[Filipiniana Book Shelf series focuses on books on the PAWR library - that is, bought books that have been read and are being re-read just because... they are valued properties]
From the PAWR Filipiniana Book Shelf, llustrado by Miguel Syjuco is special because it challenges the audience to rethink the role of the Filipino Illustrado in Philippine context and history. More than just a historical fiction this book provokes us to think deeply about the subject of the Illustrado identity.
I didn't always immediately understand post-modern tales but I feel that traditional novels - those chronological, plot oriented or character driven narratives sometimes become dull and boring to read. So to challenge myself I picked Illustrado again from the PAWR library. This novel has given me really deep thoughts about writing a novel.
For instance, I thought about how the narrator in Illustrado isn't reliable and yet, he's the only narrator that can tell me that very tale of why novelists matter. And further, how authors themselves are aware that what they've written probably won't matter at all in the greater scheme of things.
But even with this knowledge, not writing isn’t an option. This is a calling that will not go away –for all the desiring-to-become-writers out there. There’s no way to curb the desire to write, it is simply frustrating and exhausting to do so.
And it seems to me that this is the sadness of Syjuco's tale: how an author can be so engaged with history and the suffering of its nation, and will always be motivated and eager to pen a prophetic piece, but will have to always fight oneself in the process, since all writers who are eager to write anything at all will have to decide against any soul sell-out and scheme for a quick and easy road to prosperity.
In this novel, the term Illustrado is negatively pursued, because the narrator doubts the protege to be a real Illustrado. Like, what does this Illustrado really know about the grim realities on the city streets, the squalor in urban squatters, the catastrophe in the rural areas where disasters are endless? His more financially endowed background should have allowed him more opportunities to advocate for development where change needed to happen, but in his rich location, he often didn’t have an accurate feel of the sadness of the situation. If he would fully engage, he would have to become a traitor to his class.
If he could see his birthplace from exile as most Illustrados did before him, how deeply could he engage the questions of national suffering once he’d gone incognito in some remote place as an OFW? He would have to negotiate the terms of comfort – this freedom from the onslaught of suffering outside his country vis a vis his desire to go back and confront by actually seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling his country's ills. Perhaps then, he could burn his bridges and tell-all.
This seems to be the burden of the Illustrado. The prospective Illustrado who wants to write-all immediately wasn’t yet fully in the know, at least, as far as the narrator’s assessment is concerned.
The student of history isn’t in the story yet, but only interpolating in the narratives that were penned before his time. Not yet a real witness of history, not yet a real Illustrado.
Or a millennial who is trying not to get confused about the past. Or they have witnessed some facts of history but their own scant viewpoint keeps their language cautious, objective, and probing rather than purposeful.
In the narrator’s portfolio in this novel, he has done all the genre novels - sci fi tale, detective whodunit, even the historical romance. But he is not satisfied. And although he’s begun something that should burn bridges, it’s still questionable if he would be able to divulge in time all that is burning within him. Until he does so then, he hasn't written.
And probably, this single fact redeems the Illustrado – that after all, he's still the ONE who could be writing something that must shake the political systems, provoke a revolution, and change cultural habits and attitudes for the better. Yet, how this novel ends doesn't make me optimistic that this narrator who is the seemingly authentic illustrado is up to the task himself.
No. not at all.
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