A new book from an old author who has just resumed writing after nearly three decades of being silent and “wordless” got me reading — pleasurably, although sadly — about the condition of our society and the pathetic nature of our existence these days. I encountered the author in his bylines of yesteryear but I only met him face-to-face when I recently became a member of the Tuesday Club, a group of media and communications people chaired by Tony Katigbak, The Philippine STAR’s managing editor, that meets — when else? — every Tuesday at EDSA Shangri-La for coffee, rolls and banter. He has the charisma that allows people to warm up to him fast. One example of his natural way of connecting was the quick way he came up to me at one meeting, warmly whispering words of thanks for the jacket (a Christmas gift from ABS-CBN) he discovered to be truly useful. Since then he does not fail to greet or text if he likes what I write in this column.
The author is Ricardo Suarez Soler and the book is For Starters, a collection of short stories reflecting his decision to resume writing. This collection of compact, easy-to-digest tales are like nibbles tempting his readers to wait for his future work — a novel that has taken him nine years to conceive but that he still has to write. The septuagenarian Soler dares to promise to finish it “before the shadows finally consume my being and make me join the multitude that has so unerringly preceded all of us.”
If this future novel will be anything like his short stories, it may well be worth waiting for. Soler’s short stories have been reviewed and praised by some of the country’s best literary minds and the most discerning and cold-blooded critics, led by two National Artists for Literature, Frankie Sionil Jose and Bien Lumbera. From my own perspective, having finished all 10 stories, the praise is spot-on and well-deserved.
Soler, a medical doctor by training but a man of commerce by practice, displays a particularly acute sense of reality and transforms this with his powerful words into a potent message that is intoxicating and, in many instances, can lead the reader to anger at his own helplessness in ending the afflictions and the madness that afflicts us. But Soler himself liberates his readers from hopelessness, stating, “We will survive our frailties, perhaps lessened and weakened, but never crippled beyond recovery.” But not all his stories have a happy ending, which is perhaps Soler’s deliberate attempt to stress the stark realities that impact people’s lives.
From what I have read, the saddest but best narratives are those that deal with the physical, intellectual, social and economic impoverishment of our masses. This is especially true in his “Hitler He Only Had One Ball,” a scathing assault on our masses’ human (or is it inhuman?) condition. It is this story I will dwell on, not exactly to critique it but more to let readers know what to expect. For this, I have the author’s permission to quote from his work freely.
Soler’s plot and characters in this story, very apt in our milieu today, are highly believable. His protagonists come alive all the more as the reader gets to know them better. There is nothing vulgar about them; regardless of their actions or thoughts, they are simply real people with failings and contradictions, their own lack of gallantry, courage and drive. Sometimes brash ruffians, their innate ignorance or developed apathy, indifference, indolence and lack of reasoned political and social participation leads them to a self-destructive existence. This message is enhanced by Soler’s absolute sincerity. He portrays some of our poorest of the poor as having simply stopped caring and just catering to sly politicians while others display vehement individualism, a reality seldom observed by other writers. His people are not merely abstract principles who move and talk. They are truly human beings.
Listen to this: “To a large number of the nameless masses but, to be sure, not most of them, politicians become the embodiment of what for them are convenient truths. These unrealities lull them from despair. It is one of the harsh facts of the human condition that fallacies, repeated often enough, lose their mythic disguises and do become truths for many — at least for that while until the moment of the uglier but actual truths come. Meantime, these shield them from living through the hope of the drowning who clutch at straws or cling to a blade to save them from falling to their deaths — kapit sa patalim, as the Tagalog saying puts it.
“But to many of those who, like Noynoy (a character in the story), are not city-bred but have migrated from the provinces and gone through political promises of betterment that never come, politicians and their promises are just a closed-fisted punch at the moon, a suntok sa buwan that brings no betterment, no changes of value at all. They form the larger number of those who have moved on to look for a better life on their own; not concerned with politics and politicians, feeling complete unto themselves. Politicians play no role in their lives as it never really matters who are the leaders as far as their state and disposition are concerned. Juan as mayor would be no different from Pedro as mayor; nothing either does really affects their lives for the better.”
It is so tempting to tell you more about this compelling account, but that would not be fair to Soler, whose last objective is to make money from his writing and just wishes that people buy the book. This is the act of a man who believes that ideas matter more than monetary gain, which is hard to have from writing, anyway. A widower and successful man-about-town, his only inspiration is to tell his stories so that people will hear and, perhaps, learn. And, it is, indeed, quite a learning experience to be informed that many of our poor — and I simply have to quote him in this, “Come to the city without expecting anything from anyone and, mute and dumb, this is their attitude in making things better for their families. As a result, the sphere of impoverishment their larger number inhabits is subsumed by a cosmos of apathy, indolence and indifference. They become less than a silent majority; they are the absent mainstream, the preponderant and greater part of the despondent, voiceless mass that no longer cares and lives in its own veiled world.”
It is instructive, too, to be informed that: “In truth, there may be fewer non-believers than there are devotees to the likes of Estrada (another character in the story) and his kind. But the former are timid and reclusive and keep away from the furor and disturbance of political bosses; the latter loud and heated — a rowdy mob under the thumb, pay and patronage of politicians. The equivalent of hired mourners supporting notions they do not even understand, they are not embarrassed by the sham they do not recognize as such. The timid and reclusive do not matter. Ultimately, neither do the loud and rowdy. Both are destined losers. Only the politicians are winners.”
It is apparent that Soler does not believe that capitalism is the best social organization possible and that democracy is the most logical. But he does not preach to us what the alternatives are. No, he lets us wonder about this in the same way he apparently does.
It is easy, with material like this, to say, “Read the book” and point that the readers who appreciate Soler’s stories may consider themselves among the select. But wait, I urge all fans and friends of Soler to make a collective shout-out and pressure him to complete the “novel in his mind.” After all, nothing is ever too late to bring into completion the desires of our heart.
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