“I know you’re wondering – yes, it’s true: his birdie is thick, as he’s always saying, but like a thumb is to a finger, and hard to find beneath the paunch and hair that make a nest for it to rest on its two eggs – or repose, if metaphor’s more politically correct re: the pitutoys of powerful men.”
We know we’re off to a fine romp with the opening paragraph of Miguel Syjuco’s second novel that dives right into the meat of things, as the main character Vita Nova is interviewed by her memoir ghostwriter “Miguel Syjuco.” We first met them both and many of the characters in this story in Syjuco’s award-winning debut novel Ilustrado (2010).
“I Was the President’s Mistress!!” is the tell-all memoir of Vita, a film starlet who is the paramour of President Fernando V. Estregan, a former boxer turned head of state (elsewhere described by Syjuco as a blend of several Philippine presidents, being “all of those and none of them”).
Vita gets mixed up in a whole bunch of shenanigans: the Sexy-Sexygate scandal that rocks the government’s foundations, an assassination attempt on the president by his first love, a national snap election, and an impeachment led by Senator Lucy Lontok.
The book is “Miguel’s” file of transcripts of interviews with Vita and 12 others – politicians, a bishop, a journalist, and a jailbird, among others as colorful. Shades of Jesus and his disciples?
I do wish, though, that “Miguel” had also interviewed the “anti human rights former human rights lawyer,” spokesperson Hari Pukeh, who, with the rest, is “deft at playing musical chairs in those seconds between power ballads in our country’s long cotillion.”
Each “transcript” meanders in and around the character’s personal past and present as well as the storyline. This convoluted treatment may increase the level of difficulty in negotiating the myriad narratives that have little to do with pushing the storyline forward and everything to do with fleshing out a (tongue in cheek) picture of Philippine society and government. Plot? Who needs one when there are so many scandalous goings-on and juicy gossip about personages that mirror those in reality?
The story is rife with countless cultural, political, and Philippine-centric references that might puzzle non-Filipino readers. On the flipside, many of the jokes and asides are of foreign extraction transplanted to Philippine scenes.
The joy is in the writing, lush and complex, structured in the manner of a mille crepe cake: top layer, the hijinks; slice deeper and taste the vicissitudes and outrages of Philippine society, acted out by characters that could be thinly-veiled versions of the real thing.
What makes the book a worthwhile read are the serious discourses that show its point is to skewer the powerful and mighty and shake the sleepers awake. One of my pet passages has veteran journo Furio Almondo, M.A., Ph.D. saying, in between bouts of tobacco-induced coughing and gulps of his favorite tipple:
“Bonifacio’s spirit must make our manifesto. To each whose voice isn’t heard, to us empowered with useless votes, to they at protests silent and ignored, to those who work for less each day, to we who are crushed by debt or toil, to all who suffer selfish leaders far too long: Raise your voices, make them loud!”
I asked Syjuco why the long gap between his two novels.
“I’ve wandered a bit between books, longer than I would’ve liked,” he replied. “But I realize now that I needed to, and that my interim years of newspaper work, my political and intellectual growth, and my stymied early drafts of my novel were all necessary to my development as a writer, citizen, and human being.
“IWTPM!! represents all that, and to a large extent asks the reader to engage in a similar with difficult ideas, politics, and complications of the world. The reader is asked to wander, to react, to push back, to be lost, and to, finally, I hope, in the end, find their own understanding, and stand by it as their own, hard-fought and all that much clearer.”
He added that underneath everything, IWTPM!! is “a satire of Philippine politics and a defense of free speech, journalism, democracy, and civic responsibility. I dare say it’s also a lot of fun.”
And I agree. If you want to enjoy a hearty serving of humor, lots of sexy-sexy but also intellectual dialogue, a plethora of details that puts the ‘thick’ in Geertz’s “thick description,” and the challenge of figuring out all the hints and who’s who amid pondering the reality of the social and political condition of the Philippines, this one’s for you.
The book hits shelves on April 5, “thirty-five days before our elections,” Syjuco said. “It was the soonest I could get my publisher to ready it.”
Connect with the author at www.syjuco.com.
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After a hiatus during the first and second years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature (CPMA) are back, via a cryptic announcement on their website: “The 70th [CPMA] is now accepting entries for the year 2022.” There are no other details. I guess we just have to wait and see.
For comments and feedback, you may reach the author on Facebook and Twitter: @DrJennyO
I WAS THE PRESIDENT’S MISTRESS!!
By Miguel Syjuco
384 pages, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
04/05/22 // P890.10 for pre-order at Fully Booked
