IN THE study of 21stCentury Literature from the Philippines featuring the stories of Peter Solis Nery, 19-time Palanca awardee including the Hall of Fame, the following question is often asked (which, of course, your dutiful writer answers):
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What cultural aspects did you want to convey in “Ang Kapid,” “Candido,” “Donato Bugtot”, and “Si Padre Olan kag ang Dios”?
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In “Ang Kapid,” I returned to disabled and handicapped persons through the patients of a mental hospital.
How crazy are the “crazy people” as we call them?
Could they be just extremely smarter than us, and simply misunderstood?
In a way, I think I was also protesting how the medical profession sometimes just dismisses their patients as statistics.
If you want to get deep into the story, you will also interpret in it how families, healthcare workers, and medical professionals may treat the mentally ill very lowly.
In our time with the Covid-19 pandemic, mental health issues also came to the surface.
And somehow it explains the readers’ newfound interest in “Ang Kapid.”
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It’s pretty obvious that I’m making a statement about superstitions and soothsaying even as I write about the Philippine brave and courageous ideals for freedom and independence set against the Philippine Revolution in “Candido,” a story about a Katipunero who was among the 19 martyrs of Aklan.
“Candido” is a beautifully played plot on predicting fortunes and prophesying the future of one historical character.
But I hope that readers do not miss my gentle and sensitive scene where his lover talked about the differences in the traits of Filipino males and females: that males are a destructive force responsible for wars, killing, pillaging; while females are the creative force as seen their tasks of cooking, weaving, giving birth and nurturing children.
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“Donato Bugtot” is plain and simple a morality story anchored on the biblical “stone that the builders rejected which became the cornerstone.”
It harps on the theme of not judging by appearances.
It is a story about a hunchback who became a perfect tissue match for his handsome twin brother who needed a kidney.
I’m pretty sure that serious readers will also find many issues about family dynamics and family dysfunctions in the story.
But as to the main purpose why I wrote the story the way it turned out, I just wanted readers to realize and count their biggest and most ignored blessing—the gift of life!
Being here, and now.
Existing in a cruel world maybe, but existing just the same.
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I wanted to showcase our current Filipino church dynamics in “Si Padre Olan kag ang Dios.”
I focused on the Roman Catholic tradition because, after all, I was a seminarian for a few years.
But more than that, I think what really made me write the story was my adult understanding that “God is not a waiter who takes our orders,” and more importantly, “that we cannot twist the arm of God by our religious rituals and piety.”
I wanted to write a story of adult spirituality (as opposed to medieval worship) for our new millennium.
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As for cultural dynamics, there’s the power play in church circles, the laymen and the clergy, and there’s the role of women and their service to an organization and institution that prevent them from being ordained or serving in the highest positions.
“Si Padre Olan kag ang Dios” is a highly praised work that is often benchmarked as “mature Peter Solis Nery.”
I am okay with that.
I have labored to imbue the piece of much local color as seen in the mentioned and much described mangoes of Guimaras, the Nuesta Señora de la Candelaria in the Jaro Cathedral, and the feast of St. John the Baptist in Jordan, Guimaras.
Furthermore, as far as cultural values are concerned, I think I was pretty successful in painting the celebrated religiosity of Ilonggos, or even Western Visayans, in this story.
And I’ve also included a story within a story that featured an enduring legend of the growing statue of the Virgin Mary in Jaro.
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These five stories are just a part of the growing PSN literary corpus.
I continue to write literature of all genres while writing for our dear beloved Panay News.
I can be crazy in my column.
I have no pretensions about that.
I know my insights and quirks are often outrageous.
But that’s my gift to people who take life so seriously.
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Writing for Panay News is like a therapy for me.
I cannot write literature of the Palanca award caliber-type all my days.
My Life as Art allows me to be more balanced.
It’s “low-brow” literature where I can be funny, charming, sexy, and all-powerful. Haha.
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Literature people do not like me because I straddle two saddles.
They hate that I am superior (because I win the awards) in “serious” literature.
They hate that I enjoy “low-brow” popularity as the premier agent provocateur of the region, and I have a wide circulation newspaper that backs me up.
Well, eff them haters!
I don’t need to be liked by them.
I spit at them losers!
I live for my fans, who I love dearly.
And where there is love, there is peace.
Peace deep, deep, deep in my heart!/PN
