America's Boy; A Century of Colonialism in the Philippines
New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1999. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. 462 pages. Maps. Chronology. References. Bibliography. Index Some DJ wear and soiling. James Hamilton-Paterson FRSL (born 6 November 1941) is a poet, historian and novelist. He is one of the most reclusive of British literary exiles, dividing his time between Austria, Italy and the Philippines. He was educated at Exeter College, Oxford. Paterson earned his first break as a writer in 1969, when he began working as a reporter for the New Statesman. This continued until 1974, when he became features editor for Nova magazine.
Hamilton-Paterson is generally known as a commentator on the Philippines, where he has lived on and off since 1979. His novel Ghosts of Manila (1994) portrayed the Philippine capital in all its decay and violence and was highly critical of the Marcoses – a view he rescinded with the publication of America's Boy (1998), which sets the Marcos regime into the geopolitical context of the time. In 1989, Gerontius was published, a reconstruction of a journey made by the composer Sir Edward Elgar along the River Amazon in 1923. Regarded by admirers as being among the best British novels of the 1980s, its poetic language, dreamlike landscapes and lush imaginings won him the Whitbread Award for first novel. He won acclaim for his Gerald Samper trilogy as well as his non-fiction book Empire of the Clouds, which details the aviation industry in post-war Britain. Hamilton-Paterson was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2023. Derived from a Kirkus review: The sensational careers of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos are set in the context of Philippine culture and political history. Hamilton-Paterson has, unlike many other commentators, elected to try to understand rather than merely condemn the Marcoses for their egregious behavior during their 21-year reign in the Philippines. He certainly denounces the Philippine First Family for a plethora of crudities and crimes—e.g., Ferdinand fabricated his heroic military record in WWII and won elections so tainted that virtually no one believed the results; Imelda made of shopping an aerobic workout and kept on the palace grounds cases of the sandwich spread she’d craved as a child. But Hamilton-Paterson, a long-time resident of the Philippines and wise observer of the local mores, demonstrates convincingly that for much of their tenure the Marcoses enjoyed public favor; they helped elevate their nation economically and technologically. And with devastating clarity, he shows how the US government, which coddled and encouraged Marcos (in 1966 he addressed—and dazzled—a joint session of Congress), abandoned him only when the Vietnam War was over, only when we no longer had such an acute strategic need for his support, only when the media had turned against him. Throughout this illuminating book, Hamilton-Paterson periodically pauses to focus on a small, remote Philippine forest village (imaginary) he calls Kansulay. These lovely and lyrical sections—all in the present tense—reveal that not far from sprawling, madding Manila the old Philippine ways continue; we see that the Marcoses were representative of their class, rather than anomalous. A fascinating portrait of two extraordinary people, of a culture, of a country—a refreshing reminder of the powerful presence of ambiguity in human beings and in human affairs. Condition: Very good / Very good.
Keywords: Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos, Spanish-Am War, WWII, Colonialism, Hukbalahap, Aquino, Imelda Marcos, Vietnam War
[Book #15908]
Price: $55.00