Jay

Dostoyevsky's The Gambler marks a first read into the delightful cultural exchange that captures the human condition. It is a relatively short story, in comparison to his more significant works, but nonetheless features a rather hilarious and pitiful scenario of gambling addicts beset by the nature of dice rolls and roulettes. With that in mind, The Gambler does a nice job in doling out an adventure for the character of Alexei Ivanovich, as Dostoyevsky develops him into a person whose own vices ultimately define his triumphs and failures.

It's rather funny in the way that he outlines his characters: by nationality, of which their tendency for greed is defined. It's really something to behold, as the story takes these turns and developments that feel partly engaged and partly detached. It's a fine undertaking, considering the circumstances in which Dostoyevsky wrote all of this in.

I'm not considerably keen on how Viajero juxtaposes its national confusion of the Philippines with essences of misogyny. Oh well, I feel that Viajero carries itself as something more insufferable than profound; lackadaisical than evocative. Such a piece is too eager for anyone's liking, and I suppose FSJ's style of projecting his worldview into a wandering traveler only proves potent when he finally winds up in the Philippines–a grueling 250 pages in!

If anything, this is how the book reveals itself to be: a displaced Filipino whose curiosities in various parts of the world can be amounted to escapades with women, of whom the plot is materially driven forward without end, and then sloppily inserts sentiments about the fragmented Filipino identity somewhere. (That quibble against Lino Brocka was not cool, btw!)

It's quite creepy to consider that the words of Osamu Dazai reek of an ongoing behavior within Japan–he wrote this shortly before his death in 1948!–that is defined by a contradictory form of servitude (emotionally torn, functionally obedient) and a penchant for vices. No Longer Human evokes the kind of self-awareness that should be alarming, even as it packages itself as a fictional reading of three notebooks from a character named Oba Yozo.

The quickest way I can describe reading this is that it evokes itself so nonchalantly that any form of Japanese media that comes before or after makes a lot of sense. It's astounding to consider that this is all compressed into such a story. Wow.

The first (of many more) Eric Gamalinda read introduces itself as a forlorn, mystical undertaking that effectively is a compressed revision of Rizal's Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo in a manner that is much more spiritual, and intensely sexual (read: the sex here is astoundingly graphic, but not boyishly employed without reason.)

If anything, its freewheeling adaptation of a true-to-life spiritual leader in the Negros Revolution sheds light on Philippine History and its future in a manner so damningly strong that one can't help but be impressed. The final act of this film really turns things up, where the intensities that the war builds up just spills over and begins to be something so enchanting and tragic.

Summatively, this book is an enrapturing story of holy prophets who were born to deliver salvation at a time when everything doesn't make sense.