Dogeaters

An American Novel Of the Philippines

"Dogeaters" (1990), the first novel of Jessica Hagedorn, was nominated for the National Book Award. Hagedorn (b. 1949) was born in Manilla and moved to the United States in 1963. She is a poet as well as a novelist; in 1998, she also transformed "Dogeaters" into a play. I became interested in this book because I hadn't read any other novels set in the Philippines.

The novel is set in Manilla from the mid 1950s through early 1960s. It is of the middling length of 250 pages, but with its writing style and many characters the novel makes for slow, difficult reading. The plot develops slowly; the book is almost more a series of short inter-related vignettes than a novel. The voicings change markedly and quickly with two first person narrations together with lengthy sections told in the third person. The writing is highly descriptive and enjambed. The book has long run-on sentences and paragraphs full of at different times names, lists, adjectives -- the types of lengthy series that would not be out of place in a Walt Whitman poem. Each section of the story, and the novel as a whole, features many different characters. It is difficult, and probably intentionally so, to keep the characters straight.

Much of the book is a depiction of Philippine life which Hagedorn develops from its poorest to its most elite, powerful levels. The scenes include poor rural shacks and apartments, stressful low paying jobs, drug dens, and bars which are havens for gay prostitution. The wealthy element of Manilla life, the generals. political leaders, and owners of property also are portrayed with their control of the poor part of the population.

The book emphasizes American and earlier Spanish influence on the Philippines as a result of colonization. The influence is reflected in the more materialistic aspects of American life, including products and brand names, soap operas on television, popular songs and American film. These elements are presented at length and are shown to have a debasing effect on Philippine life as, one would assume, the author finds they have on life in the United States. Earlier Spanish culture is also reflected unfavorably in many ways, including the large influence of the Church. The book also suggests a native Philippine culture, under the centuries of colonization, which probably comes through at its clearest in the many untranslated words of Tagalog that appear frequently at many points in the story.

The early sections of the book largely describe the characters, their relationships, and their interactions. Only at about mid-point does a plot line begin to come clear as the author explores the dictatorial and oppressive character of the Philippine regime. The unhappy political situation becomes increasingly juxtaposed with the lives of the many protagonists, both poor and rich.

The collage-like, surreal aspect of the book is in part effective. The author means to show the unfortunately confused nature of Philippine culture and government with the influence of colonialism and American crassness competing against the efforts of the Philippine people to find their own way and sense of nationhood. The writing style also makes the book slow moving and unfocused.

I had mixed feelings about this novel and its message. I thought at times that the work was more interested in conveying an anti-American message of the sort that has become all-too-common in our culture and literature than it was interested in depicting Philippine life. But this tendency is balanced by an element in the book that shows the Philippine struggle to develop their country in the face of great difficulty. The focus is more on the local people than on the alleged perniciousness of American influence. The book encourages thought on a number of issues, including religion, marriage, the role of women, the nature of beauty and physical appearance, the pervasive and unfavorably depicted homosexual presence in the novel, and the nature of government that get beyond pat stereotypes and fixed answers.

Christopher Lehmann- Haupt's wrote a perceptive March 22, 1990, review of "Dogeaters" in the "New York Times". Lehmann-Haupt notices the blame America character of some of the book, observing that Hagedorn's vision and anti-Americanism may "border on ideological tendentiousness". He finds the book redeemed by its following closely upon the historical record once the story finally gets underway and by its gradually developing character as a Bildungsroman -- the story of the moral growth of the principal character in the novel. Lehmann-Haupt refers to the growth of one of the first person narrators, a young woman named Rio Gonzaga, whose voice opens the novel and who, as did Hagedorn, ultimately emigrates to the United States where Rio enjoys a successful life but never marries and remains a religious skeptic.

"Dogeaters", in sum is a less than fully successful novel. On the whole, I enjoyed the novel as a result of the beauty of some of the writing and as a result of its portrayal of Philippine life.

Robin Friedman