Miguel Syjuco: A Prelude to Philippine Literature in The Making

With the Internet consortium fully grasping the extent of its powers, the 21st century has flagrantly welcomed people from all walks of life to her “create-click-post” bosom. There is never a better time to express and inform oneself: Simply insert a witticism as your Facebook status, and you’ll set the entire news feed forest ablaze. The latest news nowadays often first breaks out on Twitter, with its 140-character limit defining swift sass. Almost everyone has gone through the pains of laboring a blog, over various platforms; to the point even the minutiae of mundane lives are given the full pixel treatment.

It is in this thriving social media that the sea of literary prospects becomes worthy to be explored. Hopeful writers with little experience promote themselves on the Internet, building a portfolio in the process, until merit is uncovered and sets the writer out to ink print possibilities. But self-publishing has serious inconveniences: The lack of discipline and the descent to narcissistic complacency. There is a tendency to exhaust one format and resist honing potentials further, on or offline, hence remaining just another blip on the Google radar. This generation’s creative outlets are massive and far-reaching, yet the majority that is seen and heard is a surfeit of generic prose and poetry, snatches of indulgent talking-head opinion, and the woeful inebriation of apathy disguised as cool — using youth as an excuse to consent the atrophy of masterful literary skill.

Has anyone embarked on the juggernaut to revitalize Philippine literature in recent times? Miguel Syjuco is one man dauntless in breaking that mold. The 33-year-old Manila-born, Montreal-based novelist, fresh from the whirlwind international book tour circuit, is the current salute of the literati, having garnered major acclaim for his metafictional Filipino headtrip, Ilustrado.

Nowhere is the enthusiasm Syjuco gives his art more manifest than in the presence of an audience he hopes to win over — reacquainting the compulsions to effect change through writing, reaffirming a steadfast devotion to the word, and unwavering in his belief that Filipino literature is a symmetry of rich identity and inspired motion.

A refresher course on (winning) history

In 2008, Ilustrado, then still on final revision, was bestowed with the country’s highest literary honor, the Palanca Grand Prize for a Novel. That award, given only once every three years, made Syjuco one of the youngest recipients at 31. It was his first Palanca; for the balikbayan who would have earned an Economics degree had fate not intervened, he outshone that season’s crop with unanimous approval, in a field where weathered contemporaries often dominate.

The Palanca win set the bar for expectations higher in another competition Syjuco entered into: The Man Asian Literary Prize, launched only the year past. A continental counterpart of the prestigious Man Booker Prize, it aims to toast the finest novelists in English from across Asia, and is the perfect springboard to artist representation. Syjuco, having tried but missed with Ilustrado’s basic manuscript on the 2007 Man Asian, recounts the second salvo:

“I went home and spent a year – getting rid of characters, revising, polishing; picking it apart and rethreading it together, and just working for a whole year. And then I submitted it to the 2008 prize, thinking, “Well, you know what? If they didn’t like it the last time, they’re not going to like it this time. But at least I tried my best and I worked a year on it.”

The effort paid off significantly, where from over 150 entries he was included, along with three other distinguished Filipino writers, in the long list of 21. His trepidation increased when he also made it to the short list of five. He arrived on the night of the awarding ceremony in Hong Kong with lukewarm expectations, but was optimistic with the prospect of finally being approached by publishers.

The night broke in rapturous applause as he received the coveted award, for a novel he had persevered for three years. And after another year of editing, copies of Ilustrado are churning volumes under various publishing houses, and as of late have been sold to 17 countries in 13 languages.

Obscurity, fame, and consequences

The genteel Mr. Syjuco, endeared as Chuck to his inner circle, admits that his pursuit in writing was originally a detour. He stayed in the Ateneo for nine years (“I was the super-duper senior there,” he recounts), having botched his first major. He settled for AB English Literature and has never looked back (an English Literature PhD is in progress at the University of Adelaide).  It was in creative thought that Syjuco’s self-esteem flourished, and he credits his mentors (among others Rofel Brion, Jessica Hagedorn, Nick Jose; and the late prolific stalwart of letters NVM Gonzalez) for putting him on the right track.

Even as a resident abroad for most of his life, making it as a writer in distant waters couldn’t come easy. He relishes languishing in obscurity during the early days of his career.  “Taking a page out of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s story about how he would wallpaper his study wall with rejection slips… I did that, which I wouldn’t recommend to any aspiring writer.”  In the process of completing his graduate degrees and writers’ grants from New York to Australia, he moonlighted as a medical guinea pig, a bookie’s assistant, a painter and inventory checker, to name a few. There were also highlights in his colorful CV that were not only impressive but beneficial to his craft: stints with The New Yorker, Time Magazine, Esquire, and The Paris Review, whose celebrated “Writers at Work” series provided the spark to write Ilustrado.

A scion of a prominent political family, Syjuco shunned the shoes that he was expected to fill and took “the path of least resistance”, intimating in an interview with Malaysia’s MPH Quill Magazine that he “wouldn’t be able to stomach the compromises and hypocrisies necessary to succeed in Philippine politics.” With that, he wants to impact his homeland, not with promises, but with prose.

Ilustrado (the title alluding to the current Filipino Diaspora), with its audacious brand of postmodernism, is a running psycho-socio-political commentary on the profile of a nation’s slow descent from grace, as seen through the eyes of Crispin Salvador, the beleaguered literary legend at the center of an unusual murder mystery; and his protégé, curiously named Miguel Syjuco, tasking himself to dissect into Salvador’s labyrinth while managing an excess baggage of his own.

Syjuco, the author, is adamant to refer to his novel as fiction, as he challenges the reader to separate facts from ideas, because “Fiction aspires to be truth.”There are brushstrokes of his life for good measure, but neither is it autobiographical. He prefaces the novel with a sly warning: “All perceived similarities between characters and people living or dead are either purely coincidental or a skewered nerve in your guilty conscience.”

He takes the hype attributed to his debut novel’s success lightly. “I hope it lives up to it though. [I hope this book forms] part of a conversation and encourages introspection. My book — it is what it is. I’m just a guy who’s got these ideas, strong opinions about certain things. I’m still learning. All of these accolades and prizes and attention are great… I’m a human being! Sometimes, especially when I’m feeling insecure: ‘You know what? I’m pretty good, look at me!’ And then I sit down and try to write a short story, or I try to work on my next novel, and it’s still the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. It’s absolutely humbling.”

A second novel is in the pipeline, brazenly titled I Was the President’s Mistress, and a name reprises itself (or not!): meet Miguel Syjuco, the ghostwriter of a Filipina starlet. On a recent web interview: “I’d prefer not to talk about it except to say that it’s about the Philippines and is a meditation on the different forms of a society’s power and how they play off each other.”

“The possibilities of fiction; the fiction of possibilities”

Syjuco’s triumph bodes well for the fellowship of the pen, especially in a country where reading has dwindled to a mass market paperback-driven pastime. What advice does he want to impart, especially to young Filipino authors who wish to emulate his feat?

o        On authenticity and The Great Filipino Novel:

He dispels the notion that in order for a composition to be considered The Great Filipino Novel (he chides the label as “damaging”), it must contain certain references of exoticness to cater to a broader (i.e., global) audience. “I think we all have a different perspective of the Filipino experience, a special slice of that. I think that authenticity comes from being authentic to who you are as a writer, and as a person.”

o        On the myth of writer’s block, finding inspiration and the Muse:

“Those are just mystical excuses not to write. Writing is a craft; it is an art, but it’s not magic.” He stresses that in order to be a writer, one needs to be a good reader first. Among his literary fathers: Nick Joaquin, Bienvenido Santos, Carlos Bulosan, and Gregorio Brillantes; Ernest Hemingway, Vladimir Nabokov, Jorge Luis Borges, and Roberto Bolaño. He says that writing should be treated like a profession, a formidable habit he calls “butt-in-chair”. “When I started writing [Ilustrado], I said, ‘All I’m going to do is finish it. I’m going to work even when it’s difficult; I’m going to work every day. On some days, it was inspired – things came together and I worked great. On some days it’s very painful, but I worked all the time. And I think that’s really the way for any writer to do it. Dispel those myths and believe in yourself.”

o        On selecting a topic:

“In all the creative writing classes I’ve ever had, people say ‘Write what you know,’ but that’s the first novel sort, when you get self-absorbed and upset with your own world and you write about what you know. But after you’ve gone through that, there’s also ‘Write what you want to know.’ There’s so much in the world that deserves to be written about. Literature is a conversation; an articulation of what one witnesses, thinks, believes, hopes, or fears. Butt-in-chair, yes, but eyes wide open; get outside once in a while and find what’s going on in the world.” His criteria for a good work of art: “Honesty. Clarity. Elegance. And craftsmanship.” 

And as for the ongoing trend of dotcom literary sensations, he views it as a double-edged sword. He lauds modern technology as an information convergence, and though he’s on Facebook, he refrains from self-publishing online because “the Internet allows everyone with an opinion to feel like they’ve got an audience.” Syjuco prefers the thrill of the chase, and adheres in the traditional route of establishing a critical rapport with the industry, where craft is constantly compelled to be refined.

“Mine is a life of working quietly at my desk, going out into the world I am creating, connecting with my characters.”

Hopefully with these insights, someone will rise to the occasion and admirably endeavor in advancing our Filipino literature.