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BY PETER SOLIS NERY
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The Insatiable
THE ILONGGO writer Melecio F. Turao, author of “A Few Inflammables” (poems), and “The Interior of Sleep” (short stories), has just finished putting together “Insatiable: A Literary Biography of Peter Solis Nery”. It is a disturbing book.
I’m not very sure if it is only I who find the book disturbing. Or, if I find it disturbing only because I am the subject of the biography.
But it is a book that delves beyond the public persona of the Peter Solis Nery that you used to know. Or that I let you know.
And what’s beyond the accessible Peter is quite disturbing, to say the least.
I’ve been telling you again and again, I am more than my tone in this column; or in any other newspaper that I write for now; or contributed to in the past, for that matter.
And I’m definitely more than everything that you can find out about me on Google.
If you’ve been reading my very short poems here, my three-liners, you would have also come across my romantic and sentimental side; or my erotic and sexy side. Which is, still, of course, not the whole of me.
If you’ve been following my literary career, and Palanca triumphs, you would have also enjoyed my great imagination; my skillful craftsmanship and signature strong tragi-comic voice, and my compassionate tone for the problems of humanity, and the cares of the world.
If you are my social media fan and follower, you would have already known that I love my public. That I do think of my followers when I post something on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
Mel Turao is not my best friend in the world. But he is one friend that I genuinely respect and admire. Mel, Felino Garcia, and Alex de los Santos are a special triumvirate in my hierarchy of writer-friends.
If I’m going to be shipwrecked and marooned on an island, and if I am to choose the literary friends I’d like to be with me, they would be it.
Of course, the feeling may not be mutual. But to me, it doesn’t matter. I love these, my three writer-friends.
With these three West Visayan writers, I feel smart, accepted, and confident. And I can freely talk to them about anything without being judged. At least, not to my face; and not to my knowledge. Haha!
Mel did several months of research for this biography including interviews with my mom, and my childhood friends. He went to Dumangas several times; and was privy to most of my events during my long vacation last year, including the making of my much talked about short film, “Ikapito nga Adlaw”.
He also went over hundreds of column materials that I have written for Ilonggo newspapers since I started my foray into the West Visayan print media in 2000.
He had full access to my books and other publications, my library and various collections, and most things that I hold most dear.
And, of course, he had the singular privilege of having spent a lot of time talking to my late American spouse before the latter croaked in 2014.
So yeah, Mel Turao is in a good position to write my biography.
But, in his very Foreword, Mel says: “The thing about writing a biographical account of someone, and even of one’s self, is that you seem to be writing about a different person altogether. You cannot be totally truthful nor can you fib through it all. You can throw in the facts and put them in order, but the moment they find themselves together in a sentence, you shall have cut their ties from the truth. This book is about Peter Solis Nery, yes, but it is not his story. This is my story of him. His story is far more than this, and what’s contained in his baby book.”
How do you quarrel with a disclaimer like that? How do you quarrel with a book called “Insatiable: A Literary Biography of Peter Solis Nery”?
How do you quarrel with the writer Mel Turao? How do you quarrel with a friend who writes a biography, a nonfiction material, like a truthful mirror?
The answer: You don’t. You deal with it. You take it with a grain of salt.
Especially if you are a Peter Solis Nery.
Especially if you are “the” Peter Solis Nery!
My biography deal started as a joke. Last year, I commissioned several emerging Ilonggo visual artists to paint my portraits.
I’m not an art collector, but I like to support artists, and especially works that are familiar to me. Like my portrait.
I mean, I’m not about to pay a fortune for a Jackson Pollock, or what looks like a fortune for what looks like a Pollock.
After the canvases, the next challenge was how to support local writers for a commissioned work on the page that’s familiar to me, like a portrait.
Somebody suggested it was about time for my biography. Mel said he would take up the challenge.
Deep inside, I felt a need for a more serious scholarship on Peter Solis Nery than just the bachelor’s and master’s degree theses of students of literature and languages. So, I greenlighted the biography project.
I even promised Mel I’d cooperate, and grant him all access to the Peter Solis Nery museum (just a collection of memorabilia, at the moment).
How do I like the book?
To be honest, it’s not my most favorite book in the world. It makes me very uncomfortable in many of its sections.
But it is a valuable and important work. At least, for a different view, a new angle of the great Peter Solis Nery.
It makes for a good story of me that is not told by me. Peter Solis Nery from an objective observer.
The Gospel of Peter Solis Nery according to the writer Mel Turao, who is not only smart and bold, truthful and true, but can also write with great imagination, and write very, very well.
I’m sure I’m going to write my own version of my life story in the future. But until then, this is a good download on the force of nature that is Peter Solis Nery, an Ilonggo icon, the legend, the living Ilonggo icon.
The book has five chapters.
Chapter 1 is laden with historical notes, but also captures the boldstar Peter in action, circa 2016.
Chapter 2 is a series of stories, episodes of The Adventures of Captain Ooze, a superhero character fashioned after my fabulous life as Iloilo’s avant-garde newspaper columnist, and my legend as the region’s premier agent provocateur.
Chapter 3 deals with Peter Solis Nery, the writer, in a historico-socio-cultural context and perspective.
Chapter 4 is about the son who married another man (and to an elderly American no less)!
Chapter 5 is A Reader’s Guide to Peter Solis Nery, which traces my literary and filmmaking career.
Insatiable is a powerful book. But speaking of powerful, so is Peter Solis Nery! (500tinaga@gmail.com/PN)
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