Chai Fonacier
“I AM your Edward Cullen,” goes a line in an acquaintance’s great – but embarrassingly awkward (and cute in the original sense of the word, to the point of comedic) – effort at poetry as a love offering to one of my friends. For the sake of convenience let’s call him Idward Kulang.
Now, Idward Kulang seems to have been working with his id, much like the way chickens squirt waste whenever they feel nature calling, rather than anything else when he wrote that poem. Four years in college and spending endless hours reading Twilight has done nothing to improve his linguistically challenged brain, other than turn him delusional. Now he thinks he’s Edward Cullen, pasty white skin and all.
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What is it about this book, anyway? People gravitate towards the book like flies to crud. It’s the Wowowee of literature, and I’d be damned if makes it into Guinness for being the most popular book next to the Bible. It also has been vilified by academicians and the better lot of the reading population countless times, and it refuses to die like, well, a vampire.
Curse that book? Well yes. I am not a big fan and I prefer seeing Mr. Pattinson during his Harry Potter glory days if I had to choose. Then again, there’s something we’re overlooking in this big picture of vampire books, raging hormones, screeching prepubescents, and, well, readers who end up suffering delusions of grandeur: reader statistics.
Answer this for me, dear average reader: What was the first book you ever read? Hell, I started with Sweet frigging Valley.
Unless you’re a Promil Kid who started reading medical or law books and used words like “Mother, I’m famished!” at the age of 3, I reckon a lot of you started with that or the like.
Now answer this next question: how long after until you moved on to better books?
Allow me my rough estimations as I am a mathematics ignoramus (equations scare the crap out my ass and they make me cry popcorn kernels), but think of this for a moment.
If a hundred people read the Twilight saga voraciously, quite a number of those will start looking for more interesting, more substantial reads. Point is, despite its exponentially crappy and sub-par quality, Twilight has invited people into reading books. There has been a significant decline in the number of book readers these days; the internet and local TV has enough distractions.
I’d rather we called them late bloomers. Alanis Morissette picked up the guitar at the age of 21. Marquis de Sade published his first book in his fifties. Who says one’s supposed to read at a particularly early age?
I don’t read as voraciously as I require myself. I haven’t read a Kafka book and the one I promised to finish last year now houses termites and dust. The only Kerouac book I’ve read is “On The Road,” and the only Ginsberg poem I know is “Howl.” I haven’t finished reading Bathalad’s Pasumbingay book of poems either. But I try; who says none of these people won’t?
Point no. 2: It has probably gotten people to explore writing too. Exhibit A: Idward Kulang. Larry Ypil was once told by a literature big wig to stick to Biology because for him, Larry’s poems probably sucked. Years later, after publishing successful pieces, same big wig said “It’s good you didn’t listen to me.”
Well, yeah, lack of skill is an entirely different ball game, but then again, who the hell knows?
In the very least, Twilight has prodded Mr. Kulang to want to be articulate about his thoughts and emotions. Once upon a time, the people of a few generations back had an impressively good grasp of English and their local tongue. These days, we cannot even speak one language straight, needing both to express emotions thoughts and opinions, and no one consults the dictionary upon encountering an unfamiliar word (Cebuano or English), and instead seeks the refuge that “Nosebleed!” offers to the indolent.
And although the call center industry and too much reality TV have taught us to mimic English accents of the western world, the growing inarticulateness is alarming, so much so that I have encountered English majors from some famous local universities strutting around with their diplomas during job interviews for the company I work for, and speaking with the grammar structures of the illiterate, and run-on sentences scattered all over the interview room.
What on God’s green earth were you guys doing for four years?
Is the amount of information available to today’s generation inversely proportional to the capacity of their brains? I have the English and Cebuano vocabulary of a fly, relatively inadequate for someone who writes, but I try to hone skills in both languages.
(I’d like to be able to say “laksot ka’g panagway” or “sinikma ka sa kapalaran!”). I hope they do too. This is not to say we should perfect a language that is not ours, nor should we become purists about our mother tongue; what I’m driving at is for us to refuse to stagnate in “Nosebleed” state and exceed ourselves.
That being said, my only hope for Twilight readers is this: that they be hungrier for reading substantial material the way Edward Cullen is for that whiny witless and annoyingly naive girl named Bella.
