STRANGER THAN FICTION

By Chuck Paluhniuk

233 pages

Published by Double Day

THE journalist is a writer in a hurry, always pounding on the keys to beat the deadline. The journalist writes objectively, detached from his or her piece, and restricted by the banal who-what-when-where formula.

The “writer writer,” as Chuck Palunhniuk calls it, is someone who writes leisurely and more creatively. The writer writer uses his own style as the formula.

The difference between the journalist writer and the writer writer reflects the difference between regular hardcore news that is purely informative, and an article that creates vivid imagery and literary pleasure offered by fiction.

Palunhniuk’s “Stranger Than Fiction” happily combines hard facts and pleasure reading.

“Stranger Than Fiction” is a collection of nonfiction materials that read like fiction. It contains 23 essays and journalistic pieces written in a delicious prose so delightful to read. His sentences have rhythm and crisp that uniquely characterizes his fictional works such as “Fight Club,” “Choke” and “Diary.”

“Stranger Than Fiction” is about real events and real people, whose characters Palunhnuik vividly portrays with full dimension and in a manner that will not leave you indifferent to the person being portrayed. 

His report about the demolition in a Washington town called Lind gives complete keen details about what members of the demolition team is wearing, how they came to town and what the place is like.

The segment about a college wrestling in Waterloo, Iowa reads exactly how he describes the piece: “What happens on this page isn’t wrestling, it’s writing,” he writes. “At best, this is a postcard from a hot, dry weekend in Waterloo, Iowa. Where meat fines from.”

Other essays include the wild sex festival in Missuola, Montana, the murder of Paluhniuk’s father and the trial of the killer, his encounters with clairvoyants, the side story of  “Fight Club” before it was made into a movie starring Edward Norton and Brad Pitt, and stories that he collected from therapy groups and hospitals.

The book’s conversational tone will make you want to keep on “listening” and get you interested in the otherwise mundane details of events that are otherwise tritely reported in the newspaper.

            Palunhnuik adds a new character to the American literary scene. 

SELLEVISION: A NOVEL

Publisher: Picador

Fiction

240 Pages

WHEN you’re browsing in a bookstore and stumble onto a book with an opening line that reads “You exposed your penis on national television, Max,” you immediately become a captive audience. Oh, well, at least I did.

            Augusten Burroughs’s “Sellevision” is not a porn book. When I read the intriguing opening line, I knew I got in on something twisted. It sparked curiosity as to why a guy named “Max” would expose his thing on national television.

            But Max Andrews, a gorgeous host for  “America’s premier retail broadcasting network” called “Sellevision,” says he didn’t really expose it. “It just sort of peeked out,” he says.

            And that’s how the story begins.

            “Sellevision” is a spoof of cable’s home-shopping mania, poking fun on semi-celebrities, who host television retail programs.

            The broadcasting network is composed of hosts, whose on-camera mishaps and scandalous affairs become staple for tabloids and TV talk-shows.

            Max Andrews has been fired for accidentally exposing himself during a children’s special, in which the hosts are required to wear bathrobes. After losing his TV job, Max spends the rest of his time auditioning for other TV and radio jobs if not loitering around the bookshop, where he thinks he could catch a smart guy to date.  But he finds no luck with either job-seeking and boyfriend-hunting missions. He ends up becoming a porn star, thus baring himself with a vengeance.

Another host, the prim and perky Peggy Jean Smythe, gets creepy e-mails from a mysterious fan Zoe, who comments on Peggy’s hairy earlobes, gruff voice, growing mustache, clumpy mascara. The spiteful letters from the e-mail stalker sends Peggy over the edge into Valium addiction and heavy drinking, and eventually to the mental institution. Peggy eventually loses her hosting job and becomes a born-again fanatic and author of a book that talks about how “Peggy Jean and Jesus” will save the souls of the humanity.

There’s also Trish Mission, the newcomer who tries to flirt her way to move her career upward. Then there’s Leigh Bushmore, the executive producer Howard Toast’s naive mistress, who waits forever for him to divorce his wife. A book titled “Women Who Love Bastards” is her bible.

And there’s Adela, who gets herself engrossed with the American Indian culture, thinking all along that she has native American blood, only to get devastated later when her mother reveals that she totally has no American Indian connection.

            In his best-selling memoir “Running With Scissors,” Burroughs is hilarious and lunatic. In “Sellevision,” he is hysterical and sarcastic. And like “Running With Scissors,” “Sellevision” will give you a wild ride.

BLINK

The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

By Malcolm Gladwell

265 pages

Published Little Brown and Company

AS the subtitle suggests, “Blink” is a book about thinking without thinking—and sometimes, over thinking.  Malcolm Gladwell presents several examples of how people make snap decisions—in the blink of an eye.

He tries to bring readers to focus on what he calls “thin-slices” of human behavior that can influence our instant judgments and decisions.

The book explores, among others, marketing experiments, selling cars and products, results of political elections, the consumers’ responses to certain products.

“Blink” can be fascinating to read because it presents various circumstances that the readers can relate to, such as our discovery of our own intuitive power or our cluelessness. But its contradictions can be confusing.

            The book begins with the theory that one’s gut is powerful, as simplified by the discovery of a fake marble piece at J. Getty Museum in California. The museum bought a marbles statue supposedly dating from the sixth century B.C. An art curator later saw the statue and “felt” that “something was not right” about the sculpture but she could not figure out what. 

The art curator’s  “gut feeling” turned out to be accurate. The marble did not come from the old centuries. It was freshly made.  How Getty Museum failed to figure that out could not be established. And how the art curator figured out that there was something odd about the piece had no explanation either. Just gut feeling. In this chapter, Gladwell suggested that a snap judgment can be powerful and accurate.

The succeeding chapters, however, were filled with examples of actual events and circumstances that totally contradict the main premise about the power of intuition.

The provocative chapter about the 1999 tragic stakeout and murder of Amadou Diallo in the Bronx, for example, depicts how a snap judgment can be wrong and dangerous. The New York cops had the “gut feeling” that Diallo was a bad guy, a dangerous rouge out to create trouble. They shot him to death, as a result of misreading his behavior. Investigation later established that Diallo just happened to be hanging out on Wheeler Avenue for fresh air. Being a newcomer in town, he was “curious, cautious and terrified.” But the cops misread his behavior as being “suspicious, brazen and dangerous.”

The tragic incident, Gladwell, says “is a powerful example of how mind reading works—and how it sometimes goes terribly awry.”

Other chapters include a presentation of how marketers can manipulate our first impressions, and why we vote for certain political candidates.

He explains the story behind the Pepsi Challenge and why New Coke seemed like a good idea at the time yet failed miserably. He recounts America’s selection of Warren Harding for the presidency based on his good looks. People thought Harding “got what it takes to be president.” He served two terms and went down in history as the worst U.S. president.

What Gladwell missed in explaining the consumers’ and voters’ response to certain products or political candidates is the manipulative power of PR works and the media.

“Blink” is definitely not a scientific book. Gladwell looks into to the advantage and disadvantages of making decisions in the “blink of an eye.”

To some degree the book will inspire you to rethink your whole way of thinking. However, Gladwell never really comes out with a systematic method for training yourself to think differently.

If they are making another OFW movie, this time based on the story of my OFW life on Guam, the film can start with this scene: Claudine Barretto wakes up in her car in the parking lot of Tumon, the nightlife district of Guam. She looks at her watch. It’s 6 a.m. “Gosh, what the hell am I doing here? Dito ako natulog?” she asks herself, rhetorically.
Claudine is playing me in the movie on my mind.
That morning I paused to remember what happened the night before. I had had too much to drink—beers and three tequilla shots. My friends offered to give me a ride home but I assured them that I could drive and insisted that they let me drive myself home, two villages away. So they all left. Guam is a safe place, anyway. It’s not like they kill drunks in the parking lot at random. I turned out to be too wasted to even manage to put the key into the ignition.
The morning after, I looked around. My car was the only one left in the parking lot, which was jam-packed the night before. The party’s over and everybody had gone home– “home” where their families were waiting. Which I don’t have here.
I turned on the radio. “I’ll be home for Christmas,” was playing. If that was a joke, it wasn’t funny.
I got depressed all day after that morning.
Stop before you pass judgment on what might seem to be an irresponsible decision to sack out in my car in a public parking lot.
I hate to be so dramatic but that drunken episode highlighted my loneliness and feeling of insignificance. I drank the night away, knowing that no one was waiting for me at my empty house. No one needed my attention. No one to cook dinner for. No one to ask me for school allowance. No one to remind me about tomorrow’s PTA meeting. No one to watch TV with. No one other than my own dirty laundry.
Coming home to an empty nest means coming home to emptiness. Dating is not even an option that excites me.
You probably have no idea what it’s like to be an economic exile. But if you’re a mother, who have experienced being many miles away from your children, you’d know what I am talking about.
I’ve been on Guam working for two years, writing for Marianas Variety, a local paper that circulates in Micronesia. This is the second time that I’ve been away from home. The first time, I was away to work for a Saipan newspaper for three years. My older son Nakni was five and my second son Ico was three when I first left. I was robbed of three of motherhood. When I came back I made up for the irretrievable time lost, vowing not to leave them ever again.
But, as they say, times are hard. Being a single mother receiving no child support, the new opportunity to earn dollars was difficult for me to pass up.
“You’re leaving them for money?” one of my best friends asked in an accusatory tone.
I was hurt, especially since the accusation came from somebody who lives in a house where money seems to stream from the faucet.
What can I say? Some people are just luckier than the others.

THE last time I saw my children was during my annual vacation last September. Nakni is now 14, and Ico is 12. I have just been robbed of two more years of their lives. My whole month of stay with them was priceless, especially after realizing that despite my physical absence—and with the help of my mother–I have been able to raise two fine young gentlemen. I must admit that despite the deep regrets, seeing what have become of them has lessened my guilt, and I guess, vindicated my decision.
The end of my vacation was most painful. I could not even turn by head to look back when I boarded the cab on the way to the airport.
On the plane, I took out the photographs to recapture my vacation when even an otherwise mundane activity such as picking them up from the school was a Kodak moment.
Hours later, I’m back in my empty nest, the mothering routine suddenly disrupted again. This is one of those strange times when I actually long to do what I normally detest, such as attending PTA meetings. I miss my son begging me to please come to the meeting in a “normal outfit.” “Huwag kang mahikaw ng malaki at huwag kang magsuot ng damit na weird.”
I find solace in the fact that we are just a three-hour flight apart. And thank God for technology, a 40-cent text message on mobile phones, the Yahoo messenger and a single click on the “send “command can shorten the distance. My budget includes long-distance phone cards. I invested in a webcam so I could watch how they grow.
If a businessman can do business transactions online and doctors can treat patients via Internet, then I guess cyber-mothering is one option available for me.
“Anong kinain nyo for lunch?”
“Masarap, kaldereta. Ikaw, mommy, anong kinain mo?”
“McDonalds lang. Nagawa mo na ang assignment mo?”
“Yung math di ko pa tapos.”
“O, tapusin bago matulog ha.”
“Mommy pwede mo bang dagdagn yung baon ko?
“Depende kung mataas ang grades mo.”
I signed up with Friendster, of which Nakni is a member. That way, I could see what kind of friends he is hanging out with.
I know that telephone and Internet mothering is not the same as mothering in real time, but it’s sort of filling up the vacuum and I am pleased that it’s working.
In my most recent online chat with him, the last message that Nakni wrote read: “O, wag mag-da-drive kapag naka-inom ka ha, he-he J.”
It was embarrassing to hear that from my own son. Well, he knows that his mom is a hippie. I laughed. Tears rolled down my cheeks. Then I remembered: 1,500 ocean miles away, I have a home where two wonderful children are always patiently waiting.
###

The Book Worm

By Mar-Vic Cagurangan

Some tales are better left untold

Living to Tell The Tale

By Gabriel Garcia Marquez

533 pages

Published by Vintage International

IN the literary world, the Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a god. For a Garcia Marquez fanatic like me, criticizing any of his works is almost blasphemy and leaving his book unfinished is sacrilege—of which I am now guilty.  Garcia Marquez’s  Living To Tell the Tale is a 533-page book. I made it only up to page 271.

Living To Tell the Tale is the first volume of his autobiography, in which he describes the circumstances surrounding his childhood and his occasional encounters with ghosts that apparently gave birth to magical realism in his novels.

He looks back to his indolent teen years. He was then an anti-education and sloppily-clad bum. He describes members of his family, who inspired the many bizarre characters in his novels.

The book revisits his old hometown in Aracataca, the basis of his fictional Macondo. Garcia Marquez recounts several episodes in his relatives’ and neighbors’ lives that have produced the seed for many of his great works. The love story of his parents produced Love in the Time of Cholera; the scandalous lampoons posted on the walls in the village later became In Evil Hour; and his grandparents failure to receive their veterans’ retirement pensions produced No Writes to the Colonel.

He recalls his foray into the writing world, acknowledging the people who brought him in. I have no idea how the whole story ends.

Not finishing a Garcia Marquez book all the way to the last page gives me—otherwise a die-hard fan—a sense of guilt.

So why did I not finish the book? Because it is spelled “disappointment.”

The work is almost bereft of the Marquezesque touch that his readers always look forward to: the magic interwoven into realism with a deadpan sense of presentation. 

The first few chapters are promising. But the succeeding chapters, which have become tedious to read, fail to sustain the otherwise enchanting buildup.

Norman Mailer once remarked that García Márquez is “the only great writer who can handle forty or fifty characters and three or four decades.”

But in this autobiography, García Márquez failed to manage a huge crowd. The number of chapters devoted to the social events with his mentors is more than what one can handle. The enumeration of his friends is quite long and some of the names are forgettable. You’d get a feeling that he wrote these chapters to show gratitude to those who had helped him get his start.  The result is disastrous. It slowed down the pace of the book and the characters are vaguely built.

The poetry and ghostly imagery, which Garcia Marquez is famous for, only come occasionally in Living To Tell the Tale. But, of course, this is autobiography, with factual events, and not one of his fiction works, where possibilities are endless and things that are impossible are possible.

Living To Tell the Tale tells all, offering too much information that demystify Marquez’s inspirations for his great novels and novelettes. Unfortunately, it spoils the spell of magic. Some tales are better left untold.

Living To Tell the Tale is a testament that a great writer should not write an autobiography.

I guess Living To Tell the Tale wouldn’t have been really bad if one doesn’t have any expectations.  García Márquez wrote overwhelming oeuvres that have become the point of reference and comparison for each of his subsequent work.

Although his autobiography may not be on a par with his earlier works, Garcia Marquez remains on the Parthenon of my literary gods. He wrote two of the most remarkable novels–One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time Of Cholera—that should be read by the entire human race.

##

THE BOOKWORM

By Mar-Vic Cagurangan

‘Chick books’ that are chic

IF there’s such a thing as “chick flicks,” there’s also a thing that I would call “chick books.” And when I say “chick books,” I definitely don’t refer to angry feminist authors like Naomi Wolf (The Beauty Myth), who hates the male   population; or feminist apologists like Susan Faludi (Backlash), who believes that feminism is still very chic.

Nope, none of them. I’m referring to books by women who talk about women without having to hate men. On   top of my favorite books that fall in this category are Bitch by Elizabeth Wurtzel, When The Messenger Is Hot by Elizabeth Crane, and  Kiss My Tiara by Susan Jane Gilman. These are harmless works. They’re merely for enjoyment and laughs and not a catalyst for further debate on women.   

In Bitch, Wurtzel praises “difficult” women — the “bad” and the “mad” ones who live full lives, as opposed to the boring nice girls personifying the love martyrs and dutiful housewives in prime time soap operas.

  Bitch is like a catalog of the mythically complicated women in history. Her take on the biblical tale of Samson and Delilah particularly offers an explanation for our reaction to the alluringly repulsive femme fatale.

Her analysis of Sylvia Plath would make a depressed woman think that being mad is part of being creative. They say that behind every man’s success is a woman, Wurtzel says that behind every creative woman is madness.

She also reviews the idiosyncrasies of Amy Fisher, Nicole Brown, Hillary Clinton, Madonna, Marilyn Monroe, and Princess Diana among others. She forgot Imelda Marcos though.

But I have to warn you that Bitch is a thick book that can be a drag occasionally, but every now and then, she introduces a startling insight about how women manipulate situations to control their lives. Just the same, she makes an admission of what most single women would deny. Dismissing the happily single, she writes that “it would be easier to eliminate racism or end poverty or cure illiteracy or dethrone Fidel Castro than it would to make girls stop wanting to be brides.”

Crane’s When The Messenger Is Hot, is a collection of funny short stories—most of which are about smart women with a series of failed dates.

After reading the stories, you’d ask: “Why do women of culture and intelligence always fail in finding the right men?” And the smart women would realize that they always end up with men dull in mind and poor in spirit.  Most women-writers come up with books complaining about this pathetic reality. But unlike most books of the same genre, When The Messenger Is Hot will leave you laughing.

Women who go through the same experiences (as in Crane’s characters), can look back, laugh and say “My love life is an award winning sitcom” like Sex and the City. Dating can always give girls something entertaining to tell their friends when they meet for coffee. For writers, real-life dating can offer good comedic material. This is fun read.

Gilman’s Kiss My Tiara is a collection of feminist essays, but I promise that they are fun to read. It’s not an angry book. It’s more of a satire on women.

Minus Gilman’s attempt to deconstruct the English language by substituting regular words with her "gender sensitive" blah-blah, Kiss My Tiara is a winner. It could serve as a bible for women who want to understand themselves, men, and relationship.

The combined wits and wisdom of Gilman and her very cool granny could help unhappy women appreciate themselves. If you are bothered by your annoying relatives, just imagine them as sitcom characters and everything will be alright.

Call me “Flip”

By Mar-Vic Cagurangan

HAGATNA—“Call it retirement community or nursing home,” a friend corrected me when I mentioned something about “home for the aged.”

     “All my life, I’ve known it as home for the aged,” I told him.

         

“But you must be politically correct,” he added.

Oh, that’s right. Calling a manamko center “nursing home” or  “retirement’ community” would reduce one’s age. I should call it that then.

     Days before that, another person corrected me when I mentioned “janitorial services.”

     “Say custodial services; that sounds better. And nowadays, they are called floor managers, not janitors,” he said.

     Which makes me wonder if  a) they get paid higher now that they have a fancy title; and b) their names come after the names of the general manager and personnel manager in the order of corporate hierarchy.

     In another occasion, I was described as racist for calling Oprah  “a black woman.” Well, I thought she was black. And what’s wrong with black? I see absolutely nothing wrong with that. I see elegance in that color. I would call Michael Jackson a white man, because he is.

Call me a brown woman. I don’t have any problem with that. Only whitening lotion, which I never use anyway, would change my skin color. You may call me “midget” and I won’t take offense. Calling me “height challenged” would not give me extra inches, would it? You may even call me “Flip.” I guess I am.

Every now and then, I get persecuted by the Language Police. This “political correct” movement has been around for over two decades but I have barely gotten used to it. I don’t understand why saying the words that we have been introduced to since we started uttering our first word is now considered heresy. I don’t understand the need to deconstruct and reconstruct the English language if it’s not going to change reality.

Back home, Filipino workers who work abroad used to be known as OCW (overseas contract workers.) Then came the administration of Cory Aquino, who gave OCW a synonym: “modern-day heroes.” Which was the most ridiculous thing to say because prodigal Filipinos leave the country for the least patriotic reason.

OCW was later changed to OFW (overseas Filipino workers). Former President Fidel Ramos attempted to further change it to OFI (overseas foreign investors). Overseas what? Give us a break. “OFI” didn’t catch on because even the most gullible detected the anomaly in that.

The Philippine government wouldn’t have to go through the hassle of making up silly acronyms if it was capable of generating jobs for Filipino workers at home.

A Filipino maid in the Middle East is a maid. A blind person is blind. A homosexual is homosexual. And I’m not even embarrassed to employ clichés. A spade is a spade.

This mob tyranny called political correctness only makes people feel bad about what they are. It’s a slogan that attempts to institutionalize irrational fears as “truth” through the use of presumptuous words.

I’m afraid that this cult that spreads what Charles Heston aptly calls “epidemic of new McCarthyism will later give rise to Orwell’s Thought Police. Telling us what to think and what to do can’t be far behind.

A few years ago, David Howard, the head of Washington DC Office of Public Advocate, was fired and told to make a public apology after saying the word “niggardly” while discussing budgetary matters with colleagues. Howard was fired because that office employed some morons who a) didn’t know the meaning of the word; b) didn’t know how to use the dictionary to discover that “niggardly” means stingy or scanty; and c) actually demanded that he apologize for their ignorance.

A moron is a moron. No amount of political correctness would contribute to one’s IQ.

I believe in plain speaking.  I believe in expressing unfettered thoughts.  Unless plain speaking is allowed, clear thinking is denied.  I may be on the Language Police’s order of battle, but I will not plead and say “Don’t shoot me.”

By Mar-Vic Cagurangan

HAGÅTÑA — It was an e-mail that I knew I would receive one day and always dreaded to read: “Papa is gone.” The message didn’t need any elaboration, other than a post-script apology that read: “We tried to call you but we couldn’t get a hold of you.”

“He died three hours ago,” my mother said when I returned the call.

She calmly said that my father had his breakfast that morning, went back to sleep and decided to sleep forever.

Before his death, I was scheduled to fly home in a week to surprise him. He missed my surprise by six days and 21 hours. Or was I too late to witness his appointment with eternity that he himself had set?

My father, Jose Cagurangan, was a very organized man (which was probably the only thing that I didn’t get from him). He had a schedule for everything. During his last stay at the hospital a couple of months ago, he snapped at the doctor who asked him if he wanted to see a priest. “Why? Am I dying? I am not dying yet. I will decide when to die.”

He did.

I rushed to re-book my flight the very next day. Who wants this kind of homecoming?
But when I looked into the coffin, I saw that familiar face — so serene, so relieved — finally free of pain. I could tell he had forgiven God. I whispered: “I don’t want to see you agonize again, so please don’t wake up.”

My father fought a long battle with emphysema, which he had acquired from smoking for I don’t know how many decades. The habit started when he was a teenager, working on his parents’ tobacco farm in the northern part of the Philippines.

During the last two years, he was living on the cusp between life and death, painfully watching his once dynamic life fading away, while at the same time hanging on to what strength remained to keep breathing — to just keep breathing for as long as he could. He was once a haughty presence that had been reduced to a shrunken figure, humbly borrowing artificial life from an oxygen tank. Until that day he decided to sleep forever.

Like what you might probably say about your own father, I would say, too. He was a domestic tyrant, very controlling. But he was the greatest. He was blissfully married to my mother for 40 years and raised seven children. He worked night and day, running a grocery store and attending to his duties as a village official, to be able to send all of us to one of the most decent universities in the Philippines.

He had always believed in God but didn’t know how; and being agnostic, he didn’t know how to teach us the concept of a Divine Authority. He made the perfect compromise by sending us to a Catholic university and allowed us to choose our own path of faith when we grew older.
For whatever I have become now, he deserved the credit — or the blame. He taught me how to think and encouraged me to write. He told me that God wouldn’t mind if I ask questions and use my reason.

Before I ever heard of Socrates, my father was the very first philosopher I had known. During my last long conversation with him last year, he told me that he had finally discovered God and asked me if I was done searching.

“I’m getting there. I’ll tell you when I’m ready to discuss it,” I said.

I didn’t realize that the conversation wouldn’t have a sequel and that he would leave me soon along the journey.

My father was cremated a week after his death. The undertaker showed us his ashes and bones before they were placed in an elegant marble urn. Why we decided to burn him instead of burying him, I don’t know.

“Do you want to put preservatives?” the undertaker asked. What difference would it make? My father wouldn’t care anymore. The dead don’t care. The grief of loss and the pleasure of the memory belong to the living.

I find mercy in the fact that what they had cremated had ceased to be my father, who had just become the idea of himself. The dead are permanent past tense, the absence in places where they used to be, and the phantom that won’t reply to your curiosity.

“Now tell me, is there a God? Is there life after death?” I asked my father’s ashes.
The dead carry questions that are left unanswered and conversations left unfinished.
I refuse to grieve now because grieving is selfish. We cry for our dead for our own selfish reasons. We cry because we refuse to feel the pain of loss. This, I learned from my own son, who asked me, “Would you rather see him alive and hurting every minute, or resting in peace with no pain that we the living have to put up with?”

Grieving is selfish.