The Novel as Visual Treat (Book Review)
The Novel as Visual Treat
(Book Review)
By Cesare A.X. Syjuco
Published in: The Manila Times, December 10, 1986
IT has gotten to be that propriety has lost its meaning. Deviation is the name of the game, and hardly anything is precisely one thing or another anymore.
Michael Adams’ disturbing novella “The Land of the Spoonclunkers” — recently feted at a public launching after nearly five years in the works — is notable for its many deviations, not the least of which is its decidedly communal flavor. In a handsomely bound edition of some 175 pages, there are 17 full-page illustrations by upcoming artists R. M. de Leon, Fernando Modesto, Jaime de Guzman, and the author’s wife, sculptress Agnes Arellano.
Adams is obviously as well-read as he is well-liked. A conveniently ambiguous preface by leading Filipino poet Alfred Yuson is followed in turn by a virtual treasure-trove of memorable passages from sources as diverse as Scott Fitzgerald, Petronius, Jean Genet, and Francis Ford Coppola that dog-ear each succeeding chapter like prayerful ejaculations. While such flighty cross-references and interactions do manage to import an aura of grandiose splendor between the sheets — not unlike trumpet-blowing midgets at a royal banquet — they do hint of a latent insecurity that mars the book’s integrity from the onset. Certainly, there is strength in numbers; but at what expense this?
Not that Adams’ own macabre tale of third-world intrigue has little need for the generous participation of so many helping hands. Skillful narrative discourse is not one of the author’s stronger points, and indeed, the tale falters frequently in its weaving. Often lacking polish, continuity, and the easy facility with emotive language that one has come to expect from contemporary novelists of worth, Adams shrewdly resorts to curious word-games and to playing tongue-in-cheek. Many of his key passages are labored and not a little self-indulgent, and the reader navigates through the thick of the woods with considerable difficulty, turning from page to page with conscious resolve. Though certainly a commendable first effort, Adams’ cumbersome text is not easy reading, and would hardly qualify as a potential bestseller.
Oddly enough, to book itself has the makings of a true local classic, first as a publishing endeavor, and then as a quasi-sociological testament — being the fanciful meanderings of a contemporary carpetbagger, a middle-aged western expatriate adrift amidst the cultural debris of a gothic parable/ neo-colonial Philippines. A most illuminating insight into the wholesale export of Old World bigotry, it is painfully condescending as its title implies, with native pride and dignity paid off meagerly in pounds sterling. Adams notes, for instance, that “spoon-clunking” is “the biting of the spoon and the scraping of it across the teeth while eating, which is the customary method of consuming food in this country.” This is far from flattering, as are his frequent references to other social peculiarities almost casually observed in passing. Fortunately for the author, the Filipino has always had an odd propensity for laughing at himself — a well-known fact, which I suspect, Adams has sought to test in his satirical melodrama. Playing Brando and Harold Robbins alternately, the author lives his cruel fantasy at the spoonclunkers’ expense, armed with moral and intellectual superiority over the haplessly indolent natives, while flaunting his imaginary expertise with high-handed espionage and automatic weaponry.
Adams is well-known in the local artistic community as a gallery owner and art enthusiast, which certainly shows in his book. “The Land of the Spoonclunkers” fares well enough as visual treat, or as chromatext at the very least. Approximately 10 per cent of it, if you remember, is comprised of visual renderings, and the edition itself is beautiful to look at. The authors’ own text is graphically explicit almost to a fault, and we may yet forgive him for his many transgressions. “People ought to be more careful,” says his swashbuckling alter-ego in the book. “This is a most dangerous country.” Perhaps not as dangerous as he imagines. But Adams’ point is well taken. As always.
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Cesare A.X. Syjuco, “The Novel as Visual Treat” (page 1 of 1), The Manila Times, December 10, 1986
