SOURCE: Vidal, Lourdes H. “Echoes and Reflections in Villa Magdalena.” Philippine Studies 35, no. 3 (1987): 377-82.

In the following essay, Vidal traces the development of Santos's major themes—alienation and corruption—in his work.

Two themes recur in the fictional works of Bienvenido Santos: the alienation/nostalgia of the exile and the loneliness/corruption of the poor boy searching for himself in the world of the rich. These themes are fully developed in two pairs of novels published almost twenty years apart. Despite the time difference, the novels maintain a continuing development into the varying manifestations of these two central themes. Each pair depicts the two themes using appropriate fictional devices.

The 1983 The Man Who (Thought He) Looked Like Robert Taylor and the 1965 The Volcano depicted the feelings and problems of the exile: the first, in America and the second, in the Philippines. Two sides of the same nostalgia and...