Ilustrado

Miguel Syjuco

The narrator of this fractured novel, Miguel, travels to the Philippines in search of the missing manuscript of his mentor’s life, arriving to a country on the verge of revolution. He wants to know why the famous novelist was killed and what was contained in the voluminous manuscript on which he had been working. The manuscript is meant to expose the corrupt ruling classes and Crispin’s role over the years in attempting to bring them down through the means of novels and journalism, as well as outright insurrection.

The life of Miguel’s mentor is reconstructed through the lens of his work — his fictional forays, his autobiography and assorted notes. The narrator himself is constructing his own present through emails, letters and recollections of his time spent growing up with his grandparents in Vancouver, Canada. They were exiled at a time fraught with the troubles of a previous revolution, in which his parents were killed on a plane crash.

The prying Miguel comes close to the truth of the past in several discussions with his grandparents. Were they allied to the brutal military dictatorship through their big business ventures and contacts or were they catalysts in the downfall of the regime? Either way, they impress on Miguel the need for his involvement in current political discourse.

The main stream of narration — Miguel’s search of the Philippines for a lost manuscript — is intercut with episodes from Crispin’s autobiography as well as excerpts from Manila Noir, a pulp crime book he has written. Unfortunately, our narrator has a bad habit of delivering really bad jokes at the outset of some chapters. Maybe they are fresh in the Philippines, but we heard them yonks ago.

Modern zeitgeist stories of the Philippines are referenced throughout: the explosion of Mount Pinatubo delivering 50 square miles of volcanic filth onto a community, the shoes of Imelda Marcos, the assassination of Benigno Aquino. It’s not a static country, it’s extremely turbulent and finding out the truth of what happened is going to be difficult.

Miguel is a young man and strikes up relationships with a string of lovers. And he is as much given to idly reminiscing about previous lovers as he is to snorting cocaine in back street bars in his ongoing search for his mentor’s drive or a quick lay. But his love of life is incontrovertible as he reminisces about old Manila, cold beer, bicycle gears, shampoo, Greenwich Village and numberless other quiddities.

Miguel’s narration is presented in a breezy, funky, in-your-face language which contrasts with the considered, poeticising of his hero.

With his street lingo, his jingoistic vocabulary, and his patois, Miguel is a modern Filippino. Is he meant to be modelled on the writer of the book? Is there a younger self being referenced? Paul Theroux is fond of such self-fictionalising and Syjuco, too, likes to keep the reader guessing as to the identity of his characters.

A twist at the end leaves the narration on an ironic note. It is Miguel who dies in a drowning and the subject, Salvador, who is alive, as told through his own notes in the only contemporary voice he is given.

But Ilustrado is overwrought. The pity is there is a decent novel in here somewhere clambering to get out. But it needs a hundred pages lopped off and a scalpel treatment to the constant excerptising.