Conversation with Alexander Yates, Author of Moondogs

Conversation with Alexander Yates, Author of Moondogs

"A man and a rooster exit a taxi idling on a crowded street."goes the first line of Moondogs, Alexander Yates' novel set in the Philippines.  The local language and descriptions sound authentic enough to be written by someone who knows the Philippines, yet there is enough perspective of an outside observer's point of view.   The novel reads like a movie with an ensemble cast of characters and their interwoven relationships, and their roles and reactions to the kidnapping of an American expat.  

Here is our conversation from the first event from Alexander Yates' Manila book tour, held at Power Books Greenbelt.  

One of your characters did not like food stewed in vinegar and spaghetti in sweet sauce with hotdogs. Do you feel the same way?

I like Filipino food. The trip has been less than a day and I’ve eaten chicken adobo, garlic rice, kilawin ng tanigue

What is it about the Philippines that inspired you to write a novel?

The Philippines and Manila are very important to me.  I moved here when I was 15. This is the city that felt like home for me.  I met the woman who would become my wife in International School Manila.   When I went to college in the States, I had never lived in the United States before. When I went to the United States, people expected that they could say the name of a football team and I should know what that was, why it was important and why I should know that person.  I had some culture shock when I went there.  When I came back to the Philippines after graduating I had the sense that I was returning home.  Of course when I got here I had to reckon with the fact that it was not really my home and it is still alien to me in a lot of ways. It’s that sense of dissonance--seeing Manila as home and longing for it as home, and being an outsider.

What are the most memorable experiences you had from studying or working in Manila and did any of those appear in the book?

There is no autobiography at all in the book.  I have a great relationship with my parents.  But there is a lot of emotional biography in it—dealing with questions of cultural identity and trying to figure out where they fit in. The experiences in Manila that affected me most are my high school career and my friends.  I loved International School Manila. I had a fantastic high school drama teacher who put me in a few plays.  An English teacher read the first novel I wrote while I was in IS, and gave me notes and comments and was very encouraging.  My teachers invigorated a passion for the arts.

Are any of the characters based on real people? How about the character who was an actor who played a politician who became a politician?

They are certainly inspired by real people. Everything in the book comes out of my life, what I’ve read and what I’ve seen.   The process of fiction writing is taking the raw material of life and making it into something. 

What is the significance of Moondogs and why did you choose that to be the title?

The first time I saw a Moondog was in Manila. I looked up and there was this big halo around the moon.   It is caused by ice in the upper atmosphere and the moon’s light refracting through it.  There was a big beautiful lunar halo and there were flares of light on each side, and it struck me as being preposterously beautiful. I called my girlfriend to come out and see it with me.   

One of the characters early in the book looks up and sees a moondog. I realized that the novel was working that way.  There was a lot of stuff going on around a core, so Moondogs felt like an appropriate title. 

There are several plotlines in the book. Who are your favorite characters and what relationships do they have with each other?

It has been pointed out to me that some of the characters are jerks. They are all struggling, but not winning the struggle.  They have “being jackass” issues. Some people have said the characters are surprisingly sympathetic or perversely sympathetic. I really care for all of them. 

Monique and Joseph

The character that is closest to me is the American Embassy employee in the book.  She was raised in Subic Bay because her father was in the navy.  She has never felt at home in the States. She gets a job in the Foreign Service and works in the American Embassy in the Philippines with a sense that she is going to a place she understands, an idealized version of home.  The Philippines of her memory is not the Philippines. It’s a little girl’s Philippines: a yard and a few special people. She goes seeking a nanny.  She arrives, does not get that sense of home and she feels lost.  

Her husband is a Trailing Spouse.  He gave up a job in the States to go with her and he does not handle the transition well. 

Benicio and Howard

Benicio is to some extent the main character. He is the young man who looks for his father in the Philippines. They have not spoken for 5 years.  His father was unfaithful to his mother and Benicio found out about it.  There was an enormous flight.  They kinda sat on the issue as people do.  They never got around to making up.  In the opening of the book, Benicio’s mother has recently died.  He reconnected with his father at his mother’s funeral and decided to spend some time together. His father lives in Manila.  He is a hotelier whose company manages resorts.   Benicio travels to the Philippines to spend the summer. When he arrives, his father is missing. He initially thought his dad was just being the dad he knew—too busy, not available. But it is revealed that his father was kidnapped. 

Reynato

Reynato is the celebrity policeman. His exploits are chronicled by the media.  He is based on the characters that Estrada would play--the tough guy, Dirty Harry macho archetype. He has no aspirations to be an actor or a politician.  There have been a series of movies based on his life.  There is an actor who plays him in the movies, and who is running for the Senate when the book opens.  Their relationship is full of friction because the actor is trading on his likeness to gain credibility.

Reynato runs a police task force that is assigned to rescue Howard. 

Task Force Ka-Pow

The task force members all have super powers. They have one foot in X-Men land. They are not heroic and they only have conceptual powers. One guy is just unlucky and soaks up the bad luck from everyone else.  Another guy can do magic for real, but only cliché magic tricks.  He can pull a coin out of his ear, and can saw a woman in half and put her back together.  There’s a character that can turn to any animal he has seen. A new recruit, Efrem, can shoot anybody wherever they are just by knowing their exact location. 

Can you tell us about the social commentary in the book?

In 2004, kidnapping felt urgent and salient and was in the media constantly. A Filipino truck driver was kidnapped in Iraq which caused the Philippines to pull out their troops.  In the opening of the book, a taxi driver has a crime of opportunity: a wealthy American, who is a little drunk steps into his cab late at night.  Everything is set up for something to go very wrong.   I have this American in the car. Clearly, the thing to do is to sell him to terrorists.  The 2 bumbling criminals are reacting to the media narrative. They are steeped in international news.  Then to keep the victim quiet, they put a booming television in the room, and it is turned on to the news so he is also imprisoned by a larger narrative. 

Your characters are very real. How did you create them?

  

I wrote the characters one by one. If you unthread the novel, you can read each character as his own short novel.  I would spend six months just doing Efrem and another six months just doing Monique.  The content comes first , voice comes much later after a slow process of figuring out what the character sounds like. I need to do my due diligence, making sure that every character has its own breath and that no character is enslaved by something I want to say. 

What is next for you?

I am teaching writing at George Mason University.  I am working on another novel, a ghost story based in Finland where my wife is from. I am also putting together a collection of short stories. My wife joined the Foreign Service so we are moving to Rwanda in the spring.

What books have influenced you?

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This book changed my life. It is so genius, so beautiful that I don’t know why I even bothered writing a novel.  Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie has superheroes yet is a serious book. I didn’t know writers can do that. I was also moved by Filipino authors.  I am a huge fan of George Saunders—he is a genius. He writes short stories about post apocalyptic theme parks.  When I moved to the Philippines, my Father gave me Gagamba by F. Sionil Jose.  Moondogs is also a tribute to Gagamba where different characters react to a singular shared event, an earthquake. 

At the end of the conversation, I got my book signed with a note I was thrilled to read.  And I got all 4 stamps of the woodcuts designed by Rebecca Cullers and cut by Emily Bender.  Each chapter starts with the symbol of the character featured in it. Can you guess who is represented by the gecko, the rooster, the crescent moon and the sun?  Moondogs is available in National Book Store and Powerbooks.  

Follow Alexander Yates on Twitter @TheOtherYates