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Aliasing
Witch, whore, witch, whore, witch whore, witch whore,
witch whore, witch whore/ Wicky's witch in graveyards / climbing coconut trees, in only three seconds / when she’s caught looking for
the bones of unblessed souls or chickens for her store.
An alias is an assumed identity.
In Aliasing the narration of fiction shifts like the weave of a binakul blanket, and the reader is confronted by a procession of simulacra that might be misunderstood as an alternative history of the Philippines. There are no falsehoods here since representation precedes and determines the real. The northern whirlpool weave that provides the novel with its title has been used to confuse evil spirits and protect its wearer while asleep. Almost traditional stories are woven into a post-history covering everyone from Macabebe Marie (the Mata Hari of Manila) to the Catholic mystic Emma de Guzman (known to followers as the Mother of Love, Peace and Joy). Reflecting the hybrid nature of our contemporary world, Aliasing reconfigures our understanding of who we are as a twice-told tall tale from the South.
In 1950, Fritz Lang came to the capital en route to Turagsoy to shoot a war film that he later considered to be the worst movie he ever made. He came to the radio station KZRM because he was listening to the radio while on set and he was amazed at the sound bites they got, from everyone from Chiang Kai Shek to Joseph Stalin. He went to KZRM and found out that a man named Koko Trinidad had been impersonating them: The easiest way to control the population is to carry out acts of terror!
Published by Book Works as part of Semina, guest edited by Stewart Home and designed by Fraser Muggeridge Studio.
The Semina series also published books by Iphgenia Baal, Stewart Home, Maxi Kim, Jarett Kobek, Jana Leo, Katrina Palmer, Bridget Penney, and Mark Waugh.
Mara Coson is a writer and editor from Manila, Philippines. She completed her MA in Creative Media at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT). In 2012, she co-founded The Manila Review, a journal that publishes book and film reviews, as well as essays on old literary publications, radio, and smugglers.
witch whore, witch whore/ Wicky's witch in graveyards / climbing coconut trees, in only three seconds / when she’s caught looking for
the bones of unblessed souls or chickens for her store.
An alias is an assumed identity.
In Aliasing the narration of fiction shifts like the weave of a binakul blanket, and the reader is confronted by a procession of simulacra that might be misunderstood as an alternative history of the Philippines. There are no falsehoods here since representation precedes and determines the real. The northern whirlpool weave that provides the novel with its title has been used to confuse evil spirits and protect its wearer while asleep. Almost traditional stories are woven into a post-history covering everyone from Macabebe Marie (the Mata Hari of Manila) to the Catholic mystic Emma de Guzman (known to followers as the Mother of Love, Peace and Joy). Reflecting the hybrid nature of our contemporary world, Aliasing reconfigures our understanding of who we are as a twice-told tall tale from the South.
In 1950, Fritz Lang came to the capital en route to Turagsoy to shoot a war film that he later considered to be the worst movie he ever made. He came to the radio station KZRM because he was listening to the radio while on set and he was amazed at the sound bites they got, from everyone from Chiang Kai Shek to Joseph Stalin. He went to KZRM and found out that a man named Koko Trinidad had been impersonating them: The easiest way to control the population is to carry out acts of terror!
Published by Book Works as part of Semina, guest edited by Stewart Home and designed by Fraser Muggeridge Studio.
The Semina series also published books by Iphgenia Baal, Stewart Home, Maxi Kim, Jarett Kobek, Jana Leo, Katrina Palmer, Bridget Penney, and Mark Waugh.
Mara Coson is a writer and editor from Manila, Philippines. She completed her MA in Creative Media at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT). In 2012, she co-founded The Manila Review, a journal that publishes book and film reviews, as well as essays on old literary publications, radio, and smugglers.
125 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 20, 2020
Longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize 2020
This short novel is surreal, playful and often baffling, perhaps best described by a line the author herself uses near the end of the book: "My imagination had eloped with local mythology."
The narrator describes episodes from her childhood (which the musical references suggest was in the 1980s) and early adulthood in a rural backwater of the Philippines, in the shadow of a volcano. Some of her historic reference points will be familiar to anyone who has read Gina Apostol's Insurrecto, but this book seems even more like a random stream of stories, local folklore and bizarre characters, with rather less verifiable history.
The whole thing is very enjoyable to read, unlike several of the heavier books on the RofC list, but I can't claim to have understood it more than superficially.
This short novel is surreal, playful and often baffling, perhaps best described by a line the author herself uses near the end of the book: "My imagination had eloped with local mythology."
The narrator describes episodes from her childhood (which the musical references suggest was in the 1980s) and early adulthood in a rural backwater of the Philippines, in the shadow of a volcano. Some of her historic reference points will be familiar to anyone who has read Gina Apostol's Insurrecto, but this book seems even more like a random stream of stories, local folklore and bizarre characters, with rather less verifiable history.
The whole thing is very enjoyable to read, unlike several of the heavier books on the RofC list, but I can't claim to have understood it more than superficially.
February 2, 2020
Everywhere the radio was tuned to DWWZ 666. Each bakery, tarpaulin printer, vulcaniser, resort, condotel, cake shop, digital media company, bar, cellphone repair shop, travel agency, shawarma restaurant, chicken rotisserie stall, pawnshop, cafe, public hot spring, private pool club, gotohan, nightclub, chapel, Enchanted Kingdom, fast food restaurant, massage parlour, coconut pie stand, hardware store, grocery had it constantly on, so that walking through the entire municipality was seamless.
Established in 1984, Book Works is, in their words:
The series strapline “where fiction has a nervous breakdown” could easily serve alongside The Republic of Consciousness Prize/Galley Beggar’s “hard-core literary fiction, and gorgeous prose” and as such the novel is a fitting inclusion on the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize longlist.
Aliasing blends references to Philippines folklore, mythical creatures, local wildlife, pop culture both locally and from Hollywood, politics (Dutarte's strongman regime), Marian devotion and more, in just 125 pages, and in a confusing plot deliberately modelled on local TV soaps, leaving the reader confused but never quite lost.
Perhaps the best, if laziest, way I can describe this novel is as a cross between Insurrecto (the book I had expected Fitzcarraldo to submit for this year’s prize) and We Are Made Of Diamond Stuff (the best book on the longlist), although Aliasing doesn't quite hit the heady heights of either.
The novel is set in the ficticious city of Turagsoy a second-class municipality that lays like gum stretched between an ocean and a lake that contains a volcano along the Pacific ring of fire. Largely unknown to the rest of the country because it is neither city nor province. Turgasoy is a cartographical oversight: chicanery; the black hole on the tip of the tongue; the illusion of x and o on far sides of paper with one eye closed.
Said volcano in a lake, Mount Tabor, literally looms over the novel, which begins A volcano is about to explode but perhaps if they don’t think about it, it won’t happen.... The description of the fictitious Tabor in the novel:
There are many such allusions and cultural references easily lost on the reader. For example, it was from more informed reviews that I learned a radio play features in the novel is actually re-enacting the historical capture of Emilio Aguinaldo, first President of the Philippines, in March 1901 by US forces aided by Macabebe Scouts; except in Coson’s world Aguinaldo is called Diego Salvador, itself the name of the hero of a real-life Philippines radio soap.
American movies also feature heavily, notably Fritz Lang’s American Guerrilla in the Philippines, filmed on location, and which he regarded as his worst movie, and several references to the film star Sylvia Syndey, now best known as the Grandma in this brilliant scene from Mars Attacks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v38Ir.... Another key thread is Marian visionaries ranging from the real (e.g. Emma de Guzman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_de...) to those created for the novel.
One could easily spend many hours searching out the references and turn it in to Playing Possum in the Philippines. But I think that would actually be against the spirit in which the novel was written. Asked in an interview for the main message she wanted readers to take from the book, the author said: "I wrote it to be a fun and easy read, and I hope that comes across!", and in another she concluded
Sources:
Interviews with the author:
https://www.cnn.ph/life/culture/liter...
and
https://www.philstar.com/lifestyle/su...
The author's current reading - which incluses Insurrecto:
https://nolisoli.ph/56982/mara-coson-...
“Gina Apostol carries consistent and tireless precision from start to finish: descriptions and gestures are so crystal. Here, the horrors of the Philippine-American war are exhumed by two competing film scripts volleying into each other.”
Useful reviews:
https://news.abs-cbn.com/ancx/culture...
and
https://nolisoli.ph/63030/many-narrat...
Established in 1984, Book Works is, in their words:
an art commissioning organisation specialising in artists’ books, spoken word and printed matter. We are dedicated to supporting new work by emerging artists, and our projects are initiated by invitation, open submission, and through guest-curated projects.Their Semina series of nine experimental novels, published between 2008 and 2018 takes its inspiration from a series of nine loose-leaf magazines issued by Californian beat artist Wallace Berman in the 1950s and 1960s and invited submissions from artists or writers willing to take risks with their prose and who demonstrate total disregard for the conventions that structure received ideas about fiction. Mara Coson was the successful applicant from the last round of submissions (https://www.bookworks.org.uk/sites/de...) and then had six months to write this novel. Alaising becoming, Semina No. 9.
The series strapline “where fiction has a nervous breakdown” could easily serve alongside The Republic of Consciousness Prize/Galley Beggar’s “hard-core literary fiction, and gorgeous prose” and as such the novel is a fitting inclusion on the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize longlist.
Aliasing blends references to Philippines folklore, mythical creatures, local wildlife, pop culture both locally and from Hollywood, politics (Dutarte's strongman regime), Marian devotion and more, in just 125 pages, and in a confusing plot deliberately modelled on local TV soaps, leaving the reader confused but never quite lost.
Perhaps the best, if laziest, way I can describe this novel is as a cross between Insurrecto (the book I had expected Fitzcarraldo to submit for this year’s prize) and We Are Made Of Diamond Stuff (the best book on the longlist), although Aliasing doesn't quite hit the heady heights of either.
The novel is set in the ficticious city of Turagsoy a second-class municipality that lays like gum stretched between an ocean and a lake that contains a volcano along the Pacific ring of fire. Largely unknown to the rest of the country because it is neither city nor province. Turgasoy is a cartographical oversight: chicanery; the black hole on the tip of the tongue; the illusion of x and o on far sides of paper with one eye closed.
Said volcano in a lake, Mount Tabor, literally looms over the novel, which begins A volcano is about to explode but perhaps if they don’t think about it, it won’t happen.... The description of the fictitious Tabor in the novel:
Several hundred years ago Tabor erupted and the explosion sliced off the top of the volcano to reveal a crater lake, and then created a smaller grocery beside it. It is to this new outcrop that we mistakenly ascribe the image of volcano - of Tabor in particular ... so many photographs and postcards! But it is not the volcano.is, as the author has explained in an interview, inspired by the real life Taal Volcano:
Q: What were your primary influences for the central story in “Aliasing”? And they don’t need to be books!And rather ominously in January 2020, when this book was Longlisted for the RoC, Taal volcano actually erupted for the first time in 43 years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Ta...)!
A: When I realized what I thought was the Taal Volcano was not the Taal Volcano! This mistaken identity, this babushka of a lake within an island within a lake, the lake being formerly part of the ocean, and not knowing when it will erupt again like it did violently in 1754 are qualities that I found made it a perfect environment — even if there are few traces of it in the book.
Turagsoy — which means mudskipper — however, is a fictional town, a patchwork of both provincial life and my own childhood and the childhoods I saw on television.
There are many such allusions and cultural references easily lost on the reader. For example, it was from more informed reviews that I learned a radio play features in the novel is actually re-enacting the historical capture of Emilio Aguinaldo, first President of the Philippines, in March 1901 by US forces aided by Macabebe Scouts; except in Coson’s world Aguinaldo is called Diego Salvador, itself the name of the hero of a real-life Philippines radio soap.
American movies also feature heavily, notably Fritz Lang’s American Guerrilla in the Philippines, filmed on location, and which he regarded as his worst movie, and several references to the film star Sylvia Syndey, now best known as the Grandma in this brilliant scene from Mars Attacks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v38Ir.... Another key thread is Marian visionaries ranging from the real (e.g. Emma de Guzman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_de...) to those created for the novel.
One could easily spend many hours searching out the references and turn it in to Playing Possum in the Philippines. But I think that would actually be against the spirit in which the novel was written. Asked in an interview for the main message she wanted readers to take from the book, the author said: "I wrote it to be a fun and easy read, and I hope that comes across!", and in another she concluded
I think when people ask me how the best way to read it is, I think it’s to water-slide through it and just enjoy the ride.And I certainly did that - although I was left rather disoriented at the end. 3.5 stars - rounded to 3 as the comparison to Insurrecto and We Are Diamond Stuff both show what might have been.
Sources:
Interviews with the author:
https://www.cnn.ph/life/culture/liter...
and
https://www.philstar.com/lifestyle/su...
The author's current reading - which incluses Insurrecto:
https://nolisoli.ph/56982/mara-coson-...
“Gina Apostol carries consistent and tireless precision from start to finish: descriptions and gestures are so crystal. Here, the horrors of the Philippine-American war are exhumed by two competing film scripts volleying into each other.”
Useful reviews:
https://news.abs-cbn.com/ancx/culture...
and
https://nolisoli.ph/63030/many-narrat...
December 4, 2020
I read this book due to its longlisting for the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize for UK and Irish small presses.
It is published by Book Works “Established in 1984, we are dedicated to supporting new work by emerging artists, and our projects are initiated by invitation, open submission, and through guest-curated projects”
And this book was (the final) part of just such a series “Semima” a series of 9 books commissioned by an artist and writer Stewart Home by a mix of specific commission and open submission- with the nine books looking for “artists or writers willing to take risks with their prose and who demonstrate total disregard for the conventions that structure received ideas about fiction” and with an overall series tagline “Semina: where the novel has a nervous breakdown”.
(More details of the previousvolumes, and the final submission request which lead to Coson’s selection here : https://www.bookworks.org.uk/sites/de...)
And its fair to say that Coson’s book perfectly fits the criteria both for the series and the (not dissimilar in intent if not in wording) criteria for the Republic of Consciousness Prize.
The conventions which the book totally disregards include coherence of plot (in fact to be honest even the concept of plot) and background explanation for the reader. However while the novel may have been having a nervous breakdown I found myself enjoying the story.
And while there is a lot innovative in the book – it does overlap strongly with in content with another recent small press book (and one which I think should have been entered for this prize Fitzcarraldo’s “Insurrecto”) and in approach with books like the RoC longlisted/Goldsmith’s shortlisted “Playing Possum” with multiple allusions to historical events and other art forms – allusions which to really appreciate what the author is trying to do, require either detailed knowledge of the subject under consideration (here the history of the Philippines – particularly in the 20th Century) or some extensive use of Google/Wiki/You Tube.
I must admit though that I found this book much easier to follow than Playing Possum and the associated internet research both fun and non-involving.
And in that spirit here are some links to add future readers and to allow them to enjoy the book as a straight read while gaining some insights and illustration at minimum effort.
Legendary creatures
Arowana fish: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.ph...
Pez-Mulier: http://darktopsecrets.blogspot.com/20...
Kapre: http://www.wowparadisephilippines.com...
People
Duterte’s election-talk: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016...
Larry Hillblom: https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMy...
Helena Pedroche: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b037...
Kok Trindad: https://kahimyang.com/kauswagan/artic...
Films
Mga anak ni Facifica Falayfay: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aDHRzmP...
ibong adarnahttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07zjI...
Fritz Lang : https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042195/
Mars Attacks : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v38Ir_e...
Do not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rlJaLLw...
The American-Philippines War
The Macabebes capture on behalf of the Americans of the Tagalog Philippine President Emilio Aguinaldo: https://www.filipinoamericanwar.com/c...
Macabebe Marie: https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=SU191...
Marian visionaries :
Veronica Leuken : http://www.ourladyoftheroses.org/ourl...
Emma de Guzman : http://lapietainternational.com/about...
It is published by Book Works “Established in 1984, we are dedicated to supporting new work by emerging artists, and our projects are initiated by invitation, open submission, and through guest-curated projects”
And this book was (the final) part of just such a series “Semima” a series of 9 books commissioned by an artist and writer Stewart Home by a mix of specific commission and open submission- with the nine books looking for “artists or writers willing to take risks with their prose and who demonstrate total disregard for the conventions that structure received ideas about fiction” and with an overall series tagline “Semina: where the novel has a nervous breakdown”.
(More details of the previousvolumes, and the final submission request which lead to Coson’s selection here : https://www.bookworks.org.uk/sites/de...)
And its fair to say that Coson’s book perfectly fits the criteria both for the series and the (not dissimilar in intent if not in wording) criteria for the Republic of Consciousness Prize.
The conventions which the book totally disregards include coherence of plot (in fact to be honest even the concept of plot) and background explanation for the reader. However while the novel may have been having a nervous breakdown I found myself enjoying the story.
And while there is a lot innovative in the book – it does overlap strongly with in content with another recent small press book (and one which I think should have been entered for this prize Fitzcarraldo’s “Insurrecto”) and in approach with books like the RoC longlisted/Goldsmith’s shortlisted “Playing Possum” with multiple allusions to historical events and other art forms – allusions which to really appreciate what the author is trying to do, require either detailed knowledge of the subject under consideration (here the history of the Philippines – particularly in the 20th Century) or some extensive use of Google/Wiki/You Tube.
I must admit though that I found this book much easier to follow than Playing Possum and the associated internet research both fun and non-involving.
And in that spirit here are some links to add future readers and to allow them to enjoy the book as a straight read while gaining some insights and illustration at minimum effort.
Legendary creatures
Arowana fish: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.ph...
Pez-Mulier: http://darktopsecrets.blogspot.com/20...
Kapre: http://www.wowparadisephilippines.com...
People
Duterte’s election-talk: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016...
Larry Hillblom: https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMy...
Helena Pedroche: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b037...
Kok Trindad: https://kahimyang.com/kauswagan/artic...
Films
Mga anak ni Facifica Falayfay: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aDHRzmP...
ibong adarnahttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07zjI...
Fritz Lang : https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042195/
Mars Attacks : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v38Ir_e...
Do not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rlJaLLw...
The American-Philippines War
The Macabebes capture on behalf of the Americans of the Tagalog Philippine President Emilio Aguinaldo: https://www.filipinoamericanwar.com/c...
Macabebe Marie: https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=SU191...
Marian visionaries :
Veronica Leuken : http://www.ourladyoftheroses.org/ourl...
Emma de Guzman : http://lapietainternational.com/about...
February 3, 2020
Aliasing is in one way an easy book to read: it does not have complicated sentences or difficult words. But, in another sense, it is a very difficult book to read: it makes very little sense (and makes less and less sense the further you progress through it). It is the second book from The Philippines that I have read in recent months, the other being Gina Apostol’s Insurrecto. The two of them make an interesting pairing as both are difficult to get to grips with but actually fun to read.
Aliasing is part of the Semina series published by Book Works:
Semina takes its inspiration from a series of nine loose-leaf magazines issued by Californian beat artist Wallace Berman in the 1950s and 1960s.
The overall series has the tagline Where the novel has a nervous breakdown. This gives you a rough idea of what you are taking on when you pick up what is, in fact, a very short book. The narrative has a kind of stream-of-consciousness, free associative feel that leaves the reader, well, this reader, disoriented although with just enough of something to hold on to to feel not quite completely lost: names repeat and every so often something happens that makes you think “I read about that a few pages ago.”
The book is set in Turagsoy, a fictional town famous for its crater lake:
We live in Turagsoy, a second-class municipality that lays like a gum stretched between an ocean and a lake that contains a volcano along the Pacific ring of fire. Largely unknown to the rest of the country because it is neither city nor province, Turagsoy is a cartographical oversight; chicanery; the black hole on the tip of the tongue; the illusion of x and o on the far sides of a paper with one eye closed.
Curiously, no one is allowed to talk about the volcano. On the first page: ”A volcano is about to explode but perhaps if they don’t think about it, it won’t happen.”
Before I started the book, I read that the author intended it to be a “fun and easy read” which the reader would not get too bogged down in but would just go along for the ride. It would certainly be easy to get lost in the detail and to spend hours looking up all the references, but, having been warned, I chose not to do this. The result is that large parts of the book passed me by, although they were all fairly entertaining to read. For example, it is only by looking at Paul’s review (and he admits to having looked at other reviews to learn this himself) that I realised that a large chunk of the book is re-enacting the “the historical capture of Emilio Aguinaldo, first President of the Philippines, in March 1901 by US forces aided by Macabebe Scouts; except in Coson’s world Aguinaldo is called Diego Salvador, itself the name of the hero of a real-life Philippines radio soap.” (in quotes because lifted directly from Paul’s review).
Overall, then, the book is quick and entertaining to read, but without the hours and hours of research that would be needed to understand all the cultural and historical references, I didn’t find enough in it to make it stick. After a night’s sleep, I found I forgotten almost everything that had happened in it. Perhaps this simply means I should read it again.
Aliasing is part of the Semina series published by Book Works:
Semina takes its inspiration from a series of nine loose-leaf magazines issued by Californian beat artist Wallace Berman in the 1950s and 1960s.
The overall series has the tagline Where the novel has a nervous breakdown. This gives you a rough idea of what you are taking on when you pick up what is, in fact, a very short book. The narrative has a kind of stream-of-consciousness, free associative feel that leaves the reader, well, this reader, disoriented although with just enough of something to hold on to to feel not quite completely lost: names repeat and every so often something happens that makes you think “I read about that a few pages ago.”
The book is set in Turagsoy, a fictional town famous for its crater lake:
We live in Turagsoy, a second-class municipality that lays like a gum stretched between an ocean and a lake that contains a volcano along the Pacific ring of fire. Largely unknown to the rest of the country because it is neither city nor province, Turagsoy is a cartographical oversight; chicanery; the black hole on the tip of the tongue; the illusion of x and o on the far sides of a paper with one eye closed.
Curiously, no one is allowed to talk about the volcano. On the first page: ”A volcano is about to explode but perhaps if they don’t think about it, it won’t happen.”
Before I started the book, I read that the author intended it to be a “fun and easy read” which the reader would not get too bogged down in but would just go along for the ride. It would certainly be easy to get lost in the detail and to spend hours looking up all the references, but, having been warned, I chose not to do this. The result is that large parts of the book passed me by, although they were all fairly entertaining to read. For example, it is only by looking at Paul’s review (and he admits to having looked at other reviews to learn this himself) that I realised that a large chunk of the book is re-enacting the “the historical capture of Emilio Aguinaldo, first President of the Philippines, in March 1901 by US forces aided by Macabebe Scouts; except in Coson’s world Aguinaldo is called Diego Salvador, itself the name of the hero of a real-life Philippines radio soap.” (in quotes because lifted directly from Paul’s review).
Overall, then, the book is quick and entertaining to read, but without the hours and hours of research that would be needed to understand all the cultural and historical references, I didn’t find enough in it to make it stick. After a night’s sleep, I found I forgotten almost everything that had happened in it. Perhaps this simply means I should read it again.
January 29, 2020
I read this book as part of the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize for experimental type fiction from small presses. Having spent time in the Philippines I was looking forward to a portrayal of the strange atmosphere
Of the country, such as found in the recently published INSURRECTO.
Unfortunately it was SO experimental that it seemed to lose all cohesion, though individual absurdist episodes were of some interest. This review from a Manila news source seems to describe this book better than I can.
https://news.abs-cbn.com/ancx/culture...
I find it hard to believe that this absurbist novel could make the ROC shortlist, but if it does I will gladly reread it and be interested in the conversation that develops on the Mookse and Gripes Good Reads forum!
Of the country, such as found in the recently published INSURRECTO.
Unfortunately it was SO experimental that it seemed to lose all cohesion, though individual absurdist episodes were of some interest. This review from a Manila news source seems to describe this book better than I can.
https://news.abs-cbn.com/ancx/culture...
I find it hard to believe that this absurbist novel could make the ROC shortlist, but if it does I will gladly reread it and be interested in the conversation that develops on the Mookse and Gripes Good Reads forum!
March 20, 2024
It is not something to watch. It is not conjoined vases. It is not a Fushigi ball. It is not a boil with pus. It is not breast milk spilling from the nipple. It is not the sex tape of a Senator or the Late Dictator of the New Society. We are in the permanent danger zone.
aliasing is a wonderfully surreal post-modern novel. its written like a very long prose poem . theres so many oddball characters in the town named after a fish that its locals consider evil and yet i remember all of them.
id love to live in the 2nd class municipality of turagsoy with its circular lake and pez muliers and lucky arowanas and elvis taxon kapres and cigars and gold frost angel-seers and alien barkeepers and homicidal duterte-like mayors in the backdrop of a volcano that everybody avoids saying that its about to--
i kept thinking about this book after reading that i had to read it again. the narrator feels very much real. shes so me. she is a hirsute radio host and former tour guide and accomplice of the murder of a pez mulier/local man.
My imagination had eloped with local mythology.
i came across this book in a national book store shelf squeezed between psicom fanfics and saw the rubber-stamped mt mayon, read its title in a bisaya accent "al-ya-sing." it was shrink wrapped in plastic so i couldnt preview it but somehow i felt like i needed to buy it immediately because this might be the only copy left in my city. and so i did and i did not regret it. its experimental, novel, weird, and it did all that with absolute literary precision. this is easily one of the best books ive ever read.
aliasing is a wonderfully surreal post-modern novel. its written like a very long prose poem . theres so many oddball characters in the town named after a fish that its locals consider evil and yet i remember all of them.
id love to live in the 2nd class municipality of turagsoy with its circular lake and pez muliers and lucky arowanas and elvis taxon kapres and cigars and gold frost angel-seers and alien barkeepers and homicidal duterte-like mayors in the backdrop of a volcano that everybody avoids saying that its about to--
i kept thinking about this book after reading that i had to read it again. the narrator feels very much real. shes so me. she is a hirsute radio host and former tour guide and accomplice of the murder of a pez mulier/local man.
My imagination had eloped with local mythology.
i came across this book in a national book store shelf squeezed between psicom fanfics and saw the rubber-stamped mt mayon, read its title in a bisaya accent "al-ya-sing." it was shrink wrapped in plastic so i couldnt preview it but somehow i felt like i needed to buy it immediately because this might be the only copy left in my city. and so i did and i did not regret it. its experimental, novel, weird, and it did all that with absolute literary precision. this is easily one of the best books ive ever read.
March 23, 2019
I don't know how to feel about experimental books, it was like reading someone's stream of consciousness, a mix of Philippine Pop Culture like the stuff that comes out from Duterte's mouth, to Marian Apparitions, Philippine Folklore, American influences all painted in a backdrop of what looks like a clear picture of Rural Philippines. If you're looking to be entertained, this book is definitely not it, but I appreciate what it's trying to do.
May 27, 2020
Based through a surreal lens in a kind of semi-mythologised and forgotten small town in the Philippines, this meanders without discernible narrative through the mythology, history, geography, politics, pop culture of the region and the present weird post-colonial conundrum of its existence — at times realistic, at times dramatic, and at times completely fantastical and high as a kite — a kaleidoscope of STUFF and characters and weird happening that are in some odd other place that definitely isn’t fact but isn’t totally presented as fiction either. The writing is also beautiful and enticing ! If you like a narrative you won’t like this lol but the tipsy turvy world it builds in such an unusual way made this well worth a read for me.
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