HOUSE OF MEMORY: NOVEL WRITING IN THE CYBER AGE OR BEING CHARLSON ONG IN THE TIME OF BOB ONG

by Charlson Ong

I first heard the name a couple of years ago from a twenty something appliance store employee who hailed from Laguna. I had won a massage chair in a raffle held by the store and the employee had delivered the item to our home and installed it. As a bonus for his services, I gave the employee a copy of my book of short stories, proudly dedicating it to him and the rest of the staff who had lured me into the store and unwittingly gifted me with an electronic massage chair.

‘Writer ho rin pala kayo,' he said, surprised. Kamag-anak ho ninyo si Bob Ong? Nabasa ko na lahat ng libro niya.'

It was the first of many occasions that I would be similarly queried and was tempted to answer in the affirmative if only to boost the sales of my own books.

So there were two Ongs in the literary scene, I realized, just as there are two Murakamis and two Amisses. I sauntered off to the bookstore to check out the competition, read a few amusing vignettes but chose not to pick up a copy. I would like to think that I was pleasantly ‘underwhelmed' by the ‘other' Ong but who knows? Perhaps I was just in denial or perhaps it was a matter of self-preservation- buying his book, after all, would be like voting for the other guy in a secret ballot for a position one publicly disdains but secretly desires. In any case, I figured it was my own book that required patronage in order to extend its shelf life, so, as always I bought a few more copies of my novel to give away to the neighbors.

Novelist Abdon Balde Jr., who also serves as consultant to a large bookstore chain, says that sales of Bob Ong's latest books rival if not surpass those of DepED-required staples like the Noli Me Tangere in many parts of the country. Balde insists that Bob Ong can no longer be dismissed as a passing fad by academics and chides us eggheads for not taking the author seriously.

He may be right and I am among those who haven't read enough of Bob Ong to fairly discuss his work. Still, some things are well known. First, Bob Ong is a product or child of ‘new media.' He made his early mark on the web where his site ‘Bobong Pinoy' drew a sizeable following and earned him his pseudonym when a letter sender reportedly referred to the unnamed site master as ‘Mr. Bob Ong.' Consequently, many of his books appear to be collections of blogs. Second, his identity remains a secret to the public.

The fact that Bob Ong has ‘crossed over' to print in a big way underscores the continued viability, if not prominence, of traditional media. Although his fans can access some of Ong's works on line, a Bob Ong book may have become a symbol of ‘hipness' among a certain crowd just as many teen-agers like to run around with their personal copies of ‘Twilight' or the latest Harry Potter.

Bob Ong may have his reasons for remaining incognito, but his decision seems to have benefited as well the marketing scheme of his publishers. We can only guess as to how readers will react should he ever decide to make himself known. Will the work seem less amusing once people can hang a face and personal history to it? Will the burden of recognition weigh heavy on the author?

Bob Ong's success disproves the notion that Filipinos don't read and won't buy books not required for classroom or professional use. Of course Filipino romance novels have always sold well as have the works of more ‘serious' writers like Lualhati Bautista- due in part to filmic versions- but Ong, I think sells to a wider demographic, his last two books are novels- one featuring a Filipino super hero- and could be harbingers for more genre writing in the country.

The first reason for buying books is information. Readers want answers. We want to improve our finances, sex lives, feng shui, as well as our chances in the hereafter. Then we want to be entertained- to be amused, aroused, haunted, horror stricken, spine tingled. All these, can of course be gotten from movies but I suspect that the time of the Filipino spy thriller, crime fiction, horror novel, science fiction is also at hand. Many of our creative writing majors are writing books for emergent genre publishers. The market for local books is, I believe, a youth market. The next Philippine best seller may yet be written by a Bob Tindig Balahibo or Corina Cygnus Delta.

Where radio and television cater to the mass audience, the web actually serves niche markets of aficionados and from these on- line groups could emerge our genre masters.

And what of the literary novel that offers no easy answers, fast entertainment or quick comfort? Will it survive in an age of ever faster, glitzier communication and video games? Who will want to read a novel when he or she has five thousand friends on- line whose every whim and whine is a touch key away? How write a love scene when graphic sex is so readily available for public viewing? What complex narrative can appeal to people who share few common cultural icons and myths and whose collective memory seem so exasperatingly short term?

Your guess is as good as mine but our novelists continue to do their work despite the lure of more profitable calling. If poets are the unacknowledged legislators of their time, fiction writers are unsung chroniclers.

My present work in progress, Blue Angel, White Shadow, began as an idea for a musical. A musician friend of mine and I were wondering about the dearth of memorable Filipino musicals in recent years when I thought of writing a musical set in an antebellum house in Binondo that is about to be sold off by its young bankrupt owner and forthwith demolished.

It would feature the ghosts of various owners of the house through the last century, trapped in their memories and their music, always bickering but finally coming together to help save their earthly abode before ‘crossing over to the light.'

But I eventually found myself working on a prose narrative and gave in to my instincts. At some point I realized I had to ‘see' the house for myself. I had been working based on a mental model but craved for a real world version. I went to Binondo to look at some old houses and how they have been transformed. I knew my grandfather used to own a store in Sto. Cristo. (I was born in the district but was raised in the suburbs of San Juan .) I even managed to sneak inside a number of abodes.

But the houses disappointed me. Somehow, they refused the memories I offered; they had enough of their own. Every house I saw seemed to suggest a different tale and to take me further away from my original intentions. I was really in search of the house in my mind. It was a house I had constructed in parts from remembered stories and occasions.

Still, whatever else they have become- stores, warehouses, dorms, brothels- the original structures I saw have remained viable because of their architecture- that of the bahay na bato. This reminded me of how the novel can only work when built upon a solid architectural idea whatever else may later accrue. Novels can be found upon architecture as upon ideas of cuisine, geography, or the seasons.

One way of conceiving the novel, then, is to think of it as a house of many rooms. A living room where characters present their everyday selves to the world, a dining room or kitchen where they indulge their real pleasures, a bed room where they enjoy intimacies, a prayer room where they can be transcendental, a tool room where they can be useful, a washroom where they can expunge their sins, an attic where they keep their darkest secrets, and finally, a toilet where they can at last be alone and at peace.

Then, the novelist has to fill up the rooms with characters who may or may not like the décor, the woodwork, the furniture, the upholstery, the plumbing, the food, the neighborhood, the rest of the world, God, and most importantly, each other. They may or may not want to kill the architect, the mason, the carpenter, the President, the Pope, and most importantly each other. They can or cannot get it right, get it up, or get it down.

Marcel Proust's mostly autobiographical ‘Remembrances of things past,' (A la recherché du temps perdu ) (1913) is considered as among the pioneers of the modern novel. On the surface it isn't about anything very exciting. When Proust became sickly during his thirties, he retired to a sedentary life- an undertaking I suspect many of us wish we could afford- and embarked upon a long leisurely work, full of minute detail in which was imprisoned, as in a net, his whole experience of his life. He revived the salon life he craved in all its observances.

When the first part of the book, Swann's Way, came out, the fresh and detailed recollection of childhood attracted some attention but Proust had to partly fund his own publication. Eventually, however, his influence became considerable as Proust introduced into the European novel an analytical method comparable to that of Freud. Proust also explores the idea of ‘creative' or psychological time ala Henri Bergson. His characters aren't presented in the 19 th century fashion as fixed psychological agents of virtue or vice, but are always in the process of change and continual re-creation.

Still, critics observe that Proust's success was due to the very thing that may have told against his wider, lasting reputation. His characters, beginning with the ‘I' of the book are exceptional, an erotic and mysterious group who have little to do with the rest of humanity. Most readers, it is argued, can only be indifferent to the fate of idle, privileged individuals who care for little more than social life.

Proust's true gift to us, however, as with other great writers, was his vision, his way of seeing his world and his life since it is a method that we may similarly employ in our own fashion. The detailed observation of life, after all- whether it claims to be fictional or otherwise- can be as valid for peasant life as it is for bourgeois or aristocratic ones. In detailing one life, Proust was really celebrating every life, all life. The individual matters, the individual transforms: one person, one vote, many fetishes. The individual has since been the mainstay of the modern novel as well as liberal democracy.

And what of the countless bloggers on the web daily detailing their foibles and follies? They can be indulged or ignored but no longer silenced. We are witnessing the making of many forms of literatures on line and off: democracy on steroids, the empire of chatter. Again, one can only guess where it is all headed. But for one who remains blessedly blogless, faceless and untwittered, a midsummer's tale still goes down well with brandy.

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