Cirilo Bautista’s ‘Galaw ng Asoge’ an ‘exemplar’ for novelists

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(Photo by Enrico Miguel S. Silverio/The Varsitarian)

An award-winning writer commended the late Cirilo Bautista’s novel “Galaw ng Asoge” as an exemplar for its “unique narrative structure,” in a novel-writing workshop last July 11.

“Sa pamamagitan ng nobelang ito, naghain siya ng isang metodo o istratehiya sa kung paano tayo dapat gumagalaw kaugnay sa mala-dambuhalang pwersa sa ating buhay at sa pananaig ng kabaluktutan sa lipunan,” said Genevieve Asenjo during the 3rd Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio Writers Workshop at the University Hotel of University of the Philippines–Diliman.

Bautista’s debut novel in Filipino, published in 2004 by the UST Publishing House, revolves around the life of Amado Ortiz and the struggles he faces in taking over the family business, following his father’s disability.

Asenjo commended the National Artist for Literature’s work as a form of “metafiction,” or a narrative that uses a “story-within-a-story” concept to talk about fiction writing itself.

The shifting points of view in the novel, from the third person to Bautista himself, to the first person and to Ortiz, depict the inseparable connection between the real life and fictive world, Asenjo explained.

Bautista’s “deconstruction” and “debunking” of philosophy and traditional writing norms, through his novel’s “shifting voices,” worked brilliantly, she said.

“Makinang, madulas, hindi diretso o tuloy-tuloy, ngunit nakakarating sa pinaroroonan. Dahil ang buhay ay ‘di isang entablado, tulad ng sabi ni Shakespeare, kundi isang laro,” she said.

The workshop, formerly known as the UP Basic Writers Workshop, is dedicated to unpublished and budding novelists. F.A.E.Braganza

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