Posts Tagged "Butch Dalisay"

Rolling the Rock in Dalisay’s novels: existentialist reading of "Soledad’s Sister" and "Killing Time in a Warm Place"

Posted by ai on Aug 12, 2008 in CRACKING REVIEWS, CRITICIZING A HOBBY | 0 comments

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“He doesn’t know what he’s reading…”[Noel told Benny.]…

“Who does? [Noel said again]…we must’ve taken up ‘The Foolish Old Man Who Moved the Mountain’ a dozen times this year, and to this day I don’t see why or how the poor man’s labors should be delivered of him by angels, of all things. Why angels? Are we supposed to believe in angels…? Of course I realize it’s just a/ figure, but it seems to me an inaapropriate one.” (72-73)

In Killing Time in a Warm Place there is a ubiquitous inquiry of who should be obeyed and how much should be obeyed, but as to why should there be obedience, the novel asks rather rhetorically through the point of view of the protagonist who has an eye for irony and absurdity.

Butch Dalisay's Series of Ridiculous Events*

Posted by ai on Aug 12, 2008 in CRITICIZING A HOBBY | 0 comments

So what happened to Soledad? shoots the first question of the typical plot-fanatic reader. Indeed Soledad’s Sister is a story of a hundred pieces, none of them about what transpired in Jeddah when the woman in the box (and in the novel’s title) died.

Soledad’s Sister launch and the author’s lecture on Filipino novels (Bulwagang Rizal, CAL, UP Diliman, July 31, 2008)

It ends with what could have been the first chapter: a sociologist and an inspector speculate on what or who killed the allegedly drowned foreigner—or to be politically incorrect, alien. And this could have been the springboard of the following series of ridiculous events:
Pinay OFW Soledad Z. Cabahug returns to country dead, drowned as autopsied, and decomposing in a crate labelled with the name and the address of her sister, Aurora.