far below a high ridge. In the flood of his memories are a swan on a quiet pond, a balustraded terrace on a misty hillside, a meadow at dusk moments after a festival of fairies, startled, had fled, scattering millions of little white flowers in their haste. Later, in the chill of the evening, he could not tell where the city lights ended and the stars began.”

Needless to say, I highly recommend you read this book. It is my best book for 2010.

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