THE DESCARTES HIGHLANDS
Two men, each unaware of the other, share a common family secret: they were sold for adoption by their American father shortly after their births in the Philippines. Their alternating stories interweave with his, as the two separately attempt to piece together the puzzle of their past. While the history of their reckless, impulsive father eludes them, their lives, loves, and losses somehow echo his own. Celebrated Filipino writer Eric Gamalinda’s international debut novel is a contemporary work of ideas that combines mystery, film noir, and existential philosophy. Named after the region of the moon where Apollo 16 landed in the same year the two boys were born of separate mothers, The Descartes Highlands demonstrates that for lives marked by unrelieved loneliness, the only hope lies in the redemptive power of love.
Author Statement
Unlike my previous novels, which all began with a plot, or an idea for a plot, The Descartes Highlands began with a feeling, or a whirlwind of feelings. It was 2002, and I wanted to convey the frustration and helplessness I felt at that time, when I thought America was imploding, maddened by paranoia and xenophobia. The Descartes Highlands springs from that period of questioning and uncertainty. I wanted to write a story set at a time when it was every man for himself, despite the empty rhetoric of healing and strength; a story in which technology was starting to get people more connected not just in space but in time, yet people were increasingly isolated in their loneliness.
I have always imagined novels coming to life the way galaxies do: ideas, emotions, themes, characters and episodes swirl in a cloud of cosmic dust, coalesce, and form their own planets, in a slow, tumultuous, and inevitable dance. At that time I read a news story about a group of men in Italy who had been arrested for selling babies they had fathered. I also read a story about an abortion clinic bombed in Dobbs Ferry, New York. Birth and death; love and rage, both disfigured and perverted. I thought the baby traffic story could easily happen in the Philippines, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, when there were so many Amerasian kids abandoned by their GI fathers. The abortion bombing, on the other hand, was a totally American phenomenon; I was curious who these people were and how they managed to create bombs so deadly. (I learned, from one of Abby Hoffman’s books, that it was quite easy). I wondered what those babies would grow up to be, and if one of them happened to be in Dobbs Ferry, how he would process such a bizarre contradiction as a Christian terrorist. I was reading a lot of philosophy, watching a lot of Tarkovsky, Dreyer, Sokurov, Béla Tarr—they made me feel less off-kilter, less perplexed by what was going on around me.
Still fixated on the juxtaposition of technology/alienation, I “published” the first draft as anonymous blogs written by the two sons in the novel. At the same time I wrote the father’s journal in private, if only to make sure I was clear about the backstory. I wanted the father’s story to happen during the early years of martial law in the Philippines, a time that I felt was eerily mirrored in post-9/11 America. I wanted the novel to explore the idea of karmic consequences, both immediate and across generations, across space and time—the karma of political and socio-economic systems, and the karma of personal decisions.
It took me more than ten years to finish the novel. It is the most difficult I have ever written, not because of the jigsaw structure (which I found enjoyable) but because the characters were so abysmally unhappy, and I, immersed in the same Zeitgeist, had a hard time finding them a way out. Perhaps there is no way out. For the writer, of course, writing can be a form of exorcism, but for people caught in the existential prison I saw them in, how does one find an exit? That is the question that I hope the reader will ask, and perhaps answer, when they read my book.
Read excerpts of The Descartes Highlands here.
Author Statement
Unlike my previous novels, which all began with a plot, or an idea for a plot, The Descartes Highlands began with a feeling, or a whirlwind of feelings. It was 2002, and I wanted to convey the frustration and helplessness I felt at that time, when I thought America was imploding, maddened by paranoia and xenophobia. The Descartes Highlands springs from that period of questioning and uncertainty. I wanted to write a story set at a time when it was every man for himself, despite the empty rhetoric of healing and strength; a story in which technology was starting to get people more connected not just in space but in time, yet people were increasingly isolated in their loneliness.
I have always imagined novels coming to life the way galaxies do: ideas, emotions, themes, characters and episodes swirl in a cloud of cosmic dust, coalesce, and form their own planets, in a slow, tumultuous, and inevitable dance. At that time I read a news story about a group of men in Italy who had been arrested for selling babies they had fathered. I also read a story about an abortion clinic bombed in Dobbs Ferry, New York. Birth and death; love and rage, both disfigured and perverted. I thought the baby traffic story could easily happen in the Philippines, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, when there were so many Amerasian kids abandoned by their GI fathers. The abortion bombing, on the other hand, was a totally American phenomenon; I was curious who these people were and how they managed to create bombs so deadly. (I learned, from one of Abby Hoffman’s books, that it was quite easy). I wondered what those babies would grow up to be, and if one of them happened to be in Dobbs Ferry, how he would process such a bizarre contradiction as a Christian terrorist. I was reading a lot of philosophy, watching a lot of Tarkovsky, Dreyer, Sokurov, Béla Tarr—they made me feel less off-kilter, less perplexed by what was going on around me.
Still fixated on the juxtaposition of technology/alienation, I “published” the first draft as anonymous blogs written by the two sons in the novel. At the same time I wrote the father’s journal in private, if only to make sure I was clear about the backstory. I wanted the father’s story to happen during the early years of martial law in the Philippines, a time that I felt was eerily mirrored in post-9/11 America. I wanted the novel to explore the idea of karmic consequences, both immediate and across generations, across space and time—the karma of political and socio-economic systems, and the karma of personal decisions.
It took me more than ten years to finish the novel. It is the most difficult I have ever written, not because of the jigsaw structure (which I found enjoyable) but because the characters were so abysmally unhappy, and I, immersed in the same Zeitgeist, had a hard time finding them a way out. Perhaps there is no way out. For the writer, of course, writing can be a form of exorcism, but for people caught in the existential prison I saw them in, how does one find an exit? That is the question that I hope the reader will ask, and perhaps answer, when they read my book.
Read excerpts of The Descartes Highlands here.
