sky is the limit

maalaala mo kaya mode muna tayo:

someone from the labyrinthine passages of the UP main library stumbled upon my blogpost which tackled a fairly recent Philippine novel in English in the lens of new history. I am publishing the e-mail s/he had sent and the reply I made regarding his/her crisis.
fellow peyup wrote:
Hi!
I’ve read your "Counter-history in Vicente Groyon's Sky Over Dimas." I just finished reading the novel and i'm about to write a paper about it. The problem is, my instructor told me that there's something wrong with my thesis statement. It's just a mere description of the novel. She asked me what my assertion is. Honestly, I don't know.

I have a week to write. Pero di ko alam ang isusulat ko o kung ano ang papatunayan ko. I am not really into writing.

One of my friends said it's realist. Another said it's historiographic metafiction. I don't know.

I need your advice. Please...

***
Ate Charo santos has this to say:
Hi! thanks for having read my blog. i hope that you get to visit my blogsite more often.
both friends of yours are correct in saying their piece. after all, one's reading of the novel (or anything else for that matter) depends on what perspective one is looking from, and what knowledge one has been informed of to claim so. the friend who said SKY is realist must be aware of the kind of social reality in negros for that friend to say that yes, quirky characters indeed populate the island as they relate to their main product that's sugar. on the other hand, that friend of yours who said SKY is historiographic metafiction has all the right to claim so, since devices associated with the writing of history as well as with the consciousness to the craft of writing are practically jumping out of the pages.

there are many ways to skin the cat, so goes an ancient idiom; thus, ask yourself how you view vincent groyon's dazzling masterpiece: is it a magic realist novel, a postcolonial novel, a marxist novel, etc? one of my readings--i supposed you will agree with me--is historiographic, as is evident in the furious rewriting of the loony haciendero of the family's past in order to unveil their secrets and, ultimately, to unburden them from the ancestral curse.

from your understanding of the novel, formulate the thesis which you intend to prove via textual proofs. say for example, you assert that the novel is grounded on the nationalistic leanings of rizal's novels. why do you say so? cite instances from the novel. you can perhaps provide evidences like the determined search for national identity, which makes rizal's NOLI ME TANGERE and EL FILIBUSTERISMO tangential to groyon's SKY.

i am flattered that you sought me for advice even though i am just a small-time schoolmate of yours. thank you and i hope that i was able to help you in my little gapanese way.

everybody's little gapanese,
cesar (09272721395)