Reviews for The Philistines

The average rating for The Philistines based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-07-24 00:00:00 Blair Sanderson Reading Michael Syjuco's Ilustrado is like eating chopsuey. Ingredients: 1 kg. Main Story Miguel Syjuco going back to Manila to find the truth about Crispin Salvador's death 1/2 kg. Biography in Progress Crispin Salvador Eight Lives Lived by Michael Syjuco 2 cups. Unfinished Manuscript The Bridge Ablaze 1/3 cup. Kaputol trilogy 5 tbs. Interview The Philippine-Gazette.com.ph 2 tps. 1988 Interview in the Paris Review To taste: Crispin Salvador's email For me, this is like reading patches of several parallel stories, told in the interviews, novels, polemics, memoirs and poetry. Those individual works were cut into pieces and scattered in the different parts of the book to form an egg mosaic-like story. For somebody like me who have been in this country for 46 years, the parts of this mosaic do not necessarily fit well. Some of those snippets talked about the Marcos era when the main story was set after 9/11 2001 and people were no longer talking about the Marcoses. It is as if the 20ish Syjuco tried to put everything he heard from his coaches or history teacher or read from history book into this 304-page work. Syjuco is a rich kid, an ilustrado himself. After studying in Ateneo (a school for rich people), he studied his masters in the US. Read his Acknowledgement at the end of the book, you will see that there are many people who helped him put up this book and most of them belong to the rich and famous in the Philippine, particularly the Fil-Am, literary world. With those people backing Syjuco, coming up with an novel with a huge scope, spanning a period of 150 years, like this should not be a hard task. What is Syjuco's objective in writing this novel? For us Filipinos to know who we are? If the answer is yes, why did he have to make this so hard to read? I don't think that the common Filipinos, who more than the schooled ones could have benefited from reading this book, would shell out P325 (~US$7) from their hard-earned money. Is it to win the Palanca and Man Literary Award? Well, he got those already. So, I am waiting for Syjuco if he can still come up with a follow up novel with this grand scope and gimmicky enough to get another nod from Palanca and Asian Man Literary gods. However, I agree that Filipinos should read this. Many of us complain that there are no books about the Philippines and written by a Filipino worthy of reading. We say that all those best-selling books of Bob Ong and the proliferation of Tagalog romance books are so shallow that they cheapen the standard of Philippine literature. If you are one of these people, I challenge you to read Ilustrado and I know you will no longer complain that there is no book that you will not be ashamed seeing holding and reading in public like when you are sipping your expensive frappe at your favorite Starbucks outlet. Reading Ilustrado will even get you an image of an cultured or cunio Filipino who is not only supporting a homegrown author but also that of being a bit more intellectual than those domestic helps reading Bob Ongs and Precious Moments novels. Too bad that the book was printed in New York so the minimum-wage employees in our publishing companies did not earn anything from this. Most of my friends here in Goodreads have been singing hosannah in honor of Syjuco. My question is: what now? Did the book make them feel proud that they are Filipinos? My emphatic answer is no. Syjuco showed us who we are. 300 years under the Spanish government ruled by Mexican governors. 30 years under the American government. 3 years under the Japanese emperor. We have a damaged culture and corruption is rampant in our government. More than half of our people are under poverty line. 7 out of 10 Filipinos are experiencing hunger everyday. We all know those, right? We don't need Syjuco and his 7-dollar book to tell us those. Darn. He even has this Erning, Rocky Isip and Boy Bastos jokes as if Syjuco is ridiculing us while we is laughing all the way to the bank from the proceeds of this book. But this depends really on one's taste. For one, I always make sure of having 2 servings of fruits and vegetables every day. When I eat out, I normally order a vegetable dish. I first check what the restaurant offers. If there is nothing interesting, I go for a chopsuey. You can never go wrong with one. It has all my favorite veggies in it and if it is cooked the right way, the carrots, pepper, beans, etc should be crispy and the sauce should be a bit sweet if those vegetables are really fresh. Yum yum. But chopsuey is filling. Ilustrado is a huge book without, sadly, any meaning nor patriotic purpose. Syjuco wasted the opportunity of improving the negative image of his/our country, the Philippines, to the world.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-09-16 00:00:00 Michael Osborne Five things about this book: (1) A good dictionary should be a good companion/reference material. I'm a wide reader, and I think my vocabulary is fair because of the nature of my work, but I thought this book had one flowery word too many. Lots of big words, in my opinion meant more to impress than to express. (2) I didn't want to read more about the sorry state of my country ~ its politics, economy, poverty, and people. When I picked this book, I thought I had a mystery to read about. Instead, what I got was a rehash of the Philippines' recent political upheavals and dramas. (3) Confusing, confusing, confusing. (4) But I definitely loved the stories about Erning Isip, the guy from AMA Computer College, and his life's travails. I couldn't help laughing out loud at Boy Bastos' chronicles, as well. (5) I thought there were some parts that could have been omitted for being irrelevant.