Conrado v pedroche autobiography of missouri

Pedroche is part of that first generation of Filipino writers in English, college-educated, refined, and very self-conscious. His language shows this. It is reflective and searching, romantic and elevated (though sometimes, he does use the slang of his period: no fooling!). Modern readers might find the language purple, but it isn't as dense as it could get. I'd call it lavender as opposed to deep aubergine.

I loved his use of imagery and incongruity: the hen nesting in the car, the tobacco pipe oiled with sweat from the carver's nose, the sudden frisson of a guitar strummed in the night by an unseen hand. The scenes come like flashes of memory: sometimes out of order, but always falling into their correct place in the sculpture of emotional history that Pedroche is trying to create. I fell in love with it by just reading a few pages. I was ready to stay in love with the whole book.

But it didn't last.

As a reader who also writes, I often struggle to divorce my livedself (as a collection of beliefs, values, prejudices, and kneejerk reactions) from my observerself who reads to understand and learn. With some books, this is much easier than others. Here, I definitely hit a snag.

I just couldn't stop myself from reacting viscerally to the writer's attitude towards women. On the one hand, I do know that the writer grew up before the feminist movement. His attitudes are a product of his time.

On the other hand, I just couldn't stop my hackles from rising whenever he called his wife his "little woman". Or whenever he lamented that his wife or aunt or sister would be unable to comprehend his deep, philosophical musings.

And when he spent a whole chapter recounting a dialogue with his wife about infidelity, in which he all but admitted that he will "touch" other women, but oh, oh, wait, despite that, she is special, you see, because those women are just playthings and only she merits his "look of love"?

I... I couldn't even. I had to put the book down, my stomach churning with repugnance, as if I'd been abruptly touched in the dark by something warm, squishy, and ever-so-slightly wet. Ugh, I'm grossing myself out.

Obviously, I too am a product of my time and place.

I had to stop and remind myself to dissociate. But while I did finish the book, I never really got back into the innocent enjoyment of reading. I could never bring myself to completely trust in the narrative voice again.

That's the problem with falling in love with a book. Once you fall out of love, it gets a little awkward. In your head, you do know that the things you loved are still there, you just don't feel the same way anymore.

(Also, I'm leaving all my ridiculous ramblings up there in case someone finds them useful. I know I've read my fair share of books because their one-star reviews and "trigger warnings" intrigued me. So. That last bit serves as my trigger warning. And I might come back to this someday to try to understand how my own attitudes would turn off some readers.)

That said, this book is a valuable artifact. It's history, the way a pottery shard is history. It's life, the way a flower pressed between the pages of a book is life. It's the Philippines, the way the hills in Padapada or a leaky house in a tiny village in Tarlac are the Philippines.

It gets almost hair-raisingly beautiful in some parts. It's at turns funny, self-deprecating, self-satisfied, modest, admiring, envious, sublime, obscene. In short, it's a chronicle of a life beautifully remembered, with no overt agenda or politics except for the glory of art.*

We need more of this kind of remembering.


*Though of course, the politics does sneak in via the reader's anachronistic reactions.