Notes on The Childhood of Jesus

 

A writer deliberately wanted to be inscrutable on the page, and it was the fault of the reader not to see the thicket for the bush. In the beginning were words, and the words were with the novelist, and the words were inscrutable to the reader. 

The title of the book was a devil trick of the novelist. The first few chapters were not indicative of any hallowed subject. The nature of the divine did not knock on the page. It was not simply granted for the atheistic reader. But why invoke the son of God into the discourse if this was not a superhero's tale?

David, the precocious boy in the book, was a Chess whiz. He easily beat an old man in a blitz chess. The man would surrender and say, 'I'll think twice before taking you on again ... You've got a real devil in you.' Can you make it any more obvious, Sir?

There definitely was something different about the boy's disposition. He doesn't like chess even if he is very talented in it. He doesn't flinch when a physical threat of violence was made right in front of him. He doesn't like violence. There was something of a pacifist, if not divine, in his comportment. But the Coetzee school of writing still resisted the equivalence of his childhood with that of sweet Jesus.

* * *

A novel is not a vaccine that could trigger an immune response to the reader. But there are certain writers who have a way with stringing words together that could trigger mass delusion on the part of the thirsty flock. An extreme case, at the end of the spectrum, was the Coelho school of writing. This was a writing characterized by an imposition of hack ideas and quack medicine about finding alignment in the universe for the circumstances to constellate into your own Personal Legend.

Another extreme case, at the other side of the spectrum, was another instance of "placebo effect", a novel variant. This was the Coetzee school of writing. This writing was not sociable, hardly helpful, full of ludic misdirections. It was not the sub-meter accurate GPS device truth-seekers yearn for. 

'What did she mean? Do you really want to push something inside her?'

'It was only a manner of speaking. She meant that I was trying to force my ideas on her. And she was right. One should not try to force ideas upon people.'

It was quite a leap: the forcing of ideas on someone (or in a novel) was satanized as sexual assault. I may be taking the dialogue out of context. In this novel, it was quite impossible to force meaning out of words when it was the meaninglessness of life itself that seemed to emerge like a castle of sand.

On page 42, a running joke on rats to prove a point that we were not reading a gospel.

'It seems to me,' he continues, 'that a growing child needs more variety, more nourishment. One cannot live on bread alone. It is not a universal food. You don't know where I can buy meat, do you ... ?

Álvaro scratches his head. 'Not around here, not around the docklands. There are people who catch rats, I have heard tell. There is no shortage of rats. But for that you will need a trap, and I don't know offhand where you would lay your hands on a good rat trap. You would probably have to make it yourself. You could use wire, with some kind of trip mechanism.'

'Rats?'

'Yes. Haven't you seen them? Whenever there are ships there are rats.'

'But who eats rats? Do you eat rats?'

'No, I wouldn't dream of it. But you asked where you could get meat, and that is all I can suggest.'

He stares long into Álvaro's eyes. He can see no sign that he is joking. Or if it is a joke, it is a very deep joke.'

A trap with a trip mechanism for catching rats? Why belabor the talk of rats when the suggestion was absurd in the first place? And this coming from a vegan author of The Lives of Animals. 

And: "One cannot leave on bread alone". We know what you're trying to do there, Mr Coetzee.

Later on, a villainous character was introduced, a new worker in the docks.

The next day a stranger makes his appearance at the docks. He is small and wiry; his skin is burned a deep walnut shade; his eyes are deep set, his nose hooked like a hawk's beak. He wears faded jeans streaked with machine oil, and scarred leather boots.

The amount of words Coetzee heaped upon the character, Señor Daga, indicated that this guy was up to no good. Here at least was a novelistic trope we could rely on.

Come pay time, all workers lined up to receive their pay. Señor Daga received money from the paymaster.

'What's this?' says Daga.

'Your pay for the days you have worked,' says Álvaro.

Daga picks up the coins and with a quick, contemptuous movement flings them back in the paymaster's face.

'What's that for?' says Álvaro.

'Rat's wage.'

'That's the rate. That's what you earned. That's what we all earn. Do you want to say we are all rats?'

Later there was fight between Señor Daga and Álvaro. Daga wounded the latter with a knife before mounting the paymaster's bicycle and skirting away.

The boy David would ask his guardian: 'Why is he called Señor Daga?'

Simón the guardian would reply: I don't know if Daga is his real name. It doesn't matter. Names don't matter. If he wants to call himself Daga, then let him.'

Throughout this part I was laughing. Names do matter, especially in the Coetzee school of writing. In Tagalog, the word daga, with the accent in the second syllable, actually means a rat. A rat's wage for a rat. Tit for tat.

* * *

So much for the first seven chapters of this first book in the Jesus trilogy. In spite of the flashes of humor, there was no reprieve for the reader. The opaqueness of its presentation, borrowing from the Kafka school of narrative, was jarring. So far, the experience (as perceived by this reader) was antithetical to the communion of reader and writer as perceived by Martin Amis.

The relationship between the writer and the reader is a mysterious one, and rather unexamined in my view. At its simplest, it’s a matter of straightforward transmission: I am telling a story. But it goes much deeper than that, until reader and writer become identical, almost indivisible. One mustn’t, of course, baby the reader, but one must be very considerate of them. The frame of this novel is a direct dialogue with the reader.

Contrary to what were emphasized above, the novelist in question (Coetzee) was very inconsiderate of the reader. To hell with the reader. And isn't it concerning that reader and writer could become one and the same, like one is being possessed by the other? That's a disenchanting thought. It's like forcing ideas on the reader.

The healing powers of mediocre fiction

"'I'm thinking,' [Montano] said to me in a sensible and very thoughtful tone, 'that Walter Benjamin speculated about the possible relationship that exists between the art of storytelling and the healing of illnesses.'" The narrator of another of Enrique Vila-Matas's lecture novels thus shared his conversation with his son, Montano, in the novel of the same name (trans. Jonathan Dunne).

I was forced to confess the truth, namely that I had no idea about this curious relationship between narrative and healing. So Montano explained, in a sweet and friendly voice, that the connection between storytelling and curing illnesses had been suggested to Walter Benjamin by a German friend who told him about the healing powers of his wife's hands, saying that their movements were very expressive, but it was impossible to describe their expressiveness, because it was as if those hands were telling a story.

'In such a way,' said my son, 'in such a peculiar way, Walter Benjamin was reminded of an intimate scene: that of the boy who, when he falls ill, is sent to bed by his mother, who then comes and sits by his side and starts telling him stories. As a result of this memory, Walter Benjamin wondered whether narrative might not in fact be the most propitious atmosphere, the most favourable condition, for a large number of cures.'

This talk of healing, illness, and storytelling was a main concern of the novel. At the outset, the novel's speaker, who happens to be a literary critic, admitted that he is afflicted with "literature sickness", similar in symptoms to his son's disease, what he termed "Montano's malady", a kind of writer's block. We learned that Montano was the author of a "dangerous novel" about writers who were unable to put pen to paper.

The form of the novel was a lecture, although it was supposedly culled from diary or journal entries of the critic. We might as well say "speculative criticism" (an unfortunate term, considering that every criticism is some kind of speculation, and yet speculative fiction also suffers from the same terminological inadequacy), because the diarist's very literariness intruded on his writing. He was literature-sick because he analyzes every aspect of his life as if it was a text, as if every lifestyle was a writing style. He was "saturated with so many books and so many quotations" that it was impossible for him to escape the labyrinthine ways in which literary ideas connect and interconnect. While he was trying very hard to prevent his mind from making associations between texts and real life, his son was desperately trying to recapture his ability to string words together. Both were exhausted or fatigued by the same literariness.

This 'textual' intrusion of literature into life was of course not an unusual phenomenon, especially in writers. And the idea of storytelling having healing properties was already present in the myths and legends. The 'germ' of the novel as the very antibiotic, so to speak, against real and imagined ailments.

In Rene O. Villanueva's memoirs (Im)Personal: Gabay sa Panulat at Pagmamanunulat ((Im)Personal: Guide to Writing and the Writerly), the writer used as his primary metaphor for writing the idea of a magic cure from the epic of Ibong Adarna, the Adarna bird. The story was about how three princes set out to capture the mythical bird whose renowned beautiful song was the only (magical) antidote to the mysterious malady that afflicted their father king. For Villanueva, this epic about a bird's enchanted song was the very embodiment of storytelling's miraculous ability to cure individuals and nations of individual and societal ills. (César Aira, of course, had his own potent and playful concoction with his own miraculous cures.)

Let it be said that the assumed ability (or power) of storytelling to cure maladies was not monopolized by epics and legends or great modernist works such as those by Vila-Matas or Aira. Mediocre and genre fiction, insofar as we understand the terms 'mediocre' and 'genre' at face value, had their own special thing going. A case in point is Stephen King, whose own writing manual On Writing was proof of the storyteller's own belief in his own formulaic writing.

The first story I did actually publish was in a horror fanzine issued by Mike Garrett of Birmingham, Alabama (Mike is still around, and still in the biz). He published this novella under the title "In a Half-World of Terror," but I still like my title much better. Mine was "I Was a Teen-Age Graverobber." Super Duper! Pow!

I confess I was not able to finish the book due to its shallow prescriptions and self-justifications. King had only to describe his writing process and validate his own personal narrative style and literary preferences for the magic to appear on the page and his fans to applaud and be cured. Pow! Super!

A narrative can be said to have two poles—form and content—to be able to function as a story. But it requires a third element (substance) for discerning readers to be able to attach values and judgements, not value-judgements, in a work of fiction and to distinguish stories that matter from those that do not.

Consider another popular medicine—The Alchemist (1988) by Paulo Coelho. This unprecedented bestseller, with more than 65 million copies (and counting) sold in original Portuguese and in various translations, was also world record holder for being translated into the most number of languages (56 and counting). I came across a copy of its very recent translation, Ang Alkemista (Lampara Books, 2014), a Filipino version by Edgardo B. Maranan. The translator was a great poet and translator who contributed to the marvelous reconstruction of the epic version of the Palawan epic Kudaman (1991).

Ang Alkemista is a tale of a shepherd who exchanged his sheltered life in a seminary for a life on the road. It was a tale of adventures and various encounters with characters who are destined to define his nomadic existence.

I can't say I was not warned about Coelho. Roberto Bolaño called the Brazilian's prose poor "in terms of lexical richness", in terms of "richness of vocabulary", scoffing at the latter's induction to the Brazilian Academy of Letters. For Bolaño, no language was capable of withstanding any translation if it is in the first place written in pale prose. The whiff of this poorly contrived language may be hard to assess in translation. What could more obviously be detected was the philosophical richness (or impoverishment) of the translated text. Ang Alkemista lacked the complex and fertile ideas that would propel the novel beyond its fabulist intents. Coelho himself confessed in the introduction that the novel was meant to be symbolic and not realist.

Sa pamamagitan ng librong ito, ipinamamana ko ang lahat ng aking natutunan sa buhay. Sinikap ko ring parangalan ang mga dakilang manunulat na nakatuklas sa Unibersal na Lengguwahe—sina Hemingway, Blake, Borges (na gumamit rin ng kasaysayang Persiyano sa isa niyang kuwento), Malba, Tahan, at marami pang iba.

[With this book, I bequeathed everything I learned in life. I also tried to honor the great writers who discovered the Universal Language—Hemingway, Blake, Borges (who also used a Persian story in one of his tales), Malba, Tahan, and many others.]

The Universal Language that Coelho spoke of is the simplicity of his words, and yet it is not only language that clothes an entire novelistic enterprise. For the symbol or metaphor to work, it must still be grounded in reality. The substance of ideas and the way they are developed are what makes for a convincing tale. How Coelho brewed his own alchemical ideas, his manner of punctuating words and branding them and selling them as proper nouns, can be an insult to a reader's intelligence. Yet for some, no words of healing and redemption could be sweeter. The constant reference to the quest for one's "Personal Legend" (Sariling Alamat) is too farcical to be taken seriously.

"Sinasabi ng librong iyan ang parehong bagay na sinasabi ng halos lahat ng libro sa mundo," patuloy ng matanda. "Inilalarawan ang kawalan ng abilidad ng tao na piliin ang mga Sariling Alamat. At natapos yan na sinasabing lahat ay naniniwala sa pinakamalaking kasinungalingan sa mundo."

"Ano ang pinakamalaking kasinungalinan sa mundo?" tanong ng binata na gulat na gulat.

"Ito: na sa isang tiyak na panahon sa buhay natin, nawawalan tayo ng kontrol sa nangyayari sa atin, at ang buhay natin ay kontrolado ng tadhana. 'Yan ang pinakamalaking kasinungaliang sa mundo."

["That book tells you the same thing all books in the world tell," the old man continued. "It describes the people's lack of ability to chart their own Personal Legends. And it concludes that all men believe in the greatest lie in the world."

"What is the greatest lie in the world?" asked the very shocked young man.

"This: that at a certain moment in our lives, we lose control of the events around us, and our lives are at the mercy of destiny. That's the greatest lie in the world."]

This. The greatest lie in the world. Sealed in a case and delivered with utter solemnity. The greatest lie in the world. The underlining was implicitly supplied.

And what about the "mysterious energy" and the "one great truth in this planet"?

"Sa paglipas ng panahon, isang mahiwagang lakas ang mangungumbinsi sa kanila na imposible nang matupad ang kanilang Sariling Alamat."

Para sa binata, walang saysay ang sinasabi ng matanda. Ngunit nais niyang malaman kung ano ang "mahiwagang lakas"; hahanga sa kanya ang anak ng mangangalakal kapag sinabi niya ito!

"Isang tila negatibong lakas, ngunit sa totoo ay nagpapakita sa iyo kung paano makakamit ang Sariling Alamat. Ito ang naghahanda ng iyong kaluluwa at kalooban, dahil may isang dakilang katotohanan sa planetang ito: kahit sino ka man, at kung ano man ang iyong ginagawa, kapag talagang may hinahangad ka, ang pagnanais na iyon ay nagmumula sa kaluluwa ng uniberso. Iyon ang misyon mo sa lupa."

["With the passage of time, a mysterious energy will convince the people it is no longer possible to realize their own Personal Legends."

For the young man, the old man did not make any sense. But he wanted to know what this "mysterious energy" is; the merchant's daughter would admire him if he shared this idea with her.

"A kind of negative energy, but in truth you will see for yourself how to realize your own Personal Legend. It prepares your own soul and being, because there is one great truth in this planet: whoever you are, whatever you do, when you truly desire something, that desire emanates from the soul of the universe. That is your mission in life."]

The writer here was enamored by his own proselytization. If I've read this book at an impressionable age, fifteen, twenty years ago, I could have become one of this book's high priests. But the medicine was lost on me. Maybe I suffered enough of a bookish malady and became immune to a sincere dosage of planetary truths.

The works of writers like King and Coelho (and Murakami Haruki, in certain novels) were a brew of self-validation and legendary fabulism. The form and content are fantastical, even magical, but the ideas are depauperate. Their avid readers, if they read it in the right frame of mind and in the right context, get their fix in this kind of thing. To borrow a concept from medicine, this is the "placebo effect" of mediocre writing. Technically it is a false cure, but some readers are administered a tyranny of quasi-philosophical ideas and became all the better for it.

The deep, healing novel was repository of all things profound. The tried and tested genre remained a potent drug. Even Bolaño's bookish pharmacists who snorted at the "great, imperfect, torrential works" would go for the perfect cough syrup. Storytelling had never been so curative. Even if wisdom always cautioned that prevention is better than cure. Should that prevent us from pursuing our own Personal Legends?