Glenn Diaz

During a regular shift at the call center, Alvin Estrada discovers a way to embezzle money from the American telecom giant for which he mans the phones. Soon a couple of friends join in, and the operation proceeds smoothly up until they quit, vowing to take the secret to their graves. A month later, a phone call at 4 in the morning tells Alvin that the police are on their way. At once a workplace novel and a meditation on history and globalization, The Quiet Ones is a grimly humorous take on a soul-sapping, multi-billion-dollar industry. In interlocking narratives, it explores lives rendered mute by irate callers, scripted apologies, and life’s menial violence, but which manage to talk back every now and then, just as long as the Mute button is firmly pressed. Winner, 2017 Palanca Grand Prize Winner, 2018 NBDB and Manila Critics Circle National Book Award

A Novel

The Quiet Ones

Where did she read it that when we lose people, we lose them gradually, over the years, one aspect at a time? What would be next, she wondered—Rey's hands, his chest, the dimple on his right cheek.

In that, his first triumph, Alvin understood that there was joy in being bold, an exhilaration in asserting yourself.

The eternal desire to please others, often waylaying his own wellbeing, he chose to see as humility, kindness even. It birthed a sad, timorous air about him, sometimes manifesting as broad awkwardness.

All that we did in this world was to salvage scraps of freedom.

When a moment made me heady with gladness, I'd always force myself to consciously remember it. To say, Philip, I want you to remember this. Stick it somewhere. Do not forget. This way, they would harden as memory even as I was experiencing them, like a physical souvenir I could keep close.

Here, then, happiness is obviously a form of strength, a subversion even, a modus of survival, even if at times it appears superficial and misplaced. 

Besides, for all of boxing's brutality, there is lyricism in its rhythm, too, something that dreamy, romantic Filipinos perhaps recognize. It is almost too facile to ascribe too much significance in this metaphor, but this incongruous combination of lyrical violence is default in Manila, where beauty is scarce, and which flourishes side by side with the hideous. There is pride in that stubborn independence, I think, whether it is on the canvas of the boxing ring or history. How did that killer song end again? 

And so a fatal combination: the hooks and straights of wars and conquest and the final paralyzing uppercut of freedom.

Or rather, the everyman. Slight of frame, hair damaged by cheap highlights, and dark skin darkened still by a loving tropical sun. Pacquiao is a smorgasbord of Filipino physicality, which a walk around Manila's streets should easily confirm: Pacquiao's almond eyes on an itinerant cigarette vendor; his straight, fine hair on a jeepmwy driver; his high cheekbones on a harried-looking bureaucrat type; his vacant eyes on a senator. 

Anchors. In a world where distance is a function not so much of miles but of sheer willingness, that’s what we need, that’s what we aspire for. Well, most of us, at least. It’s the antithesis to placelessness.

(Had I relied too much on Damian? Did I, in that awful cliché, build my world around him, so in the aftermath, I was reduced to an idle ruin? There was a vacancy that pervaded my days but was that not to be expected? We had done every thing together, from early evening walks around the block to occasional holidays, like the bank-breaker in South America in '86 that culminated in Machu Pichu. It was majestic. Ten short years later Damian started to unduly extend his consultation hours, the beginning of the end. He was working for tenure, he'd thunder, for me, for this family. Bloody tenure.)

I could feel my face contorting into that look of severe, constipated amiability that it would wear whenever I found myself in the centre of unwanted attention.

Elsewhere in the room, everything was an afterthought. The cardboard calendar on a side table announced the wrong month, maybe flipped to December by the last impatient guest. The tiny pot sat unused on a single burner gas stove (also unused). The fifty-watt bulb required a little back-and-forth twist to work.

"When I look at Sunken from here," he made a viewfinder out of bony fingers, "framed by my shoes, and your shoes, pointed upwards like this, it's kind of, you know," he blinked, "OK. I'm actually OK with this. The world is OK."

To me, this place had always spoken of the largeness of adulthood, of the world, especially for the wide-eyed provinciano whose first brush with Manila included, among others, a communist for a philosophy teacher, a dear wallet snatched while he was walking in Philcoa, and a nagging suspicion that everyone else except him had life figured out.

Things, in other words, that made one feel inconsequential.

When he'd shed off his student leader facade, as he did now, tired of the bluster, he'd snuggle and try to make himself small. I'd envelope his long, lean body. When he'd say something conciliatory, like "I want to stay here, Eric. Right here," my chest would feel the vibration before my ears heard the actual words.

To be nostalgic in a city like Manila, Scott said once, was to subject yourself to chronic, irredeemable depression. 

His skin was warm. I turned to him. His face, covered up in gauze in spots, was filled with red lines, a face being uprooted from youth and resisting. He smiled, and I fumbled for things to say. We'd had too many beers, too much of the city, of each other, again.

Back on his futon, he was watching my face, perhaps in search of a flicker of recognition, maybe even nostalgia,that social disease. Exhausted, I allowed my lips to soften to a smile. The sight, once so familiar and distressing. How many times had I arrived here unannounced to find the sheets ruffled a certain away, the sheets warm with a presence, the scent of a stranger in the air? Then the dragging discussions on monogamy, the palliative beer, the balm of long walks and fucking.

An errant thought: look, Scott, the city on your face.

My notions of love and relationships had undergone the severest examinations under Scott. Suddenly there were so many things to consider. Patriarchy, evolution, state apparatuses, Barthes. When I asked him about Ian, he'd ask back if I thought that diminished in any way what we had. Was love finite, like oil reserves? Did I see love as possession? Did I think that when we were together, I owned him? Of course not, I said, but didn't he consider my feelings? Feelings, he repeated, a sinister smile. Noticed how any harangue about fidelity and desire resound with the assertion of the self? "Whatabout me?" "Didn't you consider my feelings?" Me, me, me! "Alvin, romantic love was never meant to quench, to appease, to complete. Its essence is its constant exertion. That's what we have, don't you think?"

I stopped myself from feeling hurt, and my audacious resolve took over. "There's a lot that I need to unlearn," I said, and we hugged and kissed and settled on his futon.

If you had to say that, you no longer were, I wanted to say.

"What we have, Alvin, what we have is better than real."

"The possible is always better than the real."

All along the swirl of conversation, questions and answers, observations and defense, explanations, clarifications, as if, in showing him around Manila, I was also introducing myself, which of course I was.

"Maybe God gave you guys such beautiful singing voices so you could sing so magnificently of the tragedies in your lives."

i think there's beauty in how this story shifted from a heist-like narrative to the mundane everyday life of the characters, especially of the filipino working class. i did enjoy parts in which the writing stood out to me :) sir glenn diaz was my professor during my freshie year and ofc i expected nothing less from a palanca winner! 

however, with that, i do think i should've expected it would be a difficult read. it was a challenge for me getting through this book. in a way, sadly, i only finished it for the sake of finishing it. i think it's brilliant, yes, and remarkable in how it narrates both the manila and province life, but even though the places that were talked ahout here were oh so familiar to me, i felt detached. maybe because of the big words? the begrudgingly long descriptions? either way, it's not so bad. i recognize i'm just not the audience for this and that doesn't take away from sir glenn's writing skills. to write something like this is still a feat i can't even begin to imagine achieving.

moreover, the thought-provoking topics that were tackled here, such as loneliness, filipino joy, placelessness, queer and changing love, were all very important to me and i will remember these passages vividly.

definitely a read to remember! maybe i'll be able to appreciate it more when i read it again in the far future.

i think there's beauty in how this story shifted from a heist-like narrative to the mundane everyday life of the characters, especially of the filipino working class. i did enjoy parts in which the writing stood out to me :) sir glenn diaz was my professor during my freshie year and ofc i expected nothing less from a palanca winner! 

however, with that, i do think i should've expected it would be a difficult read. it was a challenge for me getting through this book. in a way, sadly, i only finished it for the sake of finishing it. i think it's brilliant, yes, and remarkable in how it narrates both the manila and province life, but even though the places that were talked ahout here were oh so familiar to me, i felt detached. maybe because of the big words? the begrudgingly long descriptions? either way, it's not so bad. i recognize i'm just not the audience for this and that doesn't take away from sir glenn's writing skills. to write something like this is still a feat i can't even begin to imagine achieving.

moreover, the thought-provoking topics that were tackled here, such as loneliness, filipino joy, placelessness, queer and changing love, were all very important to me and i will remember these passages vividly.

definitely a read to remember! maybe i'll be able to appreciate it more when i read it again in the far future.

★★★★ // what an interesting novel that looks like a story about a heist on the surface, but actually more of the bits and pieces, past and present, of the people involved. in each and every story, no matter how brief or excruciatingly detailed, i pick up something to ponder on. things that stood out to me were:

(1) alvin and scott and their recurring conversations about placelessness, anchors, and that which ties us to the world; the constant exertion and defamiliarization from a beloved, and the thin line that just won’t give.

(2) carolina and rey and the promise of a life-changing romance, for once finding a refuge — a home — in the midst of placelessness. yet still comes the years of unbecoming and being undone, and love changing.

(3) eric and gene and love being bigger than just the self, the anchor that could not stay yet still stays in you forever

the story is set at a time when call centers and BPOs are starting to boom in the country. in the face of the rapid growth of the industry, the individual starts to become one of the many shoulders that bear the weight of capitalism. we forget that these people have stories and lives that stretch back and forward. so it isn’t really a book about a heist. it’s a story about these lives that dissolve the moment they step foot in these airconditioned rooms, assume a different identity for days, and talk to people halfway around the world who don’t even know their face.

in one scene here, alvin had just started in the company and had to deal with an angry customer. his supervisor took over in his stead. once the issue was resolved, his supervisor told him not to worry because the caller cannot possibly harm him. the caller does not even really know him because they’re miles away. he’s safe. a double-edged sword: one that promises anonymity and security, but one that also makes you realize that you are replaceable because you are just one of the many people who answers a call.

other than a few confusing language use and noticeable inconsistent tone, i think this is a pretty solid book. oftentimes a bit scary because of my familiarity with the places mentioned, the fact that i also worked in the BPO industry, and the stretches of doubts about myself and the struggle to constantly find meaning in what i do.


  “anchors. in a world where distance is a function not so much of miles but of sheer willingness, that’s what we need, that’s what we aspire for. well, most of us, at least. it’s the antithesis to placelessness.”


what is the tie that anchors me to this world?

Borrowing a morsel of Woolf's opinion on Howards End (and I say this tentative, vague, with little self-confidence, merely by intuition), this book was written with so much responsibility. Diaz rehearsed astounding, inimitable range of novel writing in his inaugural work (which made it amusing however personally challenging). Its ethos, not missing a beat, its verisimilitude/circumstantiality perfervidly compelling, wanton, lush but certainly never superfluous. One thing I didn't expect from Diaz was his humor, every quip was risible—every throwaway query/sentiment scathingly saddening. Each of his work is an assertion of my college courses' simple assertion in literature (at least what I think they do), novels and histories are inseparable. To quote Gemino, “Memory is Imagination's heartland.”

The Quiet Ones A Novel

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