BECAUSE I have four Palanca first prize-winning stories — “Lirio” (1998), “Candido” (2007), “Donato Bugtot” (2011), and “Si Padre Olan kag ang Dios” (2013), people normally don’t hear much about my second prize winners.
But lately, with Celia F. Parcon’s translation of “Ang Kapid” (2006), and “Ang Milagro sa Ermita” (2017), these second placers are asserting themselves in my literary canon.
What are in these stories that make them ever so relevant? I guess it has to do with my treatment of mental health issues. Which also seem to be the fashionable conversation of the millennials today.
With the renewed attention, there is also an increased scholarship about these stories that (for me, at least) are very good psycho-thrillers.
I like that readers react to my literature. And when they write something exciting about them, I feel the joy of being crowned the prince of Hiligaynon literature again, and again.
I like it that new writers, new readers, and DepEd teachers are now writing critical analysis of my works. But I also enjoy what long time friends say about my literary masterpieces.
So, today, I yield my column space to my friend Roger’s exciting short essay on “Ang Kapid” (“The Twins”).
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Roger B. Rueda is the author of A Plain and Practically Lucid English Grammar. He also writes poetry, fiction, essays, blogs; and occasionally lectures on journalism and feature writing.
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Aliens in a Twisted Little World
by Roger B. Rueda
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Peter Solis Nery’s The Twins is telling us how fun reading is in these exciting times. As I try to enter the story, I needed to slow down as things begin to reveal themselves: I love how the author has built the story from start to finish. As I try to be hot on his heels, here I try imagining Nery, who, I think, is more empathetic and more willing to take on the perspectives of others; but who is also speculative. The thought replenishes the ideas that slip away from my memory.
The story at first seems to have sensual promise, a sense of liberation. The author has set up expectations and then twisted them as I swirl towards the eerie climax, which reveals to me something more: the unknown is not always in the shadows or somewhere out there, but in the twisted little world inside our mind— a lovely thing to run into, like aliens that spew out green liquid. Anticipation, for me, is a delicious pleasure in its own right, and Nery’s climax doesn’t ruin my enjoyment of the story. It completely satisfies.
Nery has not only created a place that exists on its own terms; but his characters, too, have been shaped to fit into that invented reality, and the world where our mental space is anchored.
The characters in the story are interesting and complex. They draw me in as they feed my imagination, and how they allow me to participate in the lives that Nery has created for them as he tried to mesh the story with mental illness and neurodiversity — and a kind of speculation that extraterrestrials are real. And I love their names as they reinforce the characters’ qualities: Angelica, Lucrecia, Soledad.
By putting everything else in sharp focus, Nery reduces the impact of his vivid sense of unsavory locale — the Mandaluyong and Pototan mental hospitals. These places lend authenticity as they produce a sense of identity and connectedness. With these settings, the story isn’t floating aimlessly in outer space. This creates total enjoyment as my mind steers me towards these particular places.
The narration of the story is fresh and vivid without seeming to strain for originality as it works its own magic. With a natural pace and vocabulary, the story is told in the omniscient third person, and Nery seems to be genuinely interested in the psyche of mentally ill patients. For me, this should engage more readers in the conversations around mental health; and therefore, effectively help to lessen the stigma of mental illness.
This story about aliens is out of the patients’ minds. It’s baffling but, like that green liquid from the alien’s mouth, is oozing with emotional truths./PN
