Dogeaters in Read a book from each country

Dec 28, 2010 Mostly on Storygraph rated it really liked it

Shelves: pinoy, multiple-perspectives

Quite a frenetic and schizophrenic book. I can see that Hagedorn was attempting to create an intricate picture of the mostly seedy underbelly of Manila but it felt a bit crowded. For example, there is a kind of *gasp* moment near the end that I just shrugged at because I couldn't remember why that character was important. I don't know that it benefited from its large cast of characters. I also don't like feeling cheated at the end and I felt a bit of that reading the two conflicting accounts of Quite a frenetic and schizophrenic book. I can see that Hagedorn was attempting to create an intricate picture of the mostly seedy underbelly of Manila but it felt a bit crowded. For example, there is a kind of *gasp* moment near the end that I just shrugged at because I couldn't remember why that character was important. I don't know that it benefited from its large cast of characters. I also don't like feeling cheated at the end and I felt a bit of that reading the two conflicting accounts of what occurred.

Thankfully Hagedorn does spend a little more time with Rio and Joey, probably the two more saner characters in the book. Still, I have to think Hagedorn is trying to say something when 90% of the supporting cast consists of druggies, thugs, colonial elitists, corrupt politicians, loveless neglectful family members, and shallow, vapid women. The book reads more like interweaving vignettes than a novel, and while that makes for exciting reading I do wish Hagedorn spent more time developing Joey and Rio.

I think this book would improve with a second reading, if only because this time I'd be more familiar with the characters and be able to remember them better by the book's end.
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Must amend the above based on something I just read out of Lisa Lowe's Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics which I think is a great way to look at the troublesome format of the book: Dogeaters offers scenes, dialogues, and episodes that are not regulated by plot, character, progress or resolution. Both the gossip [tsismis] it features and the format of the novel itself move in a horizontal, or metonymic, contagion rather than through the vertical, or metaphorical, processes of referentiality and signification. Spontaneous, decentered, and multivocal, gossip is antithetical to developmental narrative. It seizes details and hyperbolizes their importance; it defies the notion of information of property" (115). And later: "The association in Dogeaters of insurrection with gossip may refer implicitly to a history of guerrilla strategies that were not centrally organized and to different modes of political practice that have been obscured by the stage of oppositional party nationalisms" (119).

So my demand for more character development can in one sense be seen as a reaction to my looking for a western developmental plotline in a non-western text. Regardless, I still want to read more about Joey and Rio. :) ...more

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Aug 05, 2013 Sasa rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2013, fiction

It's funny hearing some of the usual lingo that I've heard in my childhood like "corny". I also really liked that Hagedorn captured the Filipinos interest in movies. I really enjoyed reading this except that there were so many characters and there was a point that I couldn't remember who's who anymore. I just had to let go and try to understand the context of what was going on. It seems that there were 2 main narrators, Rio and Joey. Rio's ending was conclusive but I wonder what happened to Joey ...more

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