Brief Review: Bibliolepsy

 

The other day the Politics and Prose sent me a copy of Gina Apostol’s La Tercera for this month’s book of the month. I have not yet read this book, but I did read another book by Gina Apostol.

 

 

 

Bibliolepsy by Gina Apostol is the story of a book obsessed young woman in the Philippines set during the turbulent times of the leadership of Ferdinand Marcos. Primi, the hero of the story believes that she can be saved by sex love and books. Of course, by the end of the story she is disappointed. As she says:

 

“I suppose one can’t help it if real life ends up being a clunky book, he continued, ranting, “with a writer mad for symbols and reversals, dictator’s goon turned savior, housewife turned angel, The Saints Come Marching In on stilettos and piled Carol hi and Dry hairdos. It’s ridiculous. None of this---“ And he swept his hand across the television screen, “would hold up in a good book” (kindle location 2188).

 

 

For some reason, this passage reminded me of Charlie Citrine the hero of Saul Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift -- Bellow’s best book. He thought that since Americans lived lives of prosperity compared to the rest of the world that they ought to use their abundant free time to think about big ideas.

 

“All I wanted to say in the prospectus was that America didn’t have to fight scarcity and we all felt guilty before people who still had to struggle for bread and freedom in the old way, the basic questions. We weren’t starving, we weren’t buggged by the police, locked up in madhouses for our ideas, arrested, deported, slave laborers sent to die in concentration camps. We were spared the holocausts and nights of terror. With our advantages we should be formulating the new basic questions for mankind. But instead we sleep. Just sleep and sleep, and eat and play and fuss and sleep again” (Kindle location 4017).

 

If you are wondering what bibliolepsy means, here is the first line of Apostol's book.

 

Bibliolepsy: a mawkishness derived from habitual aloneness and congenital desire.