Also, as far as I know, there’s no book launch or hoopla in the wings. This is fine with me, since I’ve never been that comfortable with book launches or hoopla anyway. UP Press likes to do things quietly, subtly, and with as small a budget as possible. Also, a recent policy instituted by National Book Store makes it unlikely that The Way Things Work – or any other forthcoming titles from UP Press, besides textbooks – will be distributed widely. This policy underscores an important point: that fiction is a fragile, insubstantial thing in a hard-boiled, bottom-line world. Nobody really needs the stuff, yet it keeps coming out – book after book after book. Something in us will always crave stories, I suppose. But for now, you’ll have to venture to the UP Press Offices at Diliman to obtain a copy (I think it sells for P180).
So, this book is soon to be launched into the great wide silence, on its own flap, as it were. Its publication comes about only because much of the material was written and refined at University of the Philippines, Diliman, where I took a creative writing master’s back in 1998: 14 stories, three of them written prior to arriving in the Philippines, seven of them crafted and shaped at UP, the rest coming along in bits and pieces on their own.
Warning: these stories are not set in Manila, for the most part. Only one ("Tropical Sprue") takes place explicitly in the Philippines. Others are set in Florence, Paris – but mostly, America.
If there is a theme tying these stories together, it is, as the title suggests, that of work – or rather, the way work can get the better of us. This was not really by design, but since, over my past three decades on the planet, I have found myself holding down a variety of short-term jobs, the notion of work has been of central importance. Economically, physically – even emotionally and spiritually – people need to put their hand to something: they need to feel they’ve left a mark on the world.
Anyway, that’s the optimist’s view of work. In my stories, work is usually a trap created by man, something that promises escape and redemption but rarely delivers it. Work literally sucks: it can pull the best out of people and offer little in return.
I find, on examination, that many of these stories also outline certain procedures. I’ve always been interested in the way things work – about how to load and fire guns, for example; or how people are set on fire in the movies; or how to remove porcupine quills from a dog. In my stories, there are professors and poets, jazz musicians and inmates, stuntmen and roller-coaster painters. I hope, though, that, in the end, the book is not about themes but about characters.
At the root of these stories is a certain rootlessness. There’s no getting around the fact that most of my characters are unhinged, adrift, cut loose. If home is what my characters seek, they are usually out of luck. My own history has provided the characters with such unsettled lives. Perhaps it is simply my interest in how people relate to one another in an increasingly individualized world. As much as we are informed that the world has grown smaller, it seems that only our pockets of the world have grown smaller – our own fractionalized experiences of living. The world will keep on turning. It’s our consciousness that undergoes radical shifts.
Briefly, here’s an overview of the stories contained in The Way Things Work and what they might (ostensibly) be about:
• "Capsule" concerns a science teacher who discovers he has a gift for poetry, but decides to reject it. The backdrop is the American space race, circa 1962.
• "Dying Slave" is about a young man whose one wish is to touch Michelangelo’s "Dying Slave" during a school field trip to Florence.
• "Anaconda" is a winding tale of appetites, maps, roller-coasters and recipes. The cover photo for The Way Things Work was inspired by this story.
• "Lessons" follows a pair of female friends and what they learn about one another during a gun lesson.
• "Bone Music" takes place in the Père Lachaise cemetery of Paris, where a young American couple search for the tomb of Jim Morrison.
• "Dakota" is another sprawling tale about an older brother who learns his younger sibling has burned down his own home. In the search for reasons, the story dips into science fiction, themes of homelessness, and the fate of the Native American. It’s supposed to be funny, too.
• "Pen" is a satire of the publishing world, wherein a series of literary submissions begin emanating from a high-security penitentiary.
• "Blue Note" is partly based on the life of saxophonist Wayne Shorter, with echoes of Bill Clinton, but unconsciously it closely tracks the myth of Orpheus.
• "Tropical Sprue" concerns the gastronomic complaints of an expat stationed in Manila by a British petrochemical company.
• "Barometer" is a Raymond Carver-esque tale of an out-of-work husband paralyzed by events which unfold one rainy morning.
• "Corpus Christi" recreates the minutes of a Texas-based arts council that is seriously reconsidering their award to a mural painter who has depicted a suffering Jesus Christ that no one can stand to look at.
• "Quills" is a brief depiction of low-rent existence somewhere in the US, as a young boy struggles to understand the savagery of life around him.
• "The Short-Term Sister" is about a household of brothers, thrown off-balance by the sudden appearance of a pseudo-sister. It takes place at the curious junction between the ‘70s and the ‘80s.
• And finally: "The Way Things Work" concerns a stuntman recovering in a hospital bed. He lies helpless in front of a television that seems to show nothing but all-night action movies featuring himself in various modes of immolation.
That’s it, then: I’ve spilled the beans, let the cat out of the bag, and come clean on this little book called The Way Things Work. Anyone who is interested in the title can e-mail me or venture out to the UP Press Bookstore, which, from all appearances, has now become a kind of glass-case museum for trapped or otherwise undisseminated fiction. Or maybe that’s just how it seems. Happy reading!