One is rendered speechless after finishing “Carnival of Hate: Stories” (2016, UST Publishing House, tel. 7313522), Augusto Antonio A. Aguila’s latest collection.
The book is brave, to say the least. But even “brave” is an understatement. He departs from the purely realist mode of his previous collection, as his new set of stories oscillates between the realist and nonrealist modes and takes its readers through the dark worlds of his ordinary, often unsuspecting, characters.
Each story in the book explores the different levels of hate. It opens with “A Whole New Nameless Thing,” which revolves around a man who’s roused from a night of troubled sleep after making love to his best friend. The story shifts its mode and takes on a dreamlike mood when he is confronted by his owl-shaped wall clock that mocks him.
The mind-noise is doubled when the rectangular shape on the curtain decides to join in. The story ends, leaving the protagonist in an ultimately vulnerable state, one of self-loathing, self-revelation and sexual (re)awakening, a distraught man aching for his—so comes the surprising twist!—male lover.
“A Condition of Worship” flows from the same vein. In this story of illusion, lust, loneliness and desperation, Aguila explores a gay man’s “secret source of misery” caused by his inability to express his feelings for the object of his affection. The ache felt by young man of the previous story lingers on for the middle-aged man in this one.
In the title story, Aguila manages to offer a fresh take on Dante’s “Inferno.” It comes with a dash of dark satire. The readers follow a glutton named Dickson—a fat, laughable, newly deceased soul who, in his lifetime, was a haughty CEO—as he journeys through the Gates of Hell with the author’s “flaming hot” Eric Bana-esque version of the poet Virgil.
As the plot progresses, the protagonist Dickson watches the people at his wake, and the scorching realization hits him that, his entire life had been built around the premise of hate, hating and hatefulness.
The hateful carnival continues in “The Contest and Smokescreen,” in which Aguila takes a daring shot at the academe. He exposes, through his unflinching prose and unconventional characters, the ugly truth of an academic system driven by gossip, politics and unfavorable alliances.
Though the abovementioned stories possess their own merits, one might say that “The Prankster” and “The Shop,” are the strongest in the entire collection. Although, at first, it may come as a shock to his readers, it is in these two stories that Aguila truly pushes himself and tackles themes like Satanism and rape—two topics that do not often appear in Philippine short fiction.
The former entertains the chilling idea of Satan’s progeny living among ordinary people, while the latter offers a picture of a young, naive girl—the one who most arouses sympathy among Aguila’s characters— who tries her luck in the city only to find herself in the most compromising of situations.
“Carnival of Hate: Stories” makes Aguila a unique force in today’s literary scene. His boldness to pen these kinds of stories and to bring such characters to life is what makes a voice like his admirable. –CONTRIBUTED
“Carnival of Hate” is available at UST Bookstore, tel. 7313522; and Solidaridad Bookshop, tel. 2541068.